WARREN, Ohio - A new audit looking into utility bills in the city of Warren found taxpayer dollars are being spent for street lights that are not real. 

The city hired a San Francisco based company Tanko Lighting to pinpoint every street light. Their results found the city is being billed for hundreds of lights that haven't been up since at least 2008.

“I was shocked,” Greg Greathouse, Warren's Third Ward Councilman said. “The people that did the audit for us said this is about usual.”

Ohio Edison is responsible for the billing and maintenance. In some spots there are no poles, in others poles have no fixtures and for some of the lights that are fully functioning the city is being billed two or three times. 

“They have bad process. We've asked them nicely to go out and start patrolling the street lights and fixing the ones they find out, they won't do it,” Greathouse said. 

Councilman Greathouse has battled the utility company before filing a lawsuit last year after the city was charged for broken street lights. For this most recent issue he believes the city is owed between $350,000 to upwards of a million dollars for past mistakes. He said if Edison refuses the refund they will take it to that PUCO and withhold portions of future bills until things are corrected.

“I can’t in good faith tell the citizens in my ward or the city why should we be paying these bills for lights that aren't there,” Greathouse said. 

Ohio Edison said the city has not yet reported the billing issues to them. 

“We have not received an inquiry from the City of Warren about this matter, but we value our partnership with the community. We are committed to working with city leaders to fully understand their concerns and ensure clarity around their streetlight billing. Providing accurate billing and reliable service to every community we serve is our priority, and we will review any information that the city would like to share,” a Ohio Edision Spokesperson told 21 News.  

Greathouse also wants the city to consider buying the lights from Ohio Edison. He said they can switch them to LED’s to last longer and upgrade the system to report outages more quickly.

A meeting is scheduled for Tuesday March 10th at 4p.m. for council to discuss the discrepancies.

A full list of the areas where the audit found missing, non functioning or incorrectly billed lights can be found below: