If a streetlight has been dark on your San Diego block for what feels like forever, there's a reason: the city's average wait for a streetlight repair has stretched to 340 days, and a new city audit says weak oversight of electricians and questionable management are largely to blame. The backlog has also nearly tripled in size since 2021, even as the city poured more money and overtime hours into the repair program.
Backlog Nearly Triples as Costs Soar
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the city's streetlight-repair backlog grew from 2,684 outstanding repairs in fiscal 2021 to 7,552 by summer 2026, per City Auditor Andy Hanau, with the audit placing the current backlog at roughly 7,000 repairs. Over that same stretch, the average wait for a fix climbed from 160 days to 340 days. Streetlight repair labor costs jumped from $2.3 million in fiscal 2021 to $5.7 million in fiscal 2026, while employee hours devoted to the work rose from 13,600 to 28,000, the newspaper's report notes.
Streetlight electrician overtime costs climbed even more sharply, from $230,000 in fiscal 2021 to $1.4 million in fiscal 2026, and overtime hours jumped from 600 to 5,300, the report states.
Electricians Parked for Hours With No Repairs Logged
The audit raised concern that some city electricians may have received unwarranted overtime or spent work hours not performing their duties, the Union-Tribune reports. In one specific finding, two electricians spent 198 hours — the equivalent of 25 workdays — parked at job sites without any documented repairs. City officials have taken corrective action against those two electricians, according to the same report.
City Auditor Andy Hanau said the audit found that operational inefficiencies and inadequate accountability were wasting taxpayer money, worsening the backlog and delaying resident requests. The audit also discussed hotline reporting and quarterly totals. The city's Transportation Department had not investigated the issues despite numerous red flags, per the same account.
Dig-Alert Duty Pulled Electricians Off Routine Repairs
Part of the slowdown traces to a staffing decision made in February 2025, when the city directed 18 full-time streetlight electricians to prioritize Before You Dig work. From February through October 2025, electricians were told to focus exclusively on dig alerts and urgent streetlight repairs, the audit found.
City Responds to Audit
San Diego officials agreed to implement all 7 of the audit's recommendations.
San Diego's Streetlight Woes Are Not New
This isn't the first time San Diego's streetlight system has drawn scrutiny. A 2016 city audit, also covered by the Union-Tribune, found the city's performance information was unreliable and the Street Division missed its repair-time goal. At the time, the average repair took about 17 days in 2015 and 16 days in 2016 — a fraction of today's 340-day wait. The city's own website has separately acknowledged a backlog of nearly 5,000 nonfunctional streetlights and said officials were committed to reducing it.
Other Cities Face Similar Streetlight Struggles
San Diego is far from alone in grappling with streetlight dysfunction. In Los Angeles, roughly 33,000 streetlight repair requests remain open — though some may be duplicates — with an average repair time of about 12 months, according to the Los Angeles Times. City officials there pointed to rising vandalism, a stagnant departmental budget and a staff of only 185 people as the causes.
In Richmond, Virginia, an audit found the city still lacks a complete and accurate inventory of its streetlights despite paying a contractor roughly $3.63 million for inventory and data work, WRIC ABC 8News reported, with the Streetlight Division lacking any centralized system for tracking repair requests. And in Elyria, Ohio, a citywide audit turned up roughly 500 nonworking streetlights, with officials there estimating repairs would take about three months, according to cleveland.com.
