STREETLIGHTS : LAMPS ONE BRIGHT SPOT FOR RESIDENTS.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer

It is unclear exactly how many of the city's 230,000 street lamps the Valley has, but city officials say there are roughly as many per capita as elsewhere due to requirements upon developers to install them.

Maintenance of street lamps has emerged as a heated issue, however, with residents in Sherman Oaks forcing the city to back away from plans to replace 1920s-era, acorn-shaped lamps with modern ones. The city said the new lights would be cheaper to operate and maintain, but wasn't able to come up with supporting figures.

The point, the homeowners said, was the city's insensitivity to one of the few public amenities truly dear to residents' hearts.

``Letters were sent out saying we're going to rip up these lights and if you want to be involved (in choosing their replacements) please come in,'' said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association.

``Our question was, `Why is this necessary?' People don't want industrial lights. People feel nostalgic about the old ones; they give us a feeling of the way L.A. used to be.''

Most residents pay $53 a year to keep the lights in their assessment districts burning anyway, though about 20 percent of the money goes into a $6.5 million citywide pot to pay for renovations. Most of those upgrades are taking place elsewhere in the city, but will reach the Valley eventually as its system ages, city officials said.

For now, it is the rest of the city that most often needs its lights fixed. For June and July, there were 3,992 calls for repairs in the rest of the city compared to 754 in the Valley, according to bureau records.