Electrocution, burglary, insomnia. These are some of Verizon's current offerings to the residents of Poplar Street in Georgetown. It sounds crazy -- and it's driving some Georgetown residents to consider desperate moves.
"It" is a swaying utility pole holding 142 wires that lashes one house during storms and provides trespassers ladder-like access to roofs. And its causing nightmares on the otherwise peaceful street in the East Village.
Resident Nancy Flinn has been calling, petitioning, and begging Verizon since 2008 to have the telephone pole moved. Flinn’s neighbors want the pole gone too -- they fear more unwanted visitors like the one who broke through a skylight after climbing the pole.
Then there are the five small children who live on the street. “What if one of those lines falls down when little Billy is playing?” Flinn asks.
Moving the pole apparently is complicated even for mega-utility Verizon. Flinn says she finally has Verizon’s attention, but its solutions are unsatisfactory. Verizon first wanted to “cut the pole down below the roof line and let the wires hang in front of our windows,” says Flinn. “I said absolutely ‘no.’”
From the beginning, Flinn has pleaded for the pole to be moved across the street where there are no house fronts, windows and roofs to access. “I’ve never understood why that’s not a solution,” she says.
No less than 15 officials and staff from Verizon, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans’ Office, the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Transportation and its Urban Forestry Administration have examined the pole and gone away bewildered, says Flinn. She does concede, however, that Verizon sought permits to move the pole to the other side of Flinn’s house.
Verizon spokesperson Sandy Arnette says they were “prepared to set a new pole, transfer the existing cables, and remove the above-ground portion of the old pole on February 1,” but failed to get agreement from the residents.
Flinn says this solution is also unacceptable: the new pole location would impede access to the front door of the house next door, block her view, and devalue her property. The current pole would not be removed but chopped down along with a large, old tree that she dearly loves -- the tree is now growing around the pole. Verizon told Flinn she would have to pay to have the tree cut down. “I feel manipulated by Verizon,” she says.
The ideal solution for residents would be to bury the wires underground to maintain historic integrity, similar to how wires are hidden on other Georgetown streets. Verizon wants residents to pay for the burial, which would cost $82 per foot or $10,000 per household. Flinn asks, “All of Georgetown is underground. Who has paid for that?” Jane Townsend, who has owned her Poplar Street home since 1967, firmly states, “I feel strongly that Verizon has to pay.”
Poplar Street is often ignored, says Townsend. “We never have snow removal or leaf or street maintenance.” Residents were forced to form a neighborhood association to resolve the issues that plague the neighborhood. Flinn remembers the street was swelling in the center and basements were flooded. “We told [the District] when they fixed the street that they should bury the lines,” Townsend says. Their requests were ignored and the street was swiftly paved over without moving the lines. “We have fought valiantly,” says Townsend, who claims they have dealt with the issue since 2002.
One frustrated resident says, “There must be a win-win situation for us all.” Possibly a wireless project? “It seems primitive to be talking about burying wires in this day and age,” she says.
Residents see Poplar Street as a “wonderful historic treasure.” With homes from the 1860s, it used to be the epicenter of a thriving black community and is now on one of Georgetown’s walking tours. And they believe that the wires greatly diminish the beauty and history of the area.
Flinn believes she doesn’t have a lot of time left. “That pole will be in my bedroom soon. Verizon has been insulting to me. Their solutions have been unsatisfactory. We don’t want a quick band-aid. We want it done right.”
Townsend says the neighbors are running out of options. “Our next step is action. We’ll march around City Hall if we have to.” Flinn has other plans, “We’re signing a petition and sending it to the Mayor’s office.” The petition has seven signatures, which may not seem a large number. But the street isn’t very big either.
Flinn points to the side of the street where the utility pole could be moved to end the disruption.
The utility pole with all 142 wires leaning on a Poplar St. home.
20 Comments For This Article
I hope this article is picked up by larger news outlets and people not living on Poplar Street are outraged. Maybe then Verizon will respond appropriately and bury the wires. Are not these 142 wires important to their services?
