By Adam Swift
The city council tabled a proposed ordinance amendment that would change how the city approves new pole requests from National Grid and other utility companies at its meeting last week. The ordinance change would effectively shift utility pole location oversight from the council and to the city engineer.
The council’s legislative affairs subcommittee had previously recommended approval of the ordinance change. However, at the full council meeting last week, Ward 2 Councillor Ira Novoselsky said he objected to the ordinance change and voted against a second reading on the issue, tabling the motion to a future meeting. “I’m against this, I think we as a city council lose control of what we want to do,” said Novoselsky. “I … think the city engineer, and I’d say a lot of departments, have poor communication to the council and I just don’t feel comfortable with the approvals going through the city engineer without us directly being involved.”
Councillor-at-Large Anthony Zambuto said he believed that putting the city engineer in charge of the process would streamline the process. Councillor-at-Large Robert Haas III asked if there was a way the motion could be amended so that the ward councillor for the requests, as well as the city engineer, would be notified of the utility pole requests. City Clerk Ashley Melnik stated that the language could not simply be added because the global replacement must fit grammatically across several sections of the ordinance. Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro suggested that the council pass the revised ordinance with the language before it and that the council could revisit the issue at a future date and modify or repeal it if needed. But with Novoselsky’s objection to the second reading on the ordinance amendment, the issue was tabled.
