SEATTLE -- Seattle City Light is millions of dollars over budget on a radio project that was scheduled to be finished years ago.

KIRO Team 7 Investigative Reporter Chris Halsne unraveled how an attempt to save money instead turned onto a tax-funded money-pit.

Seattle City Light wanted better radio communications between trucks in the field and dispatchers trying to solve customer complaints, so they bought new equipment.

The problem is: That was back in 1999.

KIRO Team 7 Investigators discovered the radios never worked quite right, but that didn't stop City Light from continuing to throw money at the problem.

Before WTO riots, before any construction on Light Rail to the airport, before the invention of the iPod -- came the start of Seattle City Light's attempts to install a new 800 megahertz simulcast radio system. After 10 years, the radios remained silent.

Seattle City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco inherited the radio project already behind schedule and in debt.

He told Halsne, "Our effort has been to fix the project and get it operational as soon as we could."

But, instead of abandoning the idea years ago, Carrasco approved spending millions of additional dollars.

"It was very far along," explained Carrasco. "There were a lot of components already in place."

Records we obtained show by 2002 City Light was 23% over budget. The utility had already spent $2.89 million on radio equipment, labor and overtime. That total has now ballooned to around $6 million.

Years ago, a manager wrote a memo stating "a project of this nature should have been done by a professional engineering firm as opposed to an in-house technician."

Instead of heeding that warning, the city-owned power company plowed ahead, doing the complicated install itself. That's a mistake Carrasco now freely admits.

"If I had my druthers, I'd like to have been using it at least four years before now, but that's just part of what we're dealing with here is a complex set up that took a lot of time and was underestimated when we got started. We've learned a lot from this."

Electricity customers like Gary Pearson have some heightened irritation about this tax waste at City Light. He's unhappy the power company just announced it is dialing back its power-line/tree cutting program because of budget shortfalls.

“I think they need to get their priorities straight,” Pearson said.

Rate payers Bethany O'Brien and John Spezack couldn't agree more, especially after hearing that Carrasco took a $40,000 bonus this year.

O’Brien told KIRO Team 7 Investigators, "I think that they should take care of more basic things like keeping our power on before spending on things like that."

"It makes me mad. It makes me want competition," says Spezack.

To make matters look even worse for the utility, KIRO Team 7 Investigators uncovered a "rejected" bid from Motorola.

In 2001, their crews offered to install the radio system in 100 days. In essence, the radios should have been operational seven years ago.

City Light says its staff is now close to finished, but we had to ask, is the decade-old electronic equipment already out of date before it even goes online?

Carrasco doesn’t think so.

"In this case I don't think the utility will be poorly served by having a technology that might be one generation later than what might be available now," he said.

KIRO Team 7 Investigators called the city Auditor's Office to see if they were privy to the financial issues on this project. Nobody there knew anything about it, but now promise to look into the matter.

We called City Light again Monday afternoon to get the latest update. We're now told about 450 of 500 new truck radios have been properly programmed.

UPDATE: City Light tells KIRO Team 7 Investigators that all radios in service have been re-programmed.