There’s no hiding the longtime shortcomings of the New Orleans Department of Public Works. The torn-up streets, potholes that damage your car, and dark highways tell the story without a word. But they’re the symptoms of many obstacles inside the department; including the struggle to find electrical contractors willing to work with the city. Of the 54,000 streetlights New Orleans is responsible for, about 4,000 need repair. In August, that number was 6,500. WWL-TV sat down with Sarah McLaughlin Porteous, the Interim Director of the Department of Public Works. She stepped into the position in September of 2022, but has been with the department since 2015. “So it's a combination of things. We have a lot of outages that are still left as a result of Hurricane Ida,” Porteous said. But other outages are man-made problems: criminals have stripped out copper wiring in light poles, and earlier this month someone stole fuses and cut wiring in a control box. About five poles per week are knocked down in car crashes. Any streetlights you’re seeing fixed now are part of a 4.3 million maintenance contract with All-Star Electric put in place last summer. But for a while, there was no company under contract to fix those streetlights. New Orleans relies almost exclusively on outside help for streetlight and traffic signal repair and maintenance. And in the spring, the only company that bid on the streetlight job didn’t meet the requirements. “So we had a three or four-month gap where we did not have a regular streetlight repair and maintenance contractor," Porteous said. "The number of outages just continued to grow and grow and grow."