BATON ROUGE - At the East Baton Rouge Metro Council meeting Wednesday afternoon, members approved the Mayor-President to execute a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement with Baton Rouge Sponsoring Committee/Together Baton Rouge to provide $500,000 in partial funding for three community "lighthouses".

These lighthouses will be covered with batteries and solar panels. They will also provide charging stations, heating and cooling among other things. Lead organizer of Together Baton Rouge Edgar Cage says these will greatly benefit citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish during widespread power outages.

"Your neighbor is your true first responder. Before an outage, it will be required for those locations to go out and survey that neighborhood to find out where are the most vulnerable," he said.

These panels will be built at the St. Mark United Methodist Church, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in North Baton Rouge, and IBEW Local Union 995. 

"They're also in underserved areas. We put priority towards the underserved areas. Scotlandville, Glen Oaks and the IBEW training facility," a guest said. 

Those in favor stress these locations are not meant to be shelters.

"This is meant to enhance our ability as a parish to take care of our vulnerable citizens," Director of MOSHEP Clay Reeves said. 

"This is about somebody needing to charge their oxygen machine up and won't need to go to Southern University," District 5 Councilman Darryl Hurst Jr. said. 

Cage says these panels will also be a way to save the city money.

"It won't cost that site or the city government any more money once we get these lighthouses up and running because it's designed to take care of itself," he said.