Telephone pole accident triggers action
Abbotsford is looking at implementing some new regulations after a lowhanging telephone cable was snagged by a garbage truck last week, causing a pair of poles to come down across West Spruce Street.
DPW Craig Stuttgen told the council last Wednesday that he has been trying for years to get Frontier Communications to do a better job of maintaining its telephone and Internet cables within the city’s right-of-way, but nothing changed until the Sept. 13 accident.
Four telephone poles were taken down when a garbage truck headed north on Bezak Drive by the Colby-Abby Police Department yanked a low-slung telephone wire hanging across the street.
“When the garbage truck went through, it caught the line and snapped off four light poles, two of which crossed two lanes of traffic and the sidewalk,” Stuttgen said. “If it would have happened 45 minutes later, there would’ve been kids from school walking on the sidewalk, and we would have had light poles flying at them.”
According to an accident report, a fifth utility poles was lightly cracked and bent as a result of the accident. The downed poles damaged an Abbotsford Lion’s bench and a nearby flag pole on the police department property.
Stuttgen said the telephone line has been tied to a tree on Bezak Drive for the last six years. A pole needed to be relocated during a 2015 street project, but it was never moved.
“Since 2015, I’ve been hitting it with my loader plowing snow,” he said. “I’ve repeatedly sent them letters.”
Stuttgen said the city initially refused to let Frontier put that line back up until they fixed all of their issues. He said the company has agreed to bury the line, which is what they’ve been promising to do since 2015.
“In good faith, we let them put their line back up temporarily until next week,” Stuttgen told the council.
In June, when Frontier applied for an excavation permit, Stuttgen sent a list of seven areas in the city where Frontier’s utility issues needed to be addressed.
“I could go for a drive and make this list much longer but it is not worth my time,” he wrote in an email. “I have been sending this list out for years and have gotten no results.”
Frontier normally rents pole space from Xcel Energy, but when Xcel moved all of its poles several years ago, Frontier never moved their cables. As a result, they are still hanging from old wooden poles that are prone to breaking.
Following the accident, the company started removing its old poles across the city, including 13 in one alley, Stuttgen said.
“There’s maintenance issues all over town,” he said. “This has been going on and on forever; they just never come and do their maintenance.”
As a result, the line tied to the tree just kept getting lower and lower until it was eventually caught by a passing truck.
Dan Borchardt, an engineer from MSA Professional Services, said another municipality in the area may have found a solution to the problem.
“Rothschild just experienced the same issues with utilities on projects, and they actually have an ordinance in place,” he said.
The council tabled the issue until more information could be obtained. Stuttgen said he’s just looking for more leverage against the telephone company.
“We cannot deny a utility access to our right-of-way,” he said. “With that being said, we’re trying to figure out what we can do to make them maintain it.”
Building permits will continue to cost $2 per thousand dollars of construction value, but the amount applicants are expected to pay will be capped.
The council adopted caps of $2,000 for all commercial projects and $200 for all residential ones at last week’s meeting.
The idea to cap the permit fees came from Stuttgen, who saw the higher fees as a disincentive for those looking to construct larger buildings.
“I don’t think anybody should ever have to get a $5,000 building permit or a $10,000 building permit or a $60,000 building permit,” he said.
Other business
_ City administrator Josh Soyk told the council that Clark Electric accidently struck the city’s main fiber communications line next to the Eau Pleine water treatment plant, knocking out communication to the plant and eight out of the 12 nearby wells. The disruption occurred on the morning of the meeting, Sept. 15, and communication was restored by 5 p.m. that evening.
Stuttgen said Diggers Hotline was never notified about the city’s underground utilities leading out to the water plant and well field east of city limits.
“Ten years ago, when we put out all of these wells, we never notified them that we had utilities outside of city limits,” he said.
That oversight has now been corrected, he said.
_ Stuttgen said the new flashing lights on the stop signs on West Spruce Street have not generated any complaints from neighboring homeowners.
“From a distance, they’re very bright,” he said. “When you’re up close, they’re not.”
_ The council approved a new fiveyear streets plan with 11 potential projects, ranging from complete reconstructions to simple resurfacing. The city is not committed to completing any of the projects on the list, but having a plan in place helps the city qualify for grants.
Stuttgen said one project that will come before the council soon is blacktopping 11th Street, from Spruce to Elm, using leftover grant money from the recently completed Fourth Street project to help pay for the work.
Main Street (North First) should also be milled and overlaid at some point, Stuttgen said.
“Main Street is a really busy place on the weekends,” he said. “I’m happy to see that it’s doing so well.”
Ald. Jeremiah Zeiset questioned whether the city should be taking on big street projects when it already has so much debt on the books from previous projects.
Stuttgen said the city has a lot of financial resources at its disposal, whether it’s from large grants or through tax-incremental financing, which grows whenever there is new development.
“We are in a better financial situation than we’ve ever been,” he said.
_ The council approved a motion to hire a new water/wastewater operator, at a beginning wage of between $18 and $23.90, depending on experience. A new hire is needed after Soyk accepted the position of interim city administrator.
_ The council approved a $48,600 contract with MSA for designing, bidding and administrating a water tower rehabilitation project. The project timeline calls for getting DNR approval of the plans by December, so that the project can be bid out this winter and completed in the summer of 2022.
_ During her monthly update, library director Jenny Jochimsen noted that one of their upcoming programs will be a hybrid in-person/online event, with hopes of attracting more participants.
“Trying to get people in for programs has been a bit of a struggle lately,” she said, noting that other libraries having the same issues.
_ The council approved a motion to pay off a balance of $3,862 on a copier the city had been leasing.
_ The council approved $24,247 in monthly police department bills and $447,784 in monthly city bills.
