On Monday, November 25, the Peru City Hall staff, former mayor Dave Pease and many community members gathered at City Hall to celebrate the installation and lighting of 30 new streetlights. The lights run down 5th Street from the intersections of California Street to Main Street along either side of the road. Mary Williams, who did the bulk of the planning for the project, explained that the city had applied for a grant in June and been awarded the funds in October, about three weeks before. In that time, the city installed each of the lights and celebrated their lighting with hot chocolate and cookies, as well as by cutting a ribbon and tying it to one of the lightpoles.
It was noted that the design of the streetlights was picked to mirror what Peru’s streetlights once looked like many years ago, and that the current lights hanging over the road from tall wooden poles will be removed. The streetlights, as Mary explained, were the first step in revitalizing Peru, as well as the overarching project of bringing the city together, as well as creating an Americans With Disabilities Act compliant city, with plans to add ramps and other eases to accessibility in the future. “We want to celebrate the little wins,” Peru’s new mayor Katy Propst-Novak said, and Mary added that “when the city works together towards a goal, it can do great work in little time.”
