Council discusses street‑light maintenance, who pays for underground wire repairs under proposed franchise agreement

Lincoln City Council discussed a proposed street‑light maintenance and franchise agreement with Capital Electric during its Jan. 9, 2025, meeting, focusing on who would pay for pole replacement and underground secondary‑wire repairs and how residents would report outages.

The issue matters because the contractor said the maintenance contract being negotiated would cover routine service but not the cost of replacing poles or repairing underground secondary wires — repairs that can require boring and trenching and be costly in older parts of the city. Paul, a representative of Capital Electric, told the council the agreement “does not cover the cost of an repair or replacement of the poles for the underground…