With more than 1,100 streetlights in varying states of disrepair, Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky and Traci Park are looking to pool discretionary funds to fix West Los Angeles' infrastructure.
The duo said their districts have seen a surge of copper wire theft in the past several years, leaving many neighborhoods dark.
"This is about restoring light. It's about restoring safety," said Park, who represents District 5. "It's about making sure our neighborhoods don't sit in the dark while the bureaucracy catches up. Our residents deserve better."
On Friday, Park and Yaroslavsky announced their plan to allocate $500,000 to accelerate repairs, focusing on the lights damaged by copper wire thieves. They ultimately plan to install solar-powered lights that don't use copper wires.
[CBS News California Investigates](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/los-angeles-copper-wire-theft-recycler-penalties/) obtained and analyzed city data and found that more than 37,000 streetlight repair requests were submitted by the fall of last year. More than half were still waiting for service.
"Los Angeles has a streetlight emergency," said Yaroslavsky, who represents District 11. "1 in 10 lights are out. My colleagues and I on the City Council are done asking residents to wait on a broken bureaucracy."
At that time, the Bureau of Street Lighting said 15% of the system was affected by outages, and nearly half of service requests were due to wire theft.
Mar Vista resident Andrew Martin joined the councilmembers at their news conference after copper wire thieves left his neighborhood in the dark.
"This is really encouraging," Martin said. "The usual feeling you have is that government doesn't work, but this is a clear example that it does, starting at the bottom with local community members and local leaders like Traci and Katy. We're hopeful that our lights will be up and running very soon."
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez took similar steps last week by investing $500,000 from her discretionary fund to install new solar-powered lights in [Lincoln Heights and Cypress Park.](https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/los-angeles-solar-powered-lights-copper-wire-theft/)
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