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Copyright © 2019 Albuquerque Journal

Shortly after moving to Downtown Albuquerque in mid-2016, John Benavidez noticed several nearby streetlights were dead.

He phoned 311, the city’s citizen contact center, and discovered the lights actually belong to the Public Service Co. of New Mexico.

So he called the utility company directly.

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Then he did it again. And again.

Benavidez, a University of New Mexico marketing professor, said he has likely called a dozen times over the past three years to register such complaints. While PNM restored some lights along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue west of Interstate 25, several in the vicinity are currently dark.

“It’s just frustrating as someone who lives in the neighborhood; it’s supposed to be urban living – more pedestrian friendly,” said Benavidez, who often runs in the area and considers the darkness a safety hazard for those on foot, riding bikes and in cars.

“I told them this, but nothing (has been done),” he said.

The city claims about 21,000 streetlights around town as its own. Another 11,182 belong to PNM, and the city has no authority to enforce their repair.

“There really is no agreement in place that mandates PNM has to fix a light within (a certain time),” said Johnny Chandler, a spokesman with Albuquerque’s Municipal Development Department. “We don’t have that. We do know we ask them to fix those in a good-faith effort as fast as they can.”

A spokeswoman with PNM said 193 of its lights around Albuquerque were down as of last week; less than 1 percent of PNM-maintained lights are out statewide, she said. Meaghan Cavanaugh of PNM said most repairs occur “within a few weeks” and the company fixes an average of 568 each month.

But she confirmed the company had at least three specific complaints last year regarding the MLK/Interstate 25 vicinity – an area where many lights still hover dead.

She told the Journal this week that PNM would send a crew out to evaluate and develop a plan.

“If we discover that there is copper theft in the area, or something else that has caused damage to the lines, which are underground, repairs could take a few months,” she wrote in an email to the Journal.

Streetlight repair is sometimes not at the top of PNM’s list.

“Streetlights are repaired by the same crews who do high voltage line-work, so power outages and electrical emergencies get the highest priority. If a streetlight poses an immediate hazard, for example it’s leaning and appears like it might fall, that would also take priority with our crews,” she wrote.

Chandler said his department colleagues will sometimes contact PNM themselves and “encourage them to move faster” when they hear multiple complaints about the same lights, but they cannot require any action.

The city and PNM, however, do have a new agreement obligating the utility company to convert all of its Albuquerque lights to LEDs. The city has already converted all of the lights it owns and will pay PNM an estimated $1.7 million to transition those under its control.

The change should actually lessen the need for repairs, Chandler said, since the new lights have significantly longer life spans. He called it a “positive step forward.”

PNM says it will use a contractor for the conversion and expects to finish by December. But the project may delay streetlight repair in some cases, as PNM “will not repair lights in a particular area of the city if the contractor will be in that same area in the near future,” Cavanaugh wrote. “Lights that are out in areas that contractors will not be working in the near future will be fixed as normal.”

Benavidez said he has generally seen a quicker response when complaining about city-owned streetlights and wishes the city would consider just not paying PNM when it does not fix lights, deeming it a public hazard.

“People in Albuquerque can’t drive to begin with, so it doesn’t help when it’s dark,” he said.