If Fayetteville were starting over, with all the chess pieces right where they are today, there would be no justification for charging some residents for street lights, but not others. That’s why it makes sense for the city to even things up.

This is not a good guys vs. bad guys situation. The motives were benign all around.

Nobody wanted newly annexed neighborhoods to do without street lights, so The Utility Formerly Known as Carolina Power & Light Co. struck a deal with Fayetteville’s Public Works Commission. CP&L, now Progress Energy, installed lights in neighborhoods it served, and the PWC paid for their maintenance – leaving those residents with no bill for street lights.

At the time, the cost to the city was chump change. Per individual, it still is. The PWC’s typical residential customer pays $2.23 a month for street lights.

Over two decades, though, Progress Energy gained many new customers here, thousands of them coming under the protective umbrella of that agreement. Almost two dozen subdivisions are involved to some extent. The deal now costs the PWC about $200,000 a year, and that is of course passed along to PWC customers.