Jackson Finance Committee Meeting on Energy and Street Lighting - March 31, 2026
Jackson Finance Committee Meeting on Energy and Street Lighting - March 31, 2026
The Finance Committee met on March 31, 2026, at approximately 4:03 PM to discuss energy-related costs, focusing on street lighting billing and operations. Representatives from Entergy Mississippi presented information on the number of street lights, billing structures, outage rates, and responsibilities. Council members expressed concerns about billing transparency, outage reporting, and the effectiveness of current service.
Discussion Items
- Entergy representatives (Delana Jones, Victoria Love, Andrew Mitchell) presented an overview of street light ownership, noting that the city has approximately 22,254 street lights. They reported that as of the day before the meeting, there were about 63 outages, representing less than one percent of reported outages that remained unrepaired. Council members expressed skepticism, with Councilman Parkinson stating he found it difficult to believe given his observations of dark areas.
- The base monthly billing rate was explained: previously $344,626.44, now increasing to $360,183.50 due to billing system upgrades that had paused updates for municipal accounts. Entergy noted they did not back-bill for the paused period, saving the city approximately $447,244.26, and waived conversion fees for LED light swaps totaling about $47,545.38. However, future conversion fees will apply.
- The billing structure includes riders approved by the Mississippi Public Service Commission, such as a fuel adjustment rider, which has caused recent bills to rise to around $404,000 due to a decrease in the credit amount. The base rate does not include these riders, which can fluctuate.
- Entergy explained that lights are not metered; kilowatt-hour estimates are fixed per light type and used to calculate charges, so outages do not reduce the bill. This led to council concerns about paying for non-functioning lights.
- Council members discussed the reporting system for outages, which includes a mobile app, phone number, and website. Councilwoman Brown noted her constituents have called without resolution, and others questioned the reliability of relying on citizen reports. Councilman Grisale suggested the city needs a better system, possibly involving police or technology like drones.
- Ownership and responsibility for light fixtures and poles were clarified: Entergy owns and maintains fixtures, while the city owns many poles and wiring in older areas. Councilman Hartley requested a detailed breakdown of all charges and options, as well as a list of all city-owned lights. Councilman Parkinson requested a map and list to help identify and report outages.
- Entergy agreed to provide an inventory list of lights, a map of Entergy-owned lights (previously shared with the city), and a breakdown of billing components. They also noted they can provide a proposal for Entergy to take over city-owned lights on Pascagoula Street where wiring issues are causing darkness.
Key Outcomes
- The committee requested that Entergy provide a detailed breakdown of all billing components, including base rates, riders, and the impact of fuel adjustments.
- Entergy will provide a comprehensive list of all street lights (both Entergy and city-owned), a map of Entergy-owned lights, and a list of poles for which the city is charged.
- Council members will review the list by ward, and the CAO (Mr. Taverson) will explore using city personnel to check city-owned lights.
- No formal votes or changes were made, but the committee intends to use the information to reduce costs and improve lighting service. The meeting adjourned after the discussion.
Meeting Transcript
Good afternoon. It is approximately 4 03, and we're calling the meeting for finance committee to order. At this time, we have special guests today for finance committee meeting. This meeting is going to be centered around energy. At our last meeting, we had questions about energy. Energy is normally one of the larger items on our claims docket. This meeting will only deal with numbers, bills, et cetera. Things that deal with the budget. It will not be a direct what conversation with energy about any problems or anything else. It's strictly about the figures that we pay energy and trying to figure out what we have been billed for, how to reduce costs, and basically it's about street lights and not about utilities in buildings. At this time, I'll let Energy introduce themselves, and they have provided information that they'll be going over. And at the end of their presentation, we can have questions and answers, but not in between. Thank you. Delana Jones with NGG Mississippi. I am the manager of Region Customer Service for Jackson's area. Good afternoon. My name is Victoria Love, Customer Service Manager for Entergy for the Jackson area. And my name is Andrew Mitchell. I'm the lighting coordinator for Energy Mississippi. So as councilwoman Clay mentioned, we are here to discuss the street lighting concerns that you all have voiced to us. What we have in front of you, just to kick it off with the lighting piece of what entergy owns and what is held in the responsibility of the city. If you look through our documentation, and I apologize, we did not number the images themselves, but this is just to give an outlay of who covers what within the city of Jackson. So on the first image, you can see that across Old Kenton Road near exit 100, these are M.Dot lighting facilities. So MDOT will be the owner of that light or those lightings. If you keep flipping, you'll see high street on the east side of 55 North. Right in front of about Whataburger, that's when energy picks up the lighting, and I believe that's mixed ownership. So if you keep flipping through the documentation, it will give the descriptions and just give an area view of what energy owns, what the city of Jackson owns, what is mixed ownership, and then what MDOT owns as well. So I'd be I'd be happy to continue speaking through these images, but if you all would prefer to look at them on your own time, then we could do that. So one concern that we have heard um is street lighting. So just to let you all know, we have about 22,000, and that's approximate, 22,000 street lights within the city of Jackson. Um do you have that exact number? 22, 22,254 lights within the city of Jackson. As of now, or as of yesterday, we did a we did an assessment to confirm how many outages are occurring within the city, and it is less than one percent. We have about 63 outages within the city of Jackson as of now. So we know that has been one of the concerns. If you look at the other document that has been provided to you, that is the reporting street light outages document. So that this way. Uh-oh. This this document right here, it is the reporting streetlight outages document that helps you share with your constituents how they can report streetlight outages within the city of Jackson. Keep in mind that we have a three business day commit to perform our streetlight repairs, unless there is some additional issues or damage that has been taken place or that has taken place with the that the lights themselves. But for the we try to maintain that three business day commit for any street light outages and those simple repairs. So just to let you know where we stand on the street lights, um, as far as amount as well as how many are currently out. All right, as far as billing, um currently the city is being billed a base rate of 344,626 and 44 cents a month, and that's the base rate, not including the um riders and fuel charge. We did um a couple of weeks ago speak with the city in reference to a increase to that current rate due to a billing. We had a billing system upgrade um that caused billing to be paused for municipalities, and once that upgrade was corrected, um, those charges were um updated. So no installs, removes, or exchanges had been billed to municipalities. So any um you know, lighting exchanges that were done, any new installs that were done, and that's included on the handout that I that you have that says entry lease lighting estimate. So this is all the signed lighting agreements that we have since um 2019, where we have either exchange lights and upgrading them to LED or added new lights, um, like the project on highway 18. So all of those were included within this um billing uh conversion, and that changed the uh price of your bills, which is now gonna be 360,000 183 cent, 183.50 cent. I'm sorry.
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