St. Paul ‘can’t keep up’ with street light repairs — and it may get worse

St. Paul Public Works says thousands of street lights are out, and the problem is expected to grow without more money for repairs and theft prevention.

On Tuesday, Public Works Director Deb Barber said somewhere between 3,800 and 4,000 street lights are currently out. That is about 10% of the roughly 38,000 street lights owned and maintained by the city’s Public Works Department.

The city previously hit a high of about 2,500 new outage complaints in 2024 before reporting a dip in 2025, according to prior Public Works data. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has rep...