I had opened a ticket on this many months ago and it was closed without being fixed. The developer was to have added two new streetlights at the roundabout, as well. I was told that the Certificate of Occupancy would be held until the situation was resolved. This needs to be looked into, please.

The lack of functioning streetlights, not just the new ones but the ones that have been there for years, needs attention. This was also brought up at last Monday’s Open Mic Meeting.

Thank you for contacting the City of Roswell Department of Transportation. Your request has been assigned to one of our team members and will be reviewed in the order of priority.

Traffic Engineering assigned this issue to Mike Elliott

Mike Elliott assigned this issue to Scott Brunner

Just drove down Old Alabama from the Fire Station to the left turn to Riverside. Out of the possible 15 street lights, only were operational-one at the Market Place traffic light and the other four going down the hill AFTER the roundabout. Two of these lights are at the Riverside intersection. If this merely a call to GA Power, give me the phone number and I’ll make the call. It has been nine days since this was brought up at the Council meeting and many months after the initial complaint.

The streetlight outage at the roundabout and the several streetlights north of the roundabout is due to the removal of the streetlight infrastructure on the north side of Old Alabama Road which occurred during the construction of the roundabout. There is currently no streetlight power connection feeding the previously existing streetlights as that infrastructure was not reinstalled or rerouted after the roundabout was completed. The developer was responsible for contracting the new street light work and the reconnection of the prior circuits with Georgia Power, and obviously that did not occur in a timely manner. The City is not privy to what may or may not have transpired between the developer and the power company, but Georgia Power has advised us that the replacement work has been authorized and the work is scheduled to be completed on or about October 24, 2019. My agency (Roswell Transportation Department) did indeed request several months ago that all certificates of occupancy be withheld for any units in the RiverWalk project until the street lights are fully functional.

-Scott Brunner, City Traffic Engineer
sbrunner@roswellgov.com

But several of the townhouses are occupied now so I suppose a COA is a mere formality that can be ignored whenever it suits the developers.

I recently noticed that myself and am disappointed that some of the units have been allowed to be occupied. That is one of the key remaining points of leverage that we have. Typically the power companies install the street lighting systems for such developments, so I'm sure those internal lights have been successfully completed with no issues. We have a new City Engineer and she is being very proactive in working with us to prevent these things happening in the future.

-Scott Brunner

Thank you. Now we will wait and see. I’m glad that this occurred so the City can see the lapses in interagency communications.

We will be monitoring this and following up with Georgia Power on this. Some process improvement is admittedly needed. This is the only geographic area that I have worked where the local power companies are granted authority to install street lights on collector and arterial roadways as common practice. Since the power companies are regulated by another state agency, its difficult for City staff to compel Georgia Power to do something if they have an issue with a private client (developer in this case). We have a very good working relationship with GA-Power, so we will need to work together better whenever there is such an issue in the future.

New lights were installed around the roundabout by Georgia Power last week of October and were confirmed operational earlier this month. We have recently identified a few new individual pole outages north of the roundabout that we are coordinating with Georgia Power on.

S.Brunner

Closed for now per S. Brunner