Streetlights currently owned by electric provider Oncor Electronic Delivery Company LLC could soon come under city ownership and maintenance. Officials will consider cost-saving motions toward this goal during a March 9 meeting.
This comes nearly two years after officials ordered a street light inventory and audit in June 2021, partially in anticipation of a new maintenance agreement for street lighting with the Texas Department of Transportation. At the time, officials contracted with Tanko Streetlighting to determine the location of all streetlights within city limits, who owns them and what the cost benefit to the city might be.
In June 2021, Round Rock Transportation Department Director Gary Hudder said that the ownership of street lighting within the city by an outside entity produces confusion for residents, and that the city could maintain them for less than the $731,497.32 a year that it contracts with Oncor to take care of its 5,604 streetlights.
"It is one of the ongoing, big challenges that we have all the time with the community," Hudder said at the time. "Street lamps not working, they've been knocked down in an accident, why aren't we coming to fix them, they're not ours to do that."