And have the neighbors to whose yard Ms. Flinn suggested the telephone pole be shunted ever been consulted or asked what they thought? by her? the Mayor's office? Verizon? Is this the first they heard of this proposal? ... Not a helpful approach to getting support.
Bury the wires.
No, the neighbors to whose yard Ms. Flinn suggests shunting the pole have NOT been consulted by Ms. Flinn, Ms. Townsend or anyone else.
The lines need to be buried. The area across the street is not a yard but a city easement adjacent to the fence of a back yard. No one needs the poles and lines in their front doorway, next to their roof, on an easement next to the street or in their back yard. All neighbors on the street agreed after having been consulted.
So far there are no responses or consults or replies to calls for help from Verizon, Mayor Fenty's office or Jack Evans.
Any ideas on next steps?
Have you asked the neighbors, because they were not asked EVER what they thought. Indeed, those on Poplar Street ever asks their P Street neighbors about anything - but simply carps and complains. Has anyone for example consulted the property records before announcing the existence of an easement adjacent to said fence? If one exists it would in fact be public record.
It would be much more effective if people asked their neighbors about this stuff, rather than their learning of it the first time in an online posting - no?
Suggesting that the nuisance be moved from your property or property line to your neighbors' is hardly likely to secure support or even be regarded as friendly. Of course someone might prefer that their petition land in the Mayor's office and be considered without the affected neighbors (any one of 4-5 P Street Houses) knowing about it...
Almost every sensible person wants the lines buried. A "beggar thy neighbor" approach splits people, undermining the broad position. Now you may have several homeowners going to the Mayor's office saying "about that petition, not on my property or property line"
The main cost for Verizon is burying the cables is that the rats’ nest of lines would need to be traced and every-line identified, bridged to a new line and then cut. Basically their records are a mess, they do not know what all these lines do or where they go and they need to work that out before rerouting them. There are 142 cables, but only 17 houses on the South side of P Street and 7-10 odd on Poplar Street – so there are 115 mystery-lines over and above what is needed to provide phone service to these houses. Whose are they, what do they do – are they cable? power? Lines going to homes blocks away – Verizon obviously does not know and worries about the cost of finding out – or there would be 80% less wires there.
The best solution may be to get the pole condemned as rotten and unsafe (which it is) but then to resist "tooth and nail" any replacement with another pole. Since Verizon has universal service obligations, and so must provide phone service, but would be unable to replace the pole, their only choice would be to bury the line. Certainly if the pole falls over they should not be allowed to replace it.
Try getting 19 neighbors' signatures instead of 7. Oh, wait - you just suggested sticking the unwanted pole at the entrance of several of their homes. Never mind.
Perhaps you can pretend you were misunderstood?
Personally over the past 3 years my neighbors and I have gone door to door several throughout the entire neighborhood talking with anyone we could find and dropping off leaflets when no one was at home to discuss this issue of unsightly wires and poles; we have written letters to the editors which have been published in the local press; we have been interviewed by the media; met countless times with our Councilman, Jack Evans, his staff, the Mayor's office, Verizon, Pepco, the Neighborhood Advisory Board, CAG, and countless engineers, technicians, neighbors, and friends to seek resolution of this problem. Poplar Street was always a 'back alley' for over a century--formerly home for servants to the better-off families in the area. It has a long history of being used by the City, utility companies, and folks on O and P streets as their place to park cars, dump trash, and bring in services. Now it is a lovely cul de sac lane with flowers and trees and cute houses that are a credit to Georgetown--and we have many good friends around us on O and P and 27th and 28th who bring their dogs and kids and join us at our open air 'neighbors table' for coffee, wine and conversation--all are welcome. Now we just want to get rid of these ugly poles and wire jungles overhead that are dangerous, unsightly, and causing grief to our lovely homes and trees... None of the other streets around us have these unsightly wire canopies. Virtually all streets in DC are free of these objectionable wires, having long been buried underground or routed invisibly through other means. We only want Poplar Street to be treated the same as other streets in the city...so our neighbors can join us for coffee without the sky being obstructed by visual pollution. Please join us.
