San Diego streetlight repairs now take 340 days on average, city audit finds

In fiscal year 2021, it took San Diego city crews an average of 144 days to fix a broken streetlight. This fiscal year, the same repair takes 340 days, according to a newly released city audit. During those six years, the Transportation Department’s streetlight division hired more workers. The division paid $1.4 million in overtime last fiscal year, compared with more than $230,000 six years earlier. Despite the longer waits for repairs and the increase in overtime spending, department managers did not use available tools to track workers and ensure work was being completed, according to the audit. From December 2025 through May 2026, city auditors examined vehicle logs and found that workers’ vehicles were stationary for several hours a day away from job sites or locations with reported streetlight outages. The stops averaged 2 hours and 25 minutes and totaled nearly 200 hours during the six months examined by the City Auditor’s Office.

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