With broken streetlight complaints on the rise in LA — 46K last year alone — lag on repairs keeps growing

The time between reporting a broken streetlight and getting it repaired keeps growing in the city of L.A.

By the end of 2025, city officials say, it’s expected to take a year for maintenance teams to respond to complaints about broken street lights.

Increasing maintenance and equipment costs and growing reports of copper wire theft have contributed to the lag, according to Miguel Sangalang, the head of the city's Bureau of Street Lighting.

But the main issue, Sangalang said, is that the bureau’s revenue has essentially remained stagnant.

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“We have had challenges on our maintenance and operations sides because of the structure of the bureau, where most of our revenues have been frozen in time since 1996,” Sangalang told the City Council’s public works committee on Wednesday.

The increasing lag time for repairs tracks with a growing number of 311 complaints about broken street lights.

Last year, the city received nearly 46,000 complaints about broken street lights. That’s 43% more than in 2023, according to an LAist analysis of 311 data.

A decaying streetlight was at the center of one of the largest payouts for civil liability over the last year. In all, L.A. paid out $21 million after a jury found the city liable for a serious injury caused by part of a damaged streetlight falling on a man.

Frozen revenue

The bureau’s main source of revenue is a fee, or assessment, that property owners who benefit from streetlights pay twice a year. But despite inflation and increasing maintenance needs, that fee — around $53 annually for most single-family homes — has brought in roughly the same $45 million a year for almost 30 years.

“Just in terms of [inflation] alone, if you’re looking at assessment revenue, it would have been doubled by this point in time,” Sangalang said.

The fee, which applies to residential and commercial properties alike, has been stuck since 1996 because that’s when California voters approved Proposition 218. The initiative limited how much local governments, including the city of L.A., can increase fees for “special benefits.” Street lighting is considered a special benefit because not all city streets have the infrastructure.

Instead of the city itself approving an increased fee, a majority of property owners who benefit from street lighting would need to vote in favor of it.

How would an increased fee help?

Sangalang said an increased fee could allow the bureau to increase its staff by 50% and reduce the repair lag time to just a week.

Just under 200 people work for the bureau now.

Sangalang also said that more revenue would mean more innovative solutions to fixing the city’s aging street lighting infrastructure.

A more resilient street lighting system

Forty percent of street light outages are because of people stealing copper wire and power, Sangalang said Wednesday.

The bureau’s maintenance teams are focused on restoring street lights that have been affected by theft and fortifying systems to prevent theft.

But another potential solution is removing the wires altogether in favor of solar-powered street lights.

Though expensive, the technology has the backing of Mayor Karen Bass.

On Wednesday morning, the mayor visited Historic Filipinotown, where crews were installing “hundreds of new solar-powered lights,” according to a news release from her office.

“We are using new and innovative ways to improve city services for Angelenos — from modernizing the MyLA311 system to installing new solar lighting,” Bass said in the statement. “The city is taking action to make your neighborhoods safer and cleaner.”

Councilmember and chair the public works committee, Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes Filipinotown, also sees the potential of solar street lights.

“Investing in sustainable infrastructure like these solar street lights is a win for our communities and our planet. We’re reducing our carbon footprint, we’re deterring copper wire theft, and we’re tackling the streetlight backlog in the neighborhoods that need it most,” Hernandez said in the statement.

Last year, the bureau installed solar-powered lights in Van Nuys. It will also add the technology to lights in Watts.