City Looks To Create Lighting Authority To Help Keep Street Lights On In Detroit

DETROIT (WWJ) - City leaders are working on a plan to make sure street lights work in densely populated areas of Detroit by moving infrastructure out of sparsely populated areas.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's chief operations officer Chris Brown outlined for city council plans to fix and keep the street lights on.

"The city's demographics and where they are moving, we need 46,000 working lights, now. And not only are we well under that we have lights in places were people don't live,"  Brown told WWJ Newsradio 950's Florence Walton.

While Brown expressed a desire to retain the current city employees in the Lighting department, he was non-committal about unionization:

"You know what we are trying to make sure they all transfer ... I think they are some really good employees, try to keep all of them - that's job number one as well," said Brown.

The plan calls for working with Lansing to create a Lighting Authority with power to issue bonds to help finance improvement.

Brown says residents are going to see improvements by this fall.