NEW ORLEANS -- The shady Algiers street, lined with sturdy oak trees, is a picture perfect place to live, except at night.
Residents say streetlights have not worked along a three block stretch in months, and repeated calls to City Hall have not resulted in repairs.
"My concern is for my children," said resident Mike Treadway. "I have a 3 and a 4-year-old, and with the oak tree canopy around here, it's pretty dark at night."
"First thing I'm going to have to do is check and make sure we have it logged into our system, and we know that it is out," said Public Works Director Robert Mendoza. "That is really the first key."
It was a year ago when Lake Vista residents gave me a long list of broken streetlights, fed up with begging the city for help.
"It's been almost three years since we started reporting this, and getting absolutely nowhere, and we're just tired of it," Sue Garcia of the Lake Vista Property Owners Association said then.
A year later, they know the city has been working on the repairs.
"To be honest and to be fair, the fixtures that we reported last year that were completely broken, the ones that had no fixtures on them at all, those for the most part have been repaired," Garcia said.
But they gave me another list of broken streetlights, and some were on last year's.
"The problem we have now is that there are some chronic poles that we have reported, some since Katrina, that have simply not been fixed, and the residents have complained, complained and complained," a frustrated Garcia said.
"What we're really seeing is a lot or wiring issue, specifically wire corrosion out there," Mendoza responded. "We did have to deal a lot last year with a lot of vandalism in the neighborhood."
Mendoza said a change he's made is to have one Public Works staff member concentrating on streetlight issues. And he said over the past month, the 1200 work order back log has shrunk to 900. And he expects that progress to continue citywide.
"I think with the fixtures and the lamps you'd be looking at a week to two weeks on just that kind of repairs," Mendoza said. "If you're talking about wiring issues, we are going to have to see where it fits in to the rest of our work orders. Right now, we're trying to work within the next three to six months to try to clear up our entire backlog."
We'll see what happens.
