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Bureau of Street Lighting warns of multi-year repair backlogs, plans assessment ballot to shore up funding
Summary
The Bureau of Street Lighting told the City Budget Committee that decades-old assessments and rising costs have left repairs taking up to a year and risk lengthening to 2–3 years unless new revenue is approved; the bureau proposes a fall ballot assessment and asked the CAO and council for several budget memos and potential offsets.
Miguel Sandelang, director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting, told the City Council Budget and Finance Committee that the bureau’s core maintenance and theft‑mitigation work is underfunded and that repair times already average eight to nine months and may reach a year by fall.
Sandelang said the bureau’s assessment revenue has remained at roughly $45 million annually since 1996 and that a 2022 internal and third‑party analysis estimate needs exceeding $100 million annually to sustain current services. He said the bureau will propose a new assessment ballot to the mayor and council this summer with the earliest effective date of January 1 if approved, and that the assessment revenues likely would not be collected until the following fiscal year because they are placed on the county property tax roll.
The bureau described program impacts…
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