A steep levy for LA streetlights? That’s insulting – Latest News
City drawback? Push for a tax, price, or levy.
Another metropolis drawback? Push for one other tax, cheerfully branded as “revenue.”
And on and on it goes, advert nauseam — as Pavlovian a political response as there’s on Earth.
Enough.
Los Angeles and different California jurisdictions need to cut and prioritize spending, stay within their means, rein in giveaways to unions, and stop looting cash-strapped taxpayers each 10 minutes.
Toward that finish, LA property house owners ought to forged a “no” vote on town’s newest ploy: gouging owners for streetlights plundered by copper-wire thieves.
Street mild in Woodland Hills, CA. Allison Dinner
The Ribbon Bridge at night time in Downtown Los Angeles with no lights because of stolen copper wire.
A utility employee in an orange shirt and laborious hat repairs utility traces from a bucket elevate. Getty Images
As The California Post reported solely: Rather than stopping, deterring or clamping down on steel theft, Mayor Karen Bass and council members would merely stick residents with a invoice for the crime.
City Hall has requested 600,000 LA property house owners to log out on this lunacy, with ballots due June 2.
(The scheme can’t take impact with out the assent of a weighted majority of the affected property house owners who return ballots, due to Prop. 218, authorised by state voters in 1996.)
The incontrovertible fact that the gambit made it to balloting — on a 13-1 vote by town council, with Bass cheering it on — exhibits how out of contact LA’s ruling class is.
Beleaguered taxpayers already face a national affordability disaster that’s particularly acute in high-tax, high-regulation California and but more acute in left-wing spendthrift LA.
Housing prices within the metropolis are stratospheric as it’s.
So the mayor and 13 council members would raise property prices — and yes, that features rents, not directly — to cowl a primary operate of authorities at which City Hall is failing?
As lone-vote-of-sanity Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez mentioned, the tax-first strategy is “unreasonable,” and town ought to cut bills and offer a clear, up to date plan for streetlight safety and upkeep.
Utility employees repairing web cables in a Los Angeles neighborhood. FOX 11 Los Angeles
An electrical lineman on a utility pole changing a transformer, with leafy trees within the foreground. Moment Editorial/Getty Images
A metropolis employee in a elevate fixing avenue lights in Huntington Beach. Universal Images Group through Getty Images
Why, yes.
The metropolis must also deal with the trigger of the issue, somewhat than inviting more crime with coverage that punishes taxpayers somewhat than criminals.
Instead of scrambling to pay for the consequences of crime, how about stopping it? To deter steel theft, the council ought to harden targets, clamp down on resale of the steel, and increase enforcement.
LAPD’s “Heavy Metal Task Force,” created by the council in 2024 to curb wire theft, fell sufferer to price range cuts — aka poor prioritization by the council — in 2025.
So as a substitute of enforcement, Angelenos get … more payments.
One property proprietor, who vowed to vote no, confirmed The Post a potential $205.91 annual evaluation for a two-bedroom duplex. And this might be on prime of sundry different assessments already heaped on property tax payments.
Yes, of course, streetlights are integral to public security and need to remain on.
But piling the burden on property house owners will not be the best way.
Tax, spend, and repeat will not be the best way.
Residents can’t proceed to pay more each time this metropolis or another jurisdiction faces a new problem, surprising price spikes, or just can’t cowl spending it could have recklessly authorised.
Basically, the streetlight-levy scheme is an insult to all who stay in LA.
Here’s a brilliant thought for town: Keep the lights on, and don’t charge additional.
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