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Downey council authorizes citywide streetlight master plan, drops petition requirement
Summary
Council directed staff to prepare a citywide streetlight master plan and to stop using the petition process as the primary basis for installing lights. Staff reported about 1,100 missing lights at roughly $9,000 each and proposed a $500,000 annual local‑return budget; council adjusted prioritization to emphasize safety and sidewalks and asked for a July return with a 20‑year program.
The Downey City Council voted unanimously to direct staff to prepare a citywide streetlight master plan that inventories missing fixtures, scores candidate locations and produces a phased capital plan. Council also removed the petition process as the primary installation trigger and asked staff to return in July with a prioritized 20‑year implementation plan and first‑year projects.
Public Works Director Matt Bombgardner told the council that staff’s preliminary inventory identified roughly 1,100 locations lacking streetlights and estimated an average installation cost of about $9,000 per (solar) fixture. Using a proposed $500,000 annual budget funded from local return funds (not the general fund), staff said it would take roughly 20 years to complete the citywide program.
Bombgardner told the council the master plan would layer objective data — lighting gaps, sidewalk coverage, collision history, proximity to transit and destinations, and on‑street parking pressure — into a prioritization score. During debate council members pressed staff to give greater weight to public‑safety indicators (crime/collision history), and to prioritize locations with no sidewalks or lighting gaps; they agreed to remove “public demand” (the prior petition‑driven mechanism) as the primary metric, while still honoring the existing list of resident requests as an important input.
Councilmembers and staff discussed the tradeoffs between continuing a resident petition model (which staff said had often failed to reach required thresholds) and treating streetlighting as a city CIP driven by objective safety and equity criteria. Bombgardner said prior petition efforts required extensive staff time to collect signatures and that some petitions took months and still failed to reach the needed participation rates.
Next steps: staff will refine the prioritization methodology consistent with council direction and return in July with a final master plan showing prioritized blocks, a 20‑year program and recommended implementation for the first year. The council approved the direction unanimously.
Key financial and schedule points from staff presentation: roughly 1,100 missing lights citywide; average capital cost about $9,000 per location (solar installations cited); proposed annual budget $500,000 from local return funds; preliminary schedule roughly 20 years to complete the citywide program at that funding level.
