By Adam Swift
Monday night, the city council’s legislative affairs subcommittee took up an ordinance amendment that would change how Revere approves some pole requests from National Grid.
However, the ordinance amendment did open up a larger conversation about how the city can hold National Grid and other utility providers responsible for issues with utility poles in the city.
“This is a motion that I put in,” said Ward 4 Councillor Paul Argenzio. “National Grid comes before (the city council) and holds public hearings as to the location of poles and conduits. This motion would put that under the jurisdiction of the city engineer, and that would no longer come before us.”
Argenzio said the council would still be able to call National Grid before it if it had an issue with double poles or other problems.
“I think that the people that come before us (from National Grid) for a certain issue, we tend to vent on them and they really don’t have an understanding of what we are discussing that night because it really has nothing to do with them.”
Argenzio said he also asked the city’s policy writer to come up with a policy that when the city engineer gets a request from National Grid that they reach out to the ward councillor to get their input.
Ward 2 Ira Novoselsky said he understood the intent of Argenzio’s motion, but said he still believes the council would be losing a voice for everyone.
“National Grid, we know, has been very bad, they have not been good to us and lately they have not even attempted or acknowledged coming up to us to talk about the double pole situation,” said Novoselsky. “Now, would we bring up the city engineer to ask him about double poles? Everyone is going to have questions, who else are we going to ask?”
Argenzio said ordinance amendment he proposed would only cover the installation of poles and conduits and get the council out of holding public hearings for each request.
“We can still call National Grid at any point we want, or periodically, to come up and discuss issues like that, double poles and what have you,” said Argenzio.
If the city engineer is only going to handle pole locations for new utility poles, Novoselsky said he didn’t have a problem with that, but he added that the engineer still has to communicate with the council about the requests and any issues.
Ward 1 Councillor Joanne McKenna noted that she has a lot of problems with downed wires in her ward, and that the issues extend beyond just National Grid. She said she would like more information from the city about what poles are going up in her ward, what wires are down, and who to contact when there are issues.
The subcommittee agreed to leave the ordinance amendment in committee until it could speak to the city policy writer about the proposed policy concerning the contact of councillors about potential issues that Argenzio said he would like to see in concert with the proposed amendment change.
