Your Neighborhood

Street Lighting

Clackamas County Service District No. 5 is the agency responsible for street lighting in the un-incorporated urban areas of the County, the City of Happy Valley and the City of Damascus. The District extends from the County line on the north to the Clackamas River on the south, and from the Willamette River on the west to the Urban Growth Boundary on the east. The City of Happy Valley is part of the District, but all other cities are responsible for their own street lighting. There are also a number of subdivisions and neighborhoods around Oregon City, Lake Grove, Damascus, Boring, and Welches that have annexed to the District through the years in order to obtain street lighting.

The District contracts with PGE to design, install, maintain and operate street lights. PGE in turn bills the County for this service based on tariff rates set by the Oregon Public Utility Commission. These costs are passed on to those served by the District as a special assessment on their property tax statements. Street lighting services are supported entirely by these special assessments.

Street lighting is required as a condition of approval by the Zoning and Development Ordinance (Section 1006) for all development within the Service District. Established neighborhoods request lighting through a petition process.

Reporting a Street Lighting Repair Problem

Please report street light outage and other repair problems to (503) 742-4660. If it is after hours, or no one is available to answer the phone, please leave a message on voice mail. When calling in a repair, please give the following information:

• Your name and phone number (in case there is a problem identifying the location of the light).
• The specific street address nearest the light, and any other helpful information, such as: at end of driveway; directly across the street; between these two addresses. Nearly all power poles and most street light only poles have a metal tag with an alphanumeric map location and a one or two digit pole number; these numbers are very helpful if you have them available.
• The specific nature of the problem: burned out; always on; cycles on and off.

Please mention if you have called in this repair before. Occasionally, a recently repaired light will develop a different problem within a few days. Please call the repair in again if it has been two weeks since your first call and the light has not been fixed. In periods of storm damage, street lights are the lowest repair priority. Individual lights in rural areas that do not appear to be part of a series of street lights are probably lights provided by PGE and billed to an individual property owner and are not part of the Service District No. 5 system.

Requesting Street Lights

Street light installation in established neighborhoods is requested by a petition process of property owners. Generally, we try to light a stretch of street, from intersection to intersection, rather than just putting in individual lights here and there. Discontinuous lighting can be distracting to motorists; continuous lighting provides a travel route with enhanced visibility. A majority of benefiting property owners must sign the petition in order to be a valid request. Service District staff will prepare a petition package for interested petitioner sponsors, including: petition, list of property owners, map, and yearly cost information. Please call (503) 742-4660 with street lighting requests or any other street lighting questions.