Lauderhill commissioners joined the chorus on Tuesday, passing a resolution that urges the state to study the issue. The resolution will be sent to the county and state Legislature, which is expected to take up the issue at its next session.

As the only city in Broward to pass such a resolution, Lauderhill joins a contingent of groups that want power lines buried, including state legislators and county commissioners in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

"Numerous people and governmental agencies around the state are looking at the same question," Mayor Richard J. Kaplan said. "The goal is to reduce electrical outages due to weather. I don't know of any part of the country that's more susceptible than we are."

Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle suspects the issue will come down to which neighborhood wants lines buried, as opposed to which city.

"No city can pay for it," Naugle said Tuesday. "There is going to be a cost and the customers are going to have to pay."

The costs are high indeed -- $30,000 per household, according to some estimates -- with no guarantee that underground lines would eliminate outages during a storm.

Florida Power & Light Co. "is not against putting lines underground," said FPL spokeswoman Pat Davis. "But having underground power lines does not mean you'll never have a power outage. It's not an easy answer."

Placing power lines underground makes sense in terms of safety and aesthetics, Hollywood City Manager Cameron Benson said.

Hollywood has already been working with FPL to bury power lines in its beach and downtown areas as part of the city's redevelopment plan. With the latest onslaught of hurricanes, the issue has become one of safety as well, Benson said.

"The biggest problem is who pays for it," Benson said. "We don't want the cities burdened with paying the exorbitant costs we hear about from FPL."

Those high costs explain why not every city is pushing the issue.

In Plantation, Mayor Rae Carole Armstrong has received inquiries from residents about burying power lines but said she recognizes the difficulty and expense of doing so.

In the meantime, Tamarac has no plans to press FPL to bury existing power lines, City Manager Jeffrey Miller said.

Burying power lines might be an option in new subdivisions, but moving lines from utility poles to Florida's often wet and sandy soil is an expensive proposition, Miller said.

Still, some insist the matter demands looking into.

"We got hit by four hurricanes this year," Kaplan said. "It was a very bad situation. FPL had a $345 million contingency fund. It's all gone. They thought it was better to repair the lines than to invest in the infrastructure."

Staff Writer Kevin Smith contributed to this report.