Residents press council over dark street lights; city officials say repairs hampered by utility lead times

Several residents at the Oct. 22 Long Branch City Council meeting raised public-safety concerns about dark or inoperable street lights and urged faster repairs. The council and city officials responded that the city is documenting outages and escalating complaints to the utility and regulators, but some repairs are delayed by long lead times for equipment.

Resident Scott Beaver told the council that intersections and curves are poorly lit and called the condition a public-safety hazard. "From this point forward, if anyone, especially at intersections that aren't lit, gets hurt because of this, I ask and I would promote the individual being injured to go after the city of Long Branch and JCP&L," he said in public comment.

Business Administrator Charles Shirley and Mayor John Pallone responded that the city has an inventory and an ongoing reporting process with JCP&L (now owned by FirstEnergy). Shirley said the city logs outages and has had as many as 350 lights out at one time; he said the city pays for lighting whether fixtures are working or not and has engaged to escalate repairs. Pallone said lead times for replacement lights have lengthened since FirstEnergy acquired JCP&L, and that the Board of Public Utilities is the regulator to which the utility reports. He said the city was told the lead time to clear the current list could be as long as three years, a timeline the city is pushing back on while continuing to document outages and press the utility.

Pallone also said the city has asked police to inventory outage reports and that members of Congress and the energy committee have been engaged at times to secure corporate responses. He encouraged residents to report specific outages; the clerk and administration offered council hours and a phone number for follow-up.

The transcript records public comment raising the issue and the mayor and administrator describing the city's reporting and escalation efforts; it does not record a specific binding action or a formal agreement with the utility to accelerate repairs.