L.A. Faces Dilemma Over Street Lights

In the first of hundreds of local elections that could decide the future of street lighting in Los Angeles, Melkon Abadzhyan decided to risk darkness.

Declaring that he was only dimly aware of new lights erected recently near his Sun Valley industrial property, the factory owner voted against paying special benefit assessment of $156 a year to keep them shining.

Under new rules of municipal finance ushered in by last fall’s passage of Proposition 218, what he says goes.

His vote gives the Los Angeles City Council a disconcerting choice that is being replicated in local governing councils up and down the state:

Should it shut off the lights in Abadzhyan’s neighborhood, an option that poses potential public safety and liability problems? Or should it tap revenues collected from all taxpayers--rather than just some property owners--as it does when providing other basic services such as libraries and police and fire protection?

This is a vexing option because of its potential lack of equity. Only two-thirds of Los Angeles is lighted. Should those who live in the unlighted one-third also pay?

Keeping all of the lights shining is also expensive. It costs $42 million per year--enough to pay salaries and benefits of 800 entry-level police officers.

Abadzhyan believes that the city could easily absorb that expense. “If the city would become a little more efficient in the way they spent money, they would have plenty of money for lighting,” he says.

And city officials fear that most of the nearly 500,000 property owners who are assessed will agree with him.

“Worst case,” wrote Bureau of Street Lighting Director George A. Eslinger, “adoption of Proposition 218 may result in defeat by ballot of the annual $42-million street lighting maintenance assessment ... which would result in the alternative of turning lights out or paying costs from the general fund.”

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As the issue gains momentum, the city administrative officer weighed in with an opinion Friday: Give Abadzhyan another chance to vote. But from now on make it clear that any neighborhood that votes against street lighting will not get any, because “it is not fair for the city to ask citizens in other areas to subsidize them.”

Dubbed the “right to vote on taxes” act, Proposition 218 empowered property owners to vote not only on whether they want to continue to pay for special benefit assessments for street lights, but also for some other assessments, chiefly for parks.

Campaigning on behalf of the initiative, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. charged that city councils up and down the state had unfairly and secretively imposed such assessments, which appear on property tax bills, as a way of getting around the association’s earlier, landmark anti-tax measure, Proposition 13.

Affected homeowners in Los Angeles pay between $53 and $77 per year, depending on how fancy nearby light poles are.

City officials contend that they make individual assessments with great care so that only those whose properties are illuminated are assessed and then only in proportion to the amount of illumination they receive.

But even they suspect inequities, with some property owners being assessed for lighting they do not receive and others not being assessed for lighting they get.

A Proposition 218-inspired audit is scheduled, said Philip H. Reed Jr., assistant director of the Bureau of Street Lighting.

In deciding how to cope with the possibility of a wave of property owner rebellions under the new rules, city councils are weighing evasive strategies.

-Some municipalities sought to grandfather in assessments by putting them up for general votes on the same day last fall that Proposition 218 was on the ballot.

Sacramento voters approved street lighting assessments that way. Los Angeles voters approved existing assessments for parks.

- Other municipalities waited until Proposition 218 passed and mailed ballots just to those property owners who were assessed, asking them if they wanted to continue to pay. That is how the Jarvis group envisioned the initiative would work.

Results of those votes have varied. In Compton, for example, property owners last month rejected renewing their assessment for city parks. In Torrance, the owners voted to pay their street lighting assessment.

-Still other cities have decided to stall.

This is Los Angeles’ strategy on street lights:

The city is holding neighborhood elections whenever new street lights are installed and new assessments have to be made.

But it is hoping to avoid having to submit its entire $42-million citywide assessment to a vote--at least until it becomes necessary to impose a fee increase.

So far, five mini-elections--involving as few as four affected property owners apiece--have been held, and in all five the assessments have been defeated. Many more such elections appear on the horizon--for 100 street light projects that were in operation but did not have assessments in place when Proposition 218 passed, for the 125 street light projects now under construction, for the 700 projects whose plans have been approved and perhaps for the 1,100 other projects that are now being designed.

City officials do not have much hope that property owners in these cases will vote to pay.

Their argument that the $42-million overall assessment does not need to be put to a vote hinges on semantics--whether the word “streets” as used in Proposition 218 also means “street lights.”

Citing “existing law and common sense,” Senior City Atty. Patricia Tubert argued in a letter to the City Council that it does. Citing his interpretation of the same words used in the same law and a different “common sense,” Jon Coupal, the Jarvis group attorney who was the principal draftsman of Proposition 218, argued in an interview that it does not.

Los Angeles and some other cities tried to get the state Legislature to pass a law specifically defining streets as including street lights, but could not even get a bill introduced, said Betsy Strauss, a municipal law expert who is special counsel to the League of California Cities on Proposition 218. “There is not wide agreement,” she said.

The Jarvis group has a pending lawsuit against the city of Riverside asking the courts to decide.

The reason for the heated dispute is that Proposition 218 specifically exempted certain existing assessments--including “streets”--from having to go to a vote of those paying the assessments. Other exempted assessments are for sewers, sidewalks, flood control, drainage and bonded indebtedness.

So far, no local government has turned off any street lights, Strauss said.

But the Contra Costa County city of Antioch--population 75,000--threatened to.

Antioch was one of those cities that decided that “streets” did not include lights, and so put its whole street light assessment system to a vote.

The lights lost in eight of 18 districts, said Peggy Flynn, a secretary to the city manager, leaving Antioch’s City Council with a parallel but much broader dilemma than Los Angeles’ governing body.

Flynn said the Antioch council was preparing to shut off the lights in almost half the city, but balked because of safety concerns expressed at a public hearing.

Concerns then shifted to equity: Could the council justify spending general revenue funds to keep some lights on, while assessing property owners for others? Deciding the answer was no, the Antioch council scrapped reliance on assessments to fund lighting and voted to use other funds. “Sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Flynn said.

Parks were a different story. Voters in eight of the 18 Antioch districts also rejected paying assessments to maintain parks, so parks in those areas have ceased to receive city services. Swings have been carted off. Once a sprinkler head breaks, it stays that way.

Flynn says she gets lots of calls from people who are perplexed, wondering why the garbage bins at their neighborhood parks are overflowing. She says she explains that the city no longer takes care of their parks.

She also says there is much community organizing underway, along with plans for another election.