Hollywood neighborhoods Friday can expect a dedicated street light repair team to turn the lights back on in areas that have been dark for some time.<\/p>\n
In a 14-0 vote, the Los Angeles City Council approved $1 million on Friday for a street light repair team that will work exclusively in Council District 13, encompassing the Hollywood area. Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, who represents CD13, introduced a motion last year calling for the crew that will be supported with discretionary dollars allocated for his district.<\/p>\n
Councilman Bob Blumenfield was absent during the vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell-lit streets are safe streets, and our residents deserve this basic public amenity,\u201d Soto-Martinez said in a statement. \u201cWe will do whatever it takes to get the lights back on and eliminate the street light backlog in District 13.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dedicated street light crew is expected to accelerate repairs and reduce the district\u2019s street light backlog.<\/p>\n
Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado established a similar crew to address those same issues in her Council District 14, encompassing downtown and northeast Los Angeles neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles continues to faces challenges with broken or damaged street lights. City officials report that repairing broken street lights takes more than nine months on average.<\/p>\n
According to Soto-Martinez\u2019s office, the fee that funds 90% of street light maintenance in the city hasn\u2019t been adjusted for inflation for decades.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Bureau of Street Lighting had a city-high 32% vacancy rate until recent years, when those job vacancies were eliminated entirely. Copper wire theft also increased to record levels in recent years.<\/p>\n
About 60% of broken street lights are down due to routine maintenance.<\/p>\n
Other actions that city officials have taken to address street light issues involve \u201chardening\u201d infrastructure by replacing copper wiring with solar-powered lights.<\/p>\n
City officials are exploring other ways to improve repairs and ensure street lights are taken care of by changing funding models and examining staffing solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hollywood neighborhoods Friday can expect a dedicated street light repair team to turn the lights back on in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5186,599,2323,6947,1743,48,52,51,11836,47,50,49,270,1291],"class_list":["post-127383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-approves","tag-area","tag-council","tag-crew","tag-hollywood","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-light","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-repair","tag-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}