Round Rock City Council Approves Streetlight Study

ROUND ROCK, TX — The Round Rock City Council have approved a $250,000 contract with Tanko Lighting to conduct a study of the city's streetlight system.

The study will assess the advantages and disadvantages of sole ownership of the system, which could allow Round Rock to have a central location for residents to report outages, officials said at a council meeting Thursday.

Currently, the streetlights are owned by two companies, making it difficult for residents to report any issues on lights that fail.

"We have several streetlights throughout the city that are owned by multiple parties. ... Some of them are Oncor, some of them are TxDOT," said Brian Kuhn, assistant director of the city's transportation services. "This will be an inventory for each of those fixtures to determine where they are, whose ownership and what kind of fixture is present."

Gary Hudder, the city's director of transportation, said the study will provide several things for the city, including a complete audit of all the street lamps in Round Rock, a GPS location for them and information on who owns them and what kind of infrastructure is attached to them above and below ground.

Hudder said most of the city's streetlights are owned by Oncor. The contracts are worth over $700,000 a year to maintain the infrastructure for 5,604 streetlights, according to city documents.

City officials also said the audit by San Francisco-based Tanco Lighting will allow the city to negotiate on an actual fixed number of streetlights.

“That's a very first step to eventually potentially bringing back an opportunity for council to consider us actually securing the street lamps for the long term, or otherwise,” Hudder added.

The study will provide the city with “information to assess the advantage[s] and disadvantages of sole ownership of the system.”

City documents also state the Texas Department of Transportation is seeking to negotiate “turning over all maintenance responsibilities” to the city.

“This audit will also allow the city of Round Rock to negotiate on an actual fixed number of streetlights and the annual fiscal impact to city budget, that are currently believed to be TxDOT controlled,” the packet states.