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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 that would follow if revenues fall short. Sandelang estimated the department could face cuts equal to about $7.7 million in offsets that would amount to roughly 80–100 positions — roughly a third of field staff — and said that if the DWP MOU funds are restricted to work on Department of Water & Power projects the bureau could be forced to redeploy personnel away from city streetlight repairs. Council members repeatedly asked whether entering a $7.7 million MOU with DWP to perform work for DWP would reduce streetlight responsiveness for city projects; bureau staff confirmed funds tied to DWP projects could not be commingled with the bureau’s streetlighting work.
Sandelang described several revenue and efficiency options the bureau is pursuing: a fall ballot assessment under Proposition 218 (an assessment mailed to property owners, not a general election), expanded colocation and conduit leasing opportunities, banner and permitting fees changes, participation in state middle‑mile broadband builds to offset personnel costs, and a possible internal loan or tax anticipation structure if the assessment passes but funds are not immediately available. He cautioned that internal borrowing carries risk if a future ballot measure failed.
Councilmembers requested multiple budget memos: a CAO feasibility analysis of the bureau’s offset proposals; an analysis of accelerating the assessment timeline and the assessor roll mechanics; options for using revenues (including potential securitization or internal borrowing) and the legal/financial risks; a study with City Attorney input on whether the banner program could be converted to a revenue source; and memos on how to capture greater cost recovery from EV charging and other bureau programs. Several council members asked for detail on tradeoffs between solar/battery streetlights (higher upfront cost, lower repeat repairs) and traditional repairs.
If the proposed assessment measure is placed on a fall ballot and passes, bureau staff said the earliest operational improvement would be an effective date of January 1 and that half of the first fiscal year would still be at current rates. The bureau said its hope is to place a ballot mailer this fall and to begin returning to more normal repair cadence the next fiscal year, but that short‑term constraints may require reassignments or temporary work for other city projects to keep staff employed.
The committee asked for a series of follow‑ups from the CAO, the bureau, and other departments so council can weigh options before the final FY 2025–26 budget is adopted.
