Shedding the light on city electricity

GALVESTON — The city is reviewing whether it’s getting what it pays for when it comes to streetlights.

At issue is a little known tariff imposed by CenterPoint Energy for the amount of light that’s supposed to shine from each streetlight bulb. The tariff is embedded in the bill the city receives from its retail electric provider, Cavallo Energy.

The review comes after The Daily News began asking questions last month about whose responsibility it is to maintain streetlights and how much the city pays for them.

Unlike other forms of electricity consumption, which is measured by meters and billed, typically, by kilowatt-hours, street lighting is billed in lumens, a measure of illumination or brightness as perceived by the human eye.

CenterPoint does not charge for the lighting the city actually receives, but for the amount of illumination a bulb is expected to supply. Unless island officials or CenterPoint carefully audit the lights, the city each month stands to pay for lumens it never received.

CenterPoint owns and is responsible for maintaining 4,260 lights on the island. That inventory does not include streetlights along Broadway or the causeway, which are the city’s responsibility.

After some research, city officials determined this week that the monthly streetlight tariff to the city is fixed and based on the type of pole and bulb and promised kilowatt-hour usage, said Jeff Miller, the city’s finance director. There are 15 combinations of poles and bulbs, Miller said. But the monthly tariff for streetlights the city pays to CenterPoint is relatively the same each month — $24,000, which breaks down to about $5.63 a month for each streetlight, Miller said.

The $5.63 amount is a rough number, because the tariff rate table published by the Public Utility Commission, a regulatory agency, is considerably more complicated depending on the type of light and bulb, Miller said.

When bidding to become the city’s retail electric provider, Cavallo averaged in CenterPoint’s lighting charges over an annual period, Miller said.

“Since it’s an ‘average’ calculation, I’d expect to see consistency in the lighting portion of the Cavallo billing, which is indeed the case,” Miller said.

The city this week checked a number of months of streetlight bills paid to Cavallo, which came out each month to about $24,000, plus or minus $100, Miller said.

Who's Counting?

For at least three months, 16 lights along Seawall Boulevard between 23rd and 39th streets weren’t working, The Daily News has observed. But it’s likely the city paid the streetlight tariff because CenterPoint wasn’t aware the lights weren’t working until The Daily News called.

An inventory of how many lights CenterPoint streetlights aren’t working wasn’t immediately available. But it’s easy to see how the costs for lights can quickly add up, whether they work or not.

Based just on the roughest and most conservative average of $5.63 a month, those 16 lights that didn’t work cost the city at least $90.08 a month.

The Public Utility Commission requires CenterPoint Energy to repair lights immediately upon report of a problem. When The Daily News reported the Seawall Boulevard streetlight problem, CenterPoint immediately repaired the lights.

Almost everyone from the city agreed that CenterPoint promptly responds to complaints about dead streetlights and that Keith Gray, service area director for CenterPoint, represented the company well. The city is not accusing CenterPoint of overbilling for street lights.

And Gray said city officials, including police Chief Charles Wiley and other law enforcement officials, are equally vigilant about reporting problems with lights. CenterPoint relies on its crews, residents and city officials to report on streetlights, but does not audit them each month.

2009 Inventory

Officials said the city’s last known inventory of CenterPoint streetlights was conducted in 2009. The city employee long responsible for auditing lights was swept out with several others in January after they were caught on video using city materials and time at the island’s recycling center building a barbecue pit trailer meant for personal use, Miller said.

City officials said they are working to hire a new director of utilities, whose responsibilities will include auditing streetlights.

In the meantime, city officials have asked Gray for a current inventory and will compare it to a city inventory, Miller said. City officials said also they plan to monitor the monthly tariff portion of the bill from Cavallo Energy.

Burning Issue

Streetlight maintenance is becoming a hot topic in some other cities. Last month, the city of Houston filed a lawsuit accusing CenterPoint Energy of overbilling for street lighting for 20 years.

David Feldman, Houston’s city attorney, said the claim could be for “tens of millions of dollars,” based on outcomes of similar cases cities have brought against other utility companies, according to a Houston Chronicle report. The lawsuit asserts that CenterPoint has systematically failed during the years to keep an accurate inventory of the roughly 180,000 streetlights in Houston.

But CenterPoint officials told The Daily News on Friday that Houston officials never raised such concerns with them.

“We first learned about the city of Houston’s lawsuit from a media inquiry, not from the city of Houston itself,” CenterPoint Energy spokeswoman Leticia C. Lowe said.

“After reviewing a copy of the lawsuit that we obtained from the district clerk, we remain perplexed by the city’s assertions. The notion that CenterPoint Energy has routinely overcharged the city for streetlight service over a period of 20 years is baseless.

“The city’s conduct in filing this lawsuit without first discussing any potential claim with us is deeply disappointing, and we will vigorously defend ourselves against these allegations. Because the city has still not provided us with the basis of its claims, we cannot comment further at this time.”

Beaumont V Entergy

In 2009, the city of Beaumont filed a lawsuit against Entergy Texas claiming the company had for several years “fraudulently” billed for street light costs. Entergy denied the claim and said it wanted Beaumont to prove its allegations before a jury, according to reports. The status of that case was not immediately available Friday.

Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski said Friday he planned to initiate a city council discussion about streetlights.

“It doesn’t have to be an adversarial type of review,” Jaworski said. “CenterPoint ought to be interested in making sure we have correct information; we’re their customer.”

Jaworski said he wants to discuss the issue of all streetlights and whose responsible for them, not just the ones maintained by CenterPoint.

“If the lights aren’t working, people get a bad attitude about Galveston and think we don’t have our act together,” Jaworski said. “We’d like to see the lights work. If we’re paying for it, the lights need to be working.”

+++
To report a streetlight problem:

CenterPoint maintains streetlights across the island except along Broadway and the causeway.

To report CenterPoint streetlight outage, visit www.centerpointenergy.com/services/electricity/residential/reportastreetlightoutage/

The city is responsible for streetlights along Broadway and the causeway. But residents can report all streetlight outages to the city’s Public Works Department, 409-797-3630. Callers must have the six-digit number on the streetlight pole.