L.A. streetlights take a year to fix. Council members say solar power is the answer
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Faced with numerous complaints about broken streetlights that have plunged neighborhoods into darkness, two Los Angeles City Council members unveiled a plan Friday to spend $65 million on installing solar-powered lights.With 1 in 10 streetlights out of service because of disrepair or copper wire theft, Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky and Eunisses Hernandez launched an effort to convert at least 12% of the city’s lights to solar power — or about 500 in each council district.Broken streetlights emerged as an hot-button issue in this year’s election, with council members scrambling to find ways to restore them.Councilmember Nithya Raman, now running against Mayor Karen Bass, cited the broken lights as an example of how city agencies “can’t seem to manage the basics.”By switching to solar, the streetlights will be less vulnerable to theft, said Yaroslavsky, who represents part of the Westside.
“We can’t keep rebuilding the same vulnerable systems while copper theft continues to knock out lights across Los Angeles,” she said.Three other council members — Traci Park, Monica Rodriguez and Hugo Soto-Martínez — signed on to the proposal.All five are running for reelection.Miguel Sangalang, director of the Bureau of Street Lighting, said there are 33,000 open service requests to fix streetlights across L.A., although some may be duplicates.
The average time to fix a streetlight is 12 months, he said.Repair times have increased because of a rise in vandalism, the department’s stagnant budget and a staff of only 185 people to service the city’s 225,000 streetlights, he said.About 60,000 street lights are eligible to be converted to solar, according to Yaroslavsky.Council members also are looking to increase the amount the city charges property owners for streetlight maintenance.Yaroslavsky said the assessment has been unchanged since 1996, forcing city lead...