Streetlighting - april 2022
Streetlighting
Released April 2022 Download the Full Report here Download the Highlights Page here We undertook this audit because streetlighting may improve safety and reduce criminal activity. This audit addresses whether streetlighting operational and maintenance costs are consistent with industry standards and whether adequate controls are in place to ensure that streetlight operability meets industry standards. |
We found:
Our recommendations focus on improving streetlighting costs, agreements and regulations.
- The city may be paying more for streetlighting because it has installed more costly unregulated lights, which account for 5% of its portfolio but 16% of the costs.
- The city does not have an inventory of streetlights or the necessary information to manage them because it has not retained current agreements.
- We were unable to locate 36 Georgia Power-owned lights listed in the utility’s location data in our random sample of 27 city land lots.
- Of the lights that we observed in our random sample, 12% of city-owned lights and 4% of Georgia Power-owned lights were inoperable.
- City-owned lights on interstates maintained by Georgia Power had inoperability rates as high as 9.3%, but maintenance contracts have yet to establish an inoperability rate that would trigger billing credits.
Our recommendations focus on improving streetlighting costs, agreements and regulations.