I'm troubling shooting the lighting and the entrance to our community and have run into a problem. I thought I was just going to replace some bulbs, maybe a ballast, but things have gotten worst quickly. Turns out that with the main circuit off I still have 120 between the neutral and ground. I start looking around and found the wire from the ground bus arking away like mad where it connects to the grounding spike under the box. I disconnect everything (the 1 circuit in the box). With the main still off, I continue to get 120 between the neutral wire from the utility and the ground? Surely this can't be right? Does this point to a short somewhere on the utility side? I need help as I don't want this to go on now that I'm aware of the issue...

I'm troubling shooting the lighting and the entrance to our community and have run into a problem. I thought I was just going to replace some bulbs, maybe a ballast, but things have gotten worst quickly. Turns out that with the main circuit off I still have 120 between the neutral and ground. I start looking around and found the the wire from the ground bus arking away like mad where it connects to the grounding spike under the box. I disconnect everything (the 1 circuit in the box). with the main still off, I continue to get 120 between the neutral wire from the utility and the ground? Surely this can't be right? Does this point to a short somewhere on the utility side? I need help as I don't want this to go on now that I'm aware of the issue...
Sounds like you have an open neutral problem.If everything is off in the building your checking, it's probably on the utility side.