Milwaukee streetlights out 'for months,' repairs discussed amid frustration

MILWAUKEE - People in a couple of Milwaukee neighborhoods are saying, "Let there be light already," with their streetlights out for a while. The Milwaukee Public Works committee met Tuesday to discuss the problem and ongoing repairs.

DPW officials said it's a matter of too small a staff taking on too many repairs. The city engineer said in some areas Milwaukee's infrastructure is about 100 years old.

"'The lights have been out for months,' they say," said Milwaukee Alderman Robert Bauman. "'It’s pitch dark,' they say. What are we doing? We have people that complain their neighborhood has been dark for weeks because of a lack of streetlights, and that’s a real public safety issue."

Earlier in April, City Engineer Kevin Muhs said the winter was unusually hard on the lighting system. He explained thawing and freezing cause underground infrastructure to shift and break.

"Depending on the flaw, it can take a significant amount of time to address those issues," said Muhs.

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At one point, Muhs said 75 circuits were out. Each circuit can have anywhere from 10 to 100 streetlights on it.

The good news is that during Tuesday's committee meeting, Muhs noted improvement, including repairs on the worst circuits on the south side.

"The two first circuits are almost done," said Muhs. "Like, literally, we’ll be done in a couple days for design."

With work still to be done, Bauman said it's taking too long.

"All we hear is excuse-making," said Bauman. "Maybe we need other people to do this work for us to get it done."

"If the whole pole, the whole fixture needs to be replaced, that is where we’re talking about a three- to five-year queue on that issue," said Muhs.

The city says if you are dealing with outages, you should report them. You can either call, report it online or through the city's app.