County gives streetlight vendor notice to cure after prolonged outages; commissioners set 60-day deadline

Miami-Dade County officials said the county has issued a notice to cure to its streetlight contractor after prolonged outages and slower-than-expected upgrades.

The interim director of the Department of Transportation and Public Works, Joseph Hernandez, told the committee the vendor had failed to meet the contract's 95% uptime requirement and that the county had given the contractor 180 days from the previous month to return service levels to the contract standard. Hernandez said the department is tracking work orders, wire-theft repairs and coordination with the Florida Department of Transportation.

The notice to cure prompted immediate questioning from commissioners who described outages of months in some neighborhoods. Chairman Rodriguez said 180 days was too long and sought a much shorter curing period. Rodriguez told the contractor's representative that the committee expects either a rapid fix or contract action.

Oscar Bode, CEO of Miami Dade Smart Lighting Partners, told the committee the contractor inherited an unreliable system when the contract began in February 2023. "When that contract was signed, it was not disclosed to us that instead of receiving a network that was at 95% ... the prior contractor ... handed up a network that was 4,700 lights were out, which is 83%," Bode said. He said the vendor has upgraded roughly 6,000 to 7,000 non-FDOT lights but remains limited by unresolved FDOT approvals and underground damage the contractor cannot repair without FDOT permission.

Hernandez and commissioners described the contract and the county's maintenance agreement with FDOT as a key bottleneck. The department said about 14,000 of the county's roughly 28,000 lights lie in FDOT right-of-way and require FDOT evaluation and approval of fixture changes. Hernandez said FDOT has directed the county and vendor to perform photometric analysis and that the vendor is preparing a proposal; the vendor said it submitted a LIDAR study in lieu of a full photometric analysis and is awaiting approval.

Commissioners repeatedly framed the outages as a life-safety issue given darker morning hours after daylight-saving time changes and called for urgent fixes. The county's chief operating officer, Jimmy Morales, said he would elevate coordination with FDOT and with state leadership in Tallahassee.

After extensive questioning, commissioners set an accelerated timeline: the vendor and DTPW were directed to provide written documentation that the county delivered a 95% operating network at handoff (the vendor was asked to produce it within 60 days), DTPW to reinstate its corrective notice to the vendor, and the department to provide an updated progress report to the committee by May 12, with a vendor-ready status no later than May 2, to allow third-party confirmation before the May 12 update. Chairman Rodriguez said contract action would follow if compliance was not demonstrated by those dates.

Commissioners and the vendor identified three key near-term items to unblock work: (1) streamline coordination and approvals with FDOT and document how underground repairs and claims to FDOT will be handled; (2) obtain written county approval for the contractor's underground-repair methodology and authority to replace damaged underground cable as needed; and (3) provide the contractor additional county-side resources to avoid administrative delays.

The committee also discussed wire theft as a major ongoing cause of outages; the vendor said it had been absorbing some costs to address wire theft despite that being outside the original contract scope. Hernandez said the county has issued direction to repair underground damage and will seek to recover costs from FDOT where appropriate but will prioritize life-safety repairs even if cost recovery is uncertain.

The committee did not take a formal roll-call vote on a motion at the meeting, but members voiced unanimous support for the accelerated timeline. The committee directed the director to follow up with written notices and the May 2/May 12 reporting schedule and said contract enforcement would be pursued if the vendor failed to meet the deadlines.

The vendor and department will return with documentation and status updates on the specified dates. Commissioners said they expect the county to provide the vendor the tools on the county side necessary to meet the contract and warned that the county will pursue contract remedies if performance does not improve.