Overview
- City officials certified results Friday showing 79.29% of weighted ballots opposed the Street Lighting Maintenance Assessment District, so the proposed increase will not take effect.
- The measure would have raised total streetlight collections to about $125 million a year, roughly an $80 million increase over the current assessment that has not changed since 1996.
- The Bureau of Street Lighting operates nearly 225,000 fixtures and says average repair times run about one year with roughly one in ten lights out due to disrepair or copper-wire theft.
- With the assessment blocked, city leaders have pledged a mix of fixes including a Mayor Bass plan to convert 60,000 lights to solar, a $65 million council allocation for solar poles, district discretionary repairs and vendor proposals for hardened pole-access covers.
- The vote used California’s Proposition 218 weighted mail-ballot process that counts ballots by the dollar value of each parcel’s proposed assessment and highlights legal and financing hurdles for parcel-based levies in large cities.