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fi 70 pi.). City of Orono November 29,2005 `` Y. 2750 Kelly Parkway Orono,MN 55356 Dear Michael Gaffron, I would appreciate assistance from the City of Orono in a disagreement with my next door neighbor over lighting at her home. The property that is the subject of this disagreement is 2811 Casco Point Road, in the City of Orono,owned by Theresa Norsted. Our home is on Lake Minnetonka with many windows facing the lake and many windows facing the subject property. The owner has a large steel-looking structure in her yard close to the bluff overlooking the lake,to which she has added hundreds of lights which light up the inside of our home with an irritating glare. It needs to be stressed that when we are almost anywhere in our home all that we can see are hundreds of unshielded incandescent filaments on this large steel structure,and there is no way to avoid the irritating glare that these lights produce throughout our home. This is not a birdbath sized structure—my best guess is that it is 15 to 20 feet across and 15 to 20 feet high. We sometimes lay awake in bed for hours because our master bedroom is lit up brightly by these lights. We did not purchase a home in Orono on Lake Minnetonka to be confronted with a neighbor's lights ruining our quality of life at night—the only relief we can get from this irritating glare is to retreat to our basement! Another issue is on the street side of her home, where there are bright lights on a post that are on all night every night with no glare protection for her neighbors. Without these lights we could safely negotiate our walkway,but with them on we can only see the glare from her lights on the post. We cannot see where we are walking due to the glare from the unshielded incandescent filaments. These lights also light up the inside of our home brightly from a different angle than the lakeside lights,which makes it impossible to hide from their irritating glare,except to retreat to our basement. If an Orono representative comes out to inspect these lights at night,please keep in mind that currently these lights on the post are not burning at full brightness—there appears to be one or more bulbs burned out at this time. She also runs dozens of lights at the water's edge which likely irritate our neighbors across the lake and will lead to those neighbors adding more light to their lakesides,which will further increase irritation and light pollution around the lake. I had two visits with Orono representatives to seek help on this problem. They both strongly suggested that I make an attempt to get the neighbor to correct her lighting before the city got involved. Based on these requests from the city,I asked her nicely both verbally and in writing to turn these lights off or shield our home from their direct light,but these lights continue to be a problem. After I made these requests to her,but before I made a formal complaint to the city, she states that she got a City of Orono representative to tell her that"there was no violation with either the local city ordinance or the applicable state statute". This statement is in direct conflict with the discussions that I had earlier with Orono representatives that there certainly appeared to be a violation,but the City wanted me to try to reach an amicable solution to this problem before the City got involved.