Let there be light, eventually: McAllen streetlight replacements could stretch more than a decade

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A plan to install hundreds of new streetlights, or replace outdated ones, across the city of McAllen with energy efficient LEDs could take more than a decade to complete.

That’s according to city officials who delivered a project update during a recent workshop of the McAllen City Commission.

“I believe when we first presented it, we had a plan of getting it done within six years. Based upon the meeting we had with AEP, I would say we will probably be at twice that timeline — maybe 12 years, at the rate they are going,” explained Marlen Garza, assistant director of engineering for the city’s Traffic Operations Department.

Garza was speaking of a plan to replace or install some 852 LED streetlights across McAllen’s six geographical districts. But more than a year since the project got underway, less than a dozen of the lights have been installed.

“Just to reiterate, we submitted District 1 with 92 lights… and a year later, they’re at 10% complete,” Garza said near the end of a lengthy discussion about the project during a May 28 workshop.

A number of variables have contributed to the project’s glacial pace.

Among them, crews have encountered residents who would rather not have increased lighting around their homes.

Other crews have had difficulty accessing infrastructure, such as the transformers needed to supply power to the new installations, because it lies within the confines of private property lines.

Even though utility companies have a legal right to access the infrastructure via utility easements, such occurrences create roadblocks that slow down or altogether halt installation crews from moving forward.

But by and large, the biggest obstacle to the project has been the power companies themselves — in particular, AEP, which owns and operates the majority of the power infrastructure citywide.

A small fraction of lighting infrastructure within District 1 is owned by Magic Valley Electric Cooperative, or MVEC.

THE PROJECT

The streetlight upgrade project began last spring, when city officials submitted to AEP a list of lights they wanted installed within District 1, which sits on the city’s east side.

McAllen officials delivered the 92-light wishlist to AEP, which then determined how many of those fell within its own or MVEC’s boundaries, Garza said. She further explained that MVEC had already begun work and requesting payment for its limited share of streetlights.

Meanwhile, city engineers had been hard at work determining how many streetlights would be needed in the remaining five districts.

Engineers used Google Earth to help make those preliminary estimates, Garza explained last Tuesday.

Then crews conducted physical site inspections to confirm both the need and the infrastructure currently in place so that new fixtures can match existing aesthetics, Garza explained.

Ultimately, city engineers determined that about 852 lights are needed:

DRAWN OUT DELAYS

McAllen submitted its first request — which included about 80 AEP and 12 MVEC lights in District 1 — last April.

This April, when city staffers again met with AEP to submit requests for Districts 2 and 3, they also asked about the delays in completing District 1.

“They said that the original submittal that we made is a significant number of lights for what they can handle,” Garza explained.

According to what the power company told McAllen, it has a limited number of designers who can work on the streetlight project in addition to ongoing work with other municipalities and new developments.

“Their priority is the … daily work coming in from other cities, commercial developments, new subdivisions. And they have to split their time between those daily tasks and this new project,” Garza said.

AEP suggested that breaking the requests into smaller chunks might help. But several commissioners were dubious — especially those representing districts with the highest need.

Commissioner Jose “Pepe” Cabeza de Vaca, whose District 6 needs 276 lights, wondered why the high-need districts weren’t prioritized for completion first.

“What we were trying to do was get the low-hanging fruit. We thought the 80 would get done quickly, but 80 is too big of a number still for them,” said McAllen Director of Engineering Eduardo Mendoza.

“We thought 80 was going to be easy for them to knock out. We didn’t realize there was gonna be this much of a delay,” he added.

A short while later, District 5 Commissioner Victor “Seby” Haddad, whose district needs 233 lights, asked for further clarification on when McAllen first began asking AEP for more lights.

“A year ago. I looked at the letter, and it was April 2023 and we’re about 10% into design,” Garza said.

“Nine lights?! Out of the 92?!” an incredulous Haddad responded.

“Uh, yes,” Garza said.

Haddad then asked how breaking the requests down into smaller chunks would help speed up the project.

“(AEP) mentioned that if we were to break them down that could make it easier for them. It didn’t necessarily mean that they would get them done quicker,” Garza said.