SAN DIEGO — Neighbors in Mission Beach are hoping for a fix to a problem that they say has gone on for too long. More than a dozen city lights on the boardwalk have been out for years.
“This problem has been going on for at least six years,” said Teri Youngs, who has called Mission Beach home her whole life. “It’s very frustrating.”
She and her neighbors have submitted numerous Get it Done reports over the years for the light at the end of Windemere Court at the boardwalk, to no avail.
“So here’s the street light maintenance, there’s my Get it Done number from 6 years ago, it says that it’s closed,” said Youngs as she pointed to her phone.
Neighbors say the light at Windemere isn’t the only light not working along the boardwalk.
“There are at least twenty lights from Crystal Pier down to a couple blocks south of us that are out,” said Russ Pekar.
Mayor Todd Gloria told CBS 8 Monday that $3.5 million dollars in federal funding are now being utilized as they work to catch up on the backlog of 6,000 street lights across the city.
“This funding will help us replace this outdated wiring that is so unreliable and so difficult to repair, including a redundant circuit, so if something happens to one of them, the lights can still operate on the second one while the first one gets repaired,” said Mayor Gloria.
The City of San Diego is also contracting with outside electricians, beyond their own city staff, to help address the backlog.
“These folks will get to work immediately delivering repairs at hundreds of locations across the entire city,” said Mayor Gloria.
CBS 8 reached out to the City’s Transportation Department, which oversees the street lights, and they said electrical staff should be able to fix the light at Windemere by the end of the month, while hopefully fixing other lights in the area as well.
But for now, with the lights out, neighbors around Windemere Court don’t feel safe at night.
“We need lights, there’s a lot of questionable activity on the boardwalk,” said Youngs.
“It’s lovely to walk on the boardwalk at nighttime, but not anymore because it’s all dark, it’s ridiculous,” said Evans.
The City’s Transportation Department provided CBS 8 with the following information:
“As part of the City's data-driven, location-based repair model, electrical staff are in that area this month making repairs to nearby streetlights and anticipate being able to fix and restore light to this location by the end of the month. Streetlight repair is one of our highest priorities and the City has committed funding and resources to fixing the streetlight outage backlog across San Diego. The City has recently secured 3.5 million in federal funding to expedite the necessary and challenging repair of series circuit lighting. We've also sought to improve repair times by bolstering our capacity with contracted independent electricians while we continue to hire City staff electricians.”