Street Lights in Port St. Lucie

In Port St. Lucie, lights on metal, aluminum or decorative poles are city lights reported to the city, and lights on concrete or wooden poles with wires belong to Florida Power and Light.

The split comes from the Public Works Street Lighting page, which says street lights within the City of Port St. Lucie are owned and maintained by either the city or Florida Power and Light (FPL) and uses photos to help residents tell them apart. City-owned lights are reported through 1PSL, the city's request system, or by calling 772-871-1775.

Two other Port St. Lucie pages point straight to the utility without the split. The Public Works FAQs answer the question of how to report street light trouble by directing residents to FPL's website, and the City Clerk's Request for Street Lights page says an inoperable or malfunctioning street light is reported through FPL's Lighting Trouble webpage.

New residential street lights in Port St. Lucie come through a four-step City Clerk process under City Code Chapter 161: a request form, a petition signed by at least 25 percent of affected owners, a ballot of all owners and, if approved, installation by FPL.

The steps are set out on the City Clerk's Request for Street Lights page, which says the Clerk's Office processes requests for residential street lighting boundary areas under City Code Chapter 161. Only the property owner of record can start a request for a Port St. Lucie street, and the process applies to public residential streets. The page words the deadline as a petition completed and submitted before March 1st, after which the request can proceed to the ballot.

A Port St. Lucie street light ballot passes with a simple majority, 50 percent plus 1, of the ballots actually returned, and a tie fails.

The Clerk's FAQ on the request page works through an example. On a street of 20 lots, 11 yes votes are not necessarily needed, because results are counted from the ballots returned: if 12 ballots come back, 7 in favor and 5 against, the election is successful, while 6 in favor and 6 against fails. Every owner in the proposed assessment area is mailed a ballot, and the page confirms that owners of vacant or undeveloped Port St. Lucie lots also vote.

Winning the ballot is not the last step. The page says successful elections are presented to City Council for approval, and only then are approved lighting areas added to the November tax roll (Request for Street Lights). Questions about a pending petition or ballot go to the City Clerk's Office at 772-871-5168, listed at 121 SW Port St. Lucie Blvd. in Building A of City Hall (Office of the City Clerk).

Owners inside an approved Port St. Lucie street lighting area pay an annual street lighting fee on the property tax bill, which the City Clerk's page lists at $26, the rate the City Council approved in 2024.

The Request for Street Lights page says the annual fee for street lighting is added to property tax bills and that the $26 fee is charged to all property owners within the approved area. The city's FY 2023-24 adopted budget said residents who elect to form a Street Lighting District would pay an annual fee of $26, the same as the year before, and recorded the Street Lighting Fund, #111, at $532,908 for that year (FY 2023-24 Adopted Budget Book). The same budget says the other streetlights, those along the main thoroughfares in Port St. Lucie, are funded within the Road and Bridge Fund using gasoline taxes.

On a Port St. Lucie tax bill, the fee rides on the non-ad valorem part. The city Finance Department's Special Assessment and Property Tax page gives the billing and proration period for special assessments as Nov. 1 through Oct. 31 and says a special assessment or Municipal Service Benefit Unit placed on the tax roll is assessed annually for the time period specified. Under section 197.3632, Florida Statutes, non-ad valorem assessments collected by the uniform method appear in the combined notice with ad valorem taxes and are subject to the same collection rules, including the early payment discount, installment prepayment, delinquency penalties and tax certificates for nonpayment.

Port St. Lucie Public Works proposes the layout, usually one light every four lots on existing poles, but FPL has the final say on where each light goes and can move a light without telling the city.

The Port St. Lucie Clerk's Request for Street Lights FAQ describes the standard fixture as an open bottom clear fixture with a 150 watt bulb, mounted at roughly 20 feet (the page writes plus or minus 20 feet) on a 6 foot or 8 foot arm. Where the power poles sit at the rear of a property, a new pole has to be installed at the front along the road, with power brought from the back; FPL normally runs the wires between two lots.

On Port St. Lucie streets where electrical service is already underground, the same rules apply but above ground transformer boxes in the swale area are used instead of FPL poles; underground service is used only where it already exists. When branches stand in the way of a new light, the page says FPL calls Public Works and Public Works hires a licensed and insured arborist to trim them. A new light that shines into a window is handled by FPL on request, which in past cases has added a shield or painted part of the fixture black (Request for Street Lights).

Yes: residents of public residential streets in Port St. Lucie can ask Florida Power and Light for a personal outdoor security light, which FPL mounts on a wooden pole near the end of the driveway and bills monthly on the FPL bill.

The City Clerk's Request for Street Lights page lists FPL's number for these requests and for current rates as 772-462-0555. It also explains what happens if the street later forms a lighting district: when an area approves a Street Lighting Boundary Assessment through a ballot election, an owner with an FPL security light may discontinue it, and an owner who keeps it pays the monthly FPL fee in addition to the yearly street lighting assessment.

For anything about the neighborhood program itself, from forms to ballot status, the Port St. Lucie contact is the City Clerk's Office at 772-871-5168 (Office of the City Clerk). Last verified: October 22, 2026, by rereading the Public Works street lighting page and FAQs, every step and answer on the Clerk's street light request page, the Clerk office listing, the budget's Street Lighting Fund text, the Finance assessment FAQ and the state uniform method statute.