Ballots have started arriving in mailboxes asking Los Angeles voters to pass a fee increase to fix streetlights broken or damaged by copper wire thieves.
The special ballot is being sent citywide to more than 550,000 property owners, and it contains the specific amount calculated for the property. If passed, this could tack on hundreds of dollars in fees for these property owners.
Mayor Karen Bass said one of the chief complaints her office gets is about streetlights. More than 200,000 streetlights across the city are in need of repair or replacement because of copper wire thieves.
The mayor is replacing 60,000 streetlights with solar lights, using money from the General Fund. She says this assessment, if approved, will raise $125 million — enough to get the rest of the broken streetlights in the city fixed.
“Replacing copper wire with solar lights accomplishes two goals. Number one, it gets the lights back on,” Bass said. “It contributes to our environment, but also, it deals with copper wire theft because solar lights do not have copper in them, so we are going to install 60,000 new streetlights. And as long as voters support the streetlighting assessment, we will be able to replace all 200,000 lights as needed in the city — something long, long, long overdue.”
Many property owners are outraged by the proposed assessment, questioning why they have to pay for streetlights damaged by copper wire thieves.
The city argues that most individual streetlighting assessments have not increased since 1996.
There will be two public hearings at city hall on the proposed assessment: one on May 20, and the other on June 2.
Ballots are due before the close of that June 2 hearing.