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New Orleans starts charging for custom light displays on CCC 5%
By JONAH MEADOWS19%
7/25/2026, 2:00:00 AM
Keywords: Hardwall
BS Summary: This article contains 6 faulty reasoning types, including Pessimism Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Anchoring Bias, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 11.9% saturation with 81 hits. Analysis detected 286 faulty-reasoning hits from 683 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 19.7% and a BS Rank of 5% (20,903 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 95.50% of the article peer group.
The City Council has pulled the plug on free customized lighting displays on the Crescent City Connection, establishing new rules to charge fees to private groups that want to illuminate the bridge over the Mississippi River in colors of their choosing.
The change comes more than 18 months after new LED lights were installed on the bridge.
In the months since, carnival krewes, universities, high schools, alumni groups, conventions, nonprofits and awareness campaigns have received complimentary custom displays.
The ordinance, sponsored by District B Councilmember Lesli Harris and District C Councilmember Freddy King III, establishes a nightly fee of at least $1,000 and no more than $15,000.
It steers the proceeds into a newly created Crescent City Connection Bridge Lighting Fund that may only be used for maintaining, operating and programming the display and may not be transferred to the general fund.
"This simply sets up a fee structure to pay for the lighting on the bridge," Harris said Thursday ahead of the unanimous vote to approve the change.
"Right now we're doing it for free, and so if you want to light the bridge up in a special color, you've got to pay for it."
The authorization of the new revenue source comes as city officials seek out ways to close the nine-digit budget deficit Mayor Helena Moreno’s administration inherited in January.
So far this year, the administration has identified more than $100 million in new funding sources.
And earlier this month, Abby Vienne, the city’s chief performance officer, told the council “revenues are trending favorably across the board."
The new bridge lights now run on more than 1,600 fixtures with nearly 20 miles of cable that can be custom-programmed from a smartphone app, according to Cole Frischhertz of Frischhertz Electric, the firm that installed the system and maintained it for the first year before turning it over to the city.
Big revenue generator?
Last spring, former Mayor LaToya Cantrell floated the idea of charging for custom displays, posting a set of prices — $1,000 for one color, $3,000 for two, $6,000 for four and $12,000 or more for moving color scheme.
But council members never approved an ordinance to incorporate the fee collection into the City Code, and no money was ever collected.
Past schedules indicate the bridge was illuminated to honor private groups about 15 times a month.
That’s in addition to the nearly two dozen official holiday lighting schemes, like purple green and gold for Mardi Gras, red, white and blue for Independence Day and green, red and white for Christmas Day.
In April, the most recent schedule available from the city's Office of Strategic Engagement and Special Projects, special occasion lighting displays could have generated as much as $100,000, more than the cost of the electricity needed to power the system for an entire year.
It's unclear how many of the organizations that have had their custom displays comped in recent months will still be interested now that they have to fork over thousands of dollars — or how much the city currently spends to design the custom displays or maintain the system.
"The intent for this new fund is to begin charging entities a fee for programming requests to generate revenue that can be used to maintain the decorative lighting,” King said at Thursday's meeting.
Under the new rules, city officials can still light up the bridge for holidays and special events for free and maintain the authority to cancel or reschedule any lighting programs.
But they’re not allowed to request lighting displays on behalf of third parties, “absent an overriding public, economic, or cultural benefit of general applicability.”
The ordinance also forbids the city from rejecting custom displays based on the viewpoint of the requestor or from authorizing custom lighting displays that would distract cars or boats.
And the current request form requires applicants to attest that their lighting design doesn’t “represent or promote hate, discriminate, or harm” and that the purpose of the request aligns “with the City's values of respect, inclusivity, and community well-being.”
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