Here's why New Orleans is struggling to repair thousands of street lights
New Orleans relies almost exclusively on outside help for streetlight and traffic signal repair and maintenance. But there are no bidders.
There’s no hiding the longtime shortcomings of the New Orleans Department of Public Works. The torn-up streets, potholes that damage your car, and dark highways tell the story without a word.
But they’re the symptoms of many obstacles inside the department; including the struggle to find electrical contractors willing to work with the city.
Of the 54,000 streetlights New Orleans is responsible for, about 4,000 need repair. In August, that number was 6,500.
WWL-TV sat down with Sarah McLaughlin Porteous, the Interim Director of the Department of Public Works. She stepped into the position in September of 2022, but has been with the department since 2015.
“So it's a combination of things. We have a lot of outages that are still left as a result of Hurricane Ida,” Porteous said.
But other outages are man-made problems: criminals have stripped out copper wiring in light poles, and earlier this month someone stole fuses and cut wiring in a control box. About five poles per week are knocked down in car crashes.
Any streetlights you’re seeing fixed now are part of a 4.3 million maintenance contract with All-Star Electric put in place last summer.
But for a while, there was no company under contract to fix those streetlights. New Orleans relies almost exclusively on outside help for streetlight and traffic signal repair and maintenance. And in the spring, the only company that bid on the streetlight job didn’t meet the requirements.
“So we had a three or four-month gap where we did not have a regular streetlight repair and maintenance contractor," Porteous said. "The number of outages just continued to grow and grow and grow."
No Bids
About half of the current streetlight outages are from Hurricane Ida, according to Porteous. FEMA will pay for those repairs, which will save the city money. But FEMA will only reimburse the city if they’re fixed under a different type of contract. They will not reimburse the city for the current maintenance contract with All-Star.
“We'll have to put out a separate contract in order to do that work later. The good news is that as we make other repairs, some of the Ida outages are connected to the same feeder points,” she said. “So we're seeing that number of either outages go down and we think it's going to continue to go down.”
While streetlights are taken care of for now, there is no company under contract to maintain the traffic signals that so often go out in New Orleans. Twice, that job went out for bid last year and no company wanted the job.
Currently, All-Star Electric gets paid under an emergency contract to fix traffic signals as needed. But when that happens, Porteous said they have to move a crew off streetlight repair to turn attention to traffic signals.
“We would like to have a lot more competition. We'd like to have a lot more contractors, you know, bidding on our work," Porteous said.
So why aren’t there more bidders for multi-million dollar contracts that keep the city running? Councilman Joe Giarrusso says part of the problem is red tape.
“It seems like it takes a long time for things to be bid. It takes a long time once it’s been bid. It takes time to get you to the table after everything’s done. It takes time to get you paid,” Giarrusso said.
For a smaller business that can be a deal breaker, he says. The council is looking to streamline the process that is partially blamed for holding the city back. Nearby parishes do not have issues this extensive, Giarrusso says.
“As you cross the 17th Street Canal or the Causeway, and you see what other parishes are doing, and they have the same geographical challenges that we do, the same subsidence challenges that we do, then why aren’t we in a similar position?” he said. “People want to see progress. We know that we have the money to give them that progress. What do we have to do to make sure it’s being done as quickly as possible?”
For example, in Jefferson Parish, Engineering Director Angela DeSoto explained that the parish holds two steady full-time maintenance contracts with All-Star Electric and WJ Bloecher.
More Challenges
The challenges in New Orleans go far beyond streetlights. Porteous said DPW currently has 50 staff vacancies including its sign shop to pothole fillers. There are retention issues and equipment shortages, she says.
At one point last year, the city couldn’t even fill potholes because it didn’t have the dump trucks to do the job. It had to eventually rent the vehicles under a state contract.
Meanwhile, there are catch basins to be cleaned, streets sinking into the earth below, constant construction, abandoned cars, and a department just trying to get to the baseline.
“Everything is a priority,” Porteous said. “So you really have to work hard to balance all of that. I mean, everything is important. Nothing can, you know, fall second.”
By spring, Porteous said, All-Star will have made significant progress on the 4,000 streetlights in need of repair. The city is trying to get 98% of the lights operational. They’re focusing on high-crime areas and schools first.
While Porteous focuses – on it all.
We asked her if she thought New Orleans could be a city that is known for having good infrastructure.
Porteous answered, “Absolutely. You know, we have to remember, we're living in a city that's 300 years old. So we have challenges unlike any other city. But I think we have plans. I think, you know, we're upgrading our infrastructure. We're doing some incredible things as far as green infrastructure and resilience projects. So absolutely, I think we can be a model for infrastructure around the world.”
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