Aurora – The city says its street lights aren’t getting fixed quickly enough, and officials are looking at alternatives to paying for Xcel Energy’s maintenance service.
Xcel charges the city $3.8 million to provide power and maintenance to Aurora’s 15,513 streetlights.
Last year, Aurora and 14 other cities complained to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission that Xcel provides poor service – taking several months to fix outages, charging too much for repairs and failing to provide comprehensive, readable repair reports.
At a meeting Tuesday of the city’s Operations and Environment Policy Committee, lawmakers and city officials discussed the possibility of buying the streetlights from Xcel or switching to a third party for maintenance.
The contract with Xcel is up next year.
“The committee has requested the city attorney’s office do an analysis of what it would take to allow other entities to bid on the operation and maintenance of the city’s street lighting,” City Attorney Charlie Richardson said.
The issue arose after City Light & Power Inc. of California approached Aurora last year, offering to provide streetlight service at a reduced cost.
Xcel owns the streetlights, which it purchased after developers installed them.
Xcel officials say the lights are not for sale and are waiting a settlement agreement that’s being worked out with the PUC.
The agreement would mandate that by 2008, Xcel would respond to any report of a nonworking street light within five business days. Xcel would have to respond on time 85 percent of the time or face penalties, according to Mark Stutz, Xcel spokesman.
“We haven’t been doing a good job in recent years,” Stutz said. “But we’re trying to come up with standards. We’re very close to setting some standards. The timing of this story is very interesting.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
