Mayor Karen Bass announced an initiative to install 60,000 solar-powered streetlights after Los Angeles accrued a decade-long backlog of repair requests.

“These are the basics that shape how we feel about our city, and whether our city is safe,” Bass said. “The street light backlog that piled up before I took office is unacceptable – we’re addressing it and making it safer for people to walk their dogs, come home from work, and park their cars at night.”

The initiative aims to install or repair tens of thousands of solar installations over the next two years, which includes the backlog of 32,000 service requests throughout the city. Council members Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado, Traci Park and Katy Yaroslavsky took similar measures in their districts by drawing on their discretionary funds to repair broken lights and modernize them with solar-powered upgrades.

Bass’ office attributed the backlog to stagnated infrastructure funding, which has not changed since 1996 and a 1,200% increase in copper wire theft over the last 10 years. Lights damaged during copper wire thefts cost at least four times more than typical maintenance.

“Los Angeles has a streetlight emergency,” Yaroslavsky said in February. “1 in 10 lights are out. My colleagues and I on the City Council are done asking residents to wait on a broken bureaucracy.”

Bass’ office said the solar alternatives do not use copper wires and come with battery storage capable of providing light even during grid disruptions.

“Instead of continuing to patch together antiquated street light technology, we’re using solar to make our lights more reliable, resistant to theft, and cleaner to operate,” Bass said. 

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