How should our HOA board report and track streetlight outages?

By OurHOA · General information · Revised October 31, 2026

How an HOA board handles streetlight outages: who owns each pole, reporting with the pole number, a tracking log, follow-up dates and Florida's 60-day repair rule.

Part of the HOA board handbook: vendors, projects and upkeep.

The short answer

Find out who owns each light before the next one goes dark. Report utility-owned lights to the utility with the pole number, send association-owned lights to your electrician, and keep one log of every outage with the date reported, the ticket number and the date fixed. Most streetlight complaints that drag on for weeks have the same cause. Everyone assumed someone else had called it in, or the board reported it to the utility and the light turned out to belong to the association. A log and an ownership map fix both. Rules vary by state, by utility and by your community's governing documents. This guide is general education, not legal advice.

Sort every light by owner

Streetlights in a subdivision usually fall into three groups. Utility-owned. The electric utility owns the pole and fixture and maintains them. The association, the city or a district pays a monthly rate per light, and the bill shows a fixture count on a lighting line rather than a meter reading. City-owned or city-paid. Lights on public streets are often on the city's account. The city reports outages on those, and many cities take resident reports through a 311 line. Association-owned. Decorative post-top lanterns, lights on private streets, entrance and parking lot lights, and anything fed from a meter in the association's name. The association pays for the repair. The utility will tell you which is which. Oncor's streetlight FAQ, for example, says that in most cities it serves, street lights are owned and maintained by Oncor, but that cities, homeowners associations and planned developments sometimes install and maintain their own. Its reporting map shows street lights in yellow, guard lights in blue and private lights in green, and it warns that repairs wait when the responsible party has to be found first. Ask your utility for a list of the lights billed to your account, and check the plat: private streets almost always mean association lights.

Build a pole log

One spreadsheet, one row per light, kept by one director. The columns: - Pole or tag number, copied exactly from the tag on the pole - Location: nearest address and cross street - Owner: utility, city or association - Fixture type: cobra head on an arm, post-top lantern, wall pack - Date the outage was found, and by whom - Date reported, who reported it, and the ticket or work order number - Date fixed, and what was wrong if anyone said A filled-in row looks like this: tag LS-4471, 212 Cedar Bend at Elm Court, utility, cobra head, out found 3/4 by an owner, reported 3/4 online by the secretary, ticket 88213, fixed 3/11, photocell. Fill the first version on a night walk. Two directors with a phone and a flashlight can cover a 100-home community in an hour. Repeat the walk each quarter and after any big storm, because many dead lights are on streets where nobody reports anything. The history column pays off later: a light that fails three times in a year has a wiring or pole problem, not a bad lamp, and the log is your proof when you ask for a real repair.

Report utility lights the way the utility asks

Use the utility's streetlight form or phone line, not a general outage report. Give the tag number, the nearest address, the cross street, and what is wrong: dark, cycling on and off, burning during the day, or a leaning pole. Write the ticket number into the log before you close the page. Know what a normal wait looks like. Oncor says its streetlight repairs typically take 5 to 10 days. Other utilities publish their own targets, so ask yours and write the number at the top of the log. A knocked-down pole, exposed wires or a fixture hanging by its cable is not a form submission. Call the utility's emergency line, and call 911 if anyone is at risk. Then log it like any other outage. Owners can and should report utility lights too. Duplicate reports on the same pole do no harm. A light nobody reported does.

Florida's 60-day rule

Florida Statutes section 768.1382 limits a streetlight provider's liability for injuries or damage tied to a dark streetlight, but only if the provider meets repair deadlines after it receives actual notice. Actual notice means a report made through the provider's designated procedure that identifies the light's location, describes the problem and gives contact information, and that the provider acknowledges. The deadlines in subsection (3): repair within 60 days of actual notice. If the provider decides the repair cannot be done in 60 days, it must record how long it will take, and it generally may not take more than 180 days. In a county under a declared state of emergency, the period runs to 365 days after the emergency ends, or 60 days after notice if that is later. Two points for a Florida board. First, the statute covers lights owned or maintained by a provider: the state, local governments and electric utilities. It expressly excludes customer-owned lights, so association-owned fixtures are the association's job with no such clock. Second, the deadlines run from a report made the provider's way, so use its form or line, keep the acknowledgment, and put a 60-day check date in the log. We did not find a comparable streetlight repair statute in Texas or Colorado. There, the repair terms come from the utility's lighting tariff or your service agreement, so ask the utility for them in writing.

Association-owned lights are a repair job

When the association owns the light, the board is the utility. Most outages are a failed photocell, lamp or LED driver, a tripped breaker, or a fault in the underground cable. Have the electrician check the cheap causes first, and keep a few spare photocells and lamps of the right type in storage so a two-minute fix does not wait two weeks for parts. Put a unit price for service calls and pole repairs in the electrician's contract so small jobs do not need a new quote. A cable fault means digging, and digging means a locate request first. In Texas, Utilities Code section 251.151(a) requires notice to the notification center at least 48 hours before excavation, not counting weekends and legal holidays, and no earlier than the 14th day before. In Florida, Statutes section 556.105(1)(a) requires at least 2 full business days. In Colorado, C.R.S. 9-1.5-103(3)(b) requires two business days, not counting the day of notice. The contractor normally places the call, but confirm it was made. The locate marks utility lines. It usually does not mark private wiring the association owns, so keep the as-built drawings for your lighting circuits and give them to the electrician. If nobody has them, a private locating service can trace the circuits, and the board should keep that map for next time.

Take owner reports and keep them posted

Give owners one place to report a dark light, and ask for the tag number or nearest address and a photo if they have one. Then tell them once a year how it works. A paragraph for the newsletter or website: "See a streetlight out? Note the number on the tag on the pole and the nearest address. Lights on [Main Street and Oak Avenue] belong to [utility] and you can report them directly at [link or phone], then tell us at [email] so we can track it. The post-top lights along [the entry and private lanes] belong to the association; report those to [email] and the board will send an electrician." A sample follow-up timeline for a utility light: - Day 0: report filed, ticket number logged, owner told it was reported. - Day 10: check the light at night. Still dark, report again and cite the first ticket. - Day 21: ask the utility's community or account representative for a status. - Day 30: if it is still out, ask the city's public works office or council member's office to follow up on your behalf. - Florida only, day 60: note in the log whether the provider recorded a longer repair time. Post a short status for the open outages once a month so owners see the board is on it.

Mistakes that keep lights dark

Reporting an association-owned light to the utility, waiting two weeks, and learning it was never theirs. Settle ownership before the first outage. Reporting without the tag number. Crews find the pole faster with it, and a ticket tied to the wrong pole gets closed with the light still out. Closing a ticket because the utility closed it. Check the light at night before you mark it fixed in the log. Treating a light that cycles on and off as working. It is failing. Report it. Ignoring trees. A light can be on and still leave the sidewalk dark because a limb grew over it. Trimming common-area trees is usually the association's job, and the night walk is when you see it. Dropping the log when the director who kept it leaves the board. Keep it in the association's shared files, not on a personal phone. For the bigger projects that follow, see our guides on how to convert HOA streetlights to LED and how to handle a complaint about glare from an HOA streetlight.

Sources

These guides are general education for HOA boards and residents, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Rules vary by state and by your community's governing documents - check with a professional for your situation.

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