$80 million increase in streetlight funding is rejected by L.A. property owners

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Set us as preferred Los Angeles property owners voted against an increase in an assessment for maintaining streetlights that would have collected an additional $80 million a year, as the city faces a backlog of broken streetlights due to stagnant funding and a rise in vandalism.The assessment has not changed since 1996.Property owners had until June 2 to submit their votes, which were weighted by the amount of their parcel’s proposed assessment.

According to results released Thursday, nearly 80% of the weighted vote went against raising the assessment, which currently generates about $45 million a year.For the average single family home, which make up the majority of parcels, the current payment is $58 annually, or about $5 a month, according to Miguel Sangalang, executive director and general manager of the Bureau of Street Lighting.

The increase would have brought the average annual bill to $117, or about $10 a month.The proposed increase would have brought the total amount collected by the assessment to $125 million a year.

California Broken streetlights have emerged as a hot-button issue in this year’s election, with council members scrambling to find ways to restore them.In a joint statement Thursday, Mayor Karen Bass, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and City Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Katy Yaroslavsky said that despite the result, the “critical work will continue” to address the broken streetlights that have plunged neighborhoods into darkness across the city.“Despite this outcome, the City remains committed to improving streetlight reliability, repairing outages faster, and building a sustainable funding path for streetlight operations and maintenance,” the group said.

“Every Angeleno deserves to feel safe walking their dogs, returning home from work, and parking their cars at nigh...