Here’s an email sent to me by a reader (who asked to remain anonymous, but allowed me to reprint here) explaining what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to simple things like lights in Camden City: 

I was reading your post and saw the mention of the fire hydrants. :) it is a funny green but what the “city requires” as a I was told.

Something to mentioned about the lights. In Cooper-Grant we took to the broken lights theory several years ago. It started small with me try to get a light fixed on the corner of my block. I followed procedure of submitting through PSEG and no action. I submitted a few lights several times and started asking questions to anyone who would listen.
PSEG would say the light was vandalized and they were not responsible after fixing it once. So they would not fix. I pressed and asked to proved, a. it was vandalized b. that it was fixed before.

They were mum on that bc there were no records. I know it was not vandalized bc it was working and the bulb went out (was my assumption.)

Eventually Bill Hoag, a resident of the Victor took the project to heart. He built the connections and put together really detailed logs of who what where when and why. Literally mapping streets, lights, color coded, a key with symbols etc.
Bill deserves all the credit in the world for what he has accomplished in this projects.

He started with a few lights in the core of the neighborhood and now after 3 years covers an area north of the BFB to south of the Susquehanna Bank Center. He has pressed to get fixed over 500 lights in three years.

…

Problem we had was, PSEG was not keeping records and no one from the City was watching or keeping tabs. A broken light theory that perpetuated itself into a self fulfilling prophecy. Once some lights were out, some people thought no one was watching and would destroy more lights by ripping the cooper out for cash.

Through a combination of stake holders we had to figure out who had jurisdiction. DRPA, Camden County, State EDA, Private Property, City, Rutgers, PSEG itself etc. Coopers-Ferry

Some thoughts:
– We had good infrastructure that was built with millions of dollars, but no one was really watching it, maintaining it. The majority of the lights were out on the waterfront promenade and there was a disagreement about who owned the lights, when and why, and who was going to $$.
– If the city did not have the resources to watch and report the citizens had to step up.
– There were a lot of vandalized lights, but the majority of ours were just out, not vandalized.
– It was PSEG who was repsonsible for maintaining and now they have a crew in the city just about full time fixing with our additional funds from the city lights that are not vandalized.
– Vandalized lights need funding approval from the city or someone.
– we had to focus on lights because we did not have officers. 100 were laid off at the time and we had no regular patrols. I said if we do not have officers, people on the street, we need lights. Bob Marley ” light up the darkness”

At City Council last night the group spoke at the meeting. Were given an award and took pictures. [Editor’s Note: This is in response to my piece yesterday on broken lights in Von Nieda Park]

Frank Moran, spoke as a rep of the County to say he met with group yesterday and an RFP will go out next week for the lights in Von Neida. He feeling was after bids are back the park should be light up in a couple of months once all the work is done. There was a full commitment from the County to see the project through.

I know in North Camden there was a campaign to light up State St with limited success. It hit the same time of [sic] Park Bvld. By the time these groups pressed, we had already built a relationship and had a good part of the work done in local neighborhood. The problem with these two corridors and others, which had new money to set up the infrastructure in the past 20 years etc, the lights are vandalized. Sometimes we do it to ourselves. Those vandalized lights, missing cooper are symptoms for the much bigger problems in the city. But we cannot give up. We must light up the darkness and shine the light on the root causes that lead us to destroy ourselves from the inside out.