When Conrado Guerrero, a Lincoln Heights resident, walks his dogs or brings his nieces and nephews to the park at night, he has to bring a flashlight.
“There’s a light pole right in front of my house, and it was out for over a year. We had to put an extra light just to make sure that our street was not dark,” Guerrero told LAist on Monday, when crews began the process of installing 91 solar streetlights in Lincoln Heights and Cypress Park using discretionary dollars from the office of L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez.
A few days later, on Wednesday, the L.A. City Council voted to progress a strategy to increase the city’s streetlight repair and maintenance budget, which essentially has been frozen since the late 1990s.
The strategy involves another council approval and convincing property owners to pay more in a yearly assessment on their property tax bill. If it works, Miguel Sangalang, head of the Bureau of Street Lighting, said the city could double its streetlighting field staff, expedite repairs to aging infrastructure and purchase more solar streetlights to help eliminate the growing scourge of copper wire theft.
-
L.A. is one of several California cities piloting the technology. -
Immigration enforcement has hit undocumented and immigrant neighborhoods hardest and hurt small businesses, according to new report -
Bald eagles can lay a replacement clutch if the eggs are lost early in the incubation process, as seen in the nest several seasons ago.
The background and Wednesday’s vote
Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. That yearly fee, which is around $53 for most single-family homes, has been stuck for three decades because of state law.
A third-party study from 2024 found that the assessments the bureau currently collects equate to 45% of what it needs to “properly maintain and operate the system,” according to a summary of the report from the City Administrative Officer.
The city can’t approve a higher fee without gaining approval from property owners. That’s where Wednesday’s vote comes in.
The L.A. City Council agreed to extend a contract with a consultant who will prepare what’s called an engineer’s report, which will quantify the proposed assessment increases for each parcel and show how the extra revenue will help the Bureau of Street Lighting meet the cost of maintaining service and implementing improvements.
Councilmembers Heather Hutt, Monica Rodriguez and Katy Yaroslavsky were absent for the vote. The rest of the council voted in favor of the item.
How to reach me
If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is kharjai.61.
- You can follow this link to reach me there or type my username in the search bar after starting a new chat.
- For instructions on getting started with Signal, see the app's support page.
- And if you're comfortable just reaching out by email I'm at kharjai@scpr.org
Sangalang told local leaders Wednesday that he hopes to return to L.A. City Council in March with the engineer’s report, as well as a more detailed public outreach plan. At that point, L.A. City Council would have to approve the engineer’s report and vote in favor of sending out ballots to the more than half a million property owners that would be impacted.
If all goes according to plan, property owners could receive ballots in April. The city’s timeline has been pushed back in the past, though.
Sangalang said the assessment increase, if approved, would also come with a “three-year auditing mechanism” that would ensure the city is “using every dollar as wisely as possible.”