I think everyone but verizon is on board with Trying to burying the lines here. Instead of simply moving a pole to hamper some other property.
(I don't mind my name being used... and I won't hide behind 'Anonymous')
* Personally over the past 3 years my neighbors and I have gone door to door several throughout the entire neighborhood talking with anyone we could find and dropping off leaflets when no one was at home to discuss this issue of unsightly wires and poles; we have written letters to the editors which have been published in the local press; we have been interviewed by the media; met countless times with our Councilman, Jack Evans, his staff, the Mayor's office, Verizon, Pepco, the Neighborhood Advisory Board, CAG, and countless engineers, technicians, neighbors, and friends to seek resolution of this problem. Poplar Street was always a 'back alley' for over a century--formerly home for servants to the better-off families in the area. It has a long history of being used by the City, utility companies, and folks on O and P streets as their place to park cars, dump trash, and bring in services. Now it is a lovely cul de sac lane with flowers and trees and cute houses that are a credit to Georgetown--and we have many good friends around us on O and P and 27th and 28th who bring their dogs and kids and join us at our open air 'neighbors table' for coffee, wine and conversation--all are welcome. Now we just want to get rid of these ugly poles and wire jungles overhead that are dangerous, unsightly, and causing grief to our lovely homes and trees... None of the other streets around us have these unsightly wire canopies. Virtually all streets in DC are free of these objectionable wires, having long been buried underground or routed invisibly through other means. We only want Poplar Street to be treated the same as other streets in the city...so our neighbors can join us for coffee without the sky being obstructed by visual pollution. Please join us.
"Mac" Odell - you may not hide under "Anonymous" on this blog, but when you make endless complaints about the look of your neighbors' homes (wrong shape gates, wrong wood), you DO hide under "Anonymous", and you know WE DO know.
You did not help the Poplar Street cause when you decided that the kickoff to the campaign to get the wires removed would be enhanced by some sour and nasty comments to the Georgetowner about the P and O Street neighbors (or was it the Current - for an example see your recent post), and yes, you gave your name. As a result of those comments, those attacked neighbors, all 12-20 of them, if asked, would not have signed the petition.
So here you go again, making nasty comments such as "folks on O and P streets as their place to park cars, dump trash, and bring in services". So now your O and P street neighbors are saying again, why would we support them after that cheap shot! As a self styled "community activist", you are proving a disaster in terms of rallying the community.
By the way, Polar street was not "formerly home for servants to the better-off families in the area" - the servants lived on on P Street. Poplar street (this is a family orientated publication), to be circumspect, let's say to get authentic you might want to buy light bulbs in a different shade (ps, could you turn down the wattage at the same time)!
As for dumping trash, O Street and P Street people hate finding it at their doorstep too (along with dog waste) - they keep wondering if it is the Poplar Street residents who do it.
People living on P and O Street want Poplar Street improved - but they have been royally antagonized by a few of the people who live there. Witness your posting and the gratuitous snark in it.
Why do you think this article struck a nerve? It seems that someone on Poplar Street has proposed multiple neighbors' homes as a locations for unsightly nuisances, without consulting them. They in turn are furious. Are you surprised? Do you really expect support??
Wow a lot of postings! The link to it is getting sent around.
It sounds like some efforts at hatchet burying (not in the back) are needed here. People need to make common cause and if people are mad at each other, well they might want to walk a block (or half a block even) in the other person's shoes.
It would help for people not to see the other as the enemy; of course, by the sounds of it, maybe the other person(s) has/have been a bit of a jerk at best. The facts are not clear, but it seems that there are some raw nerves in the 2700 block of P, Poplar and O Streets NW and little love lost.
The anons, well, it is pretty sad when neighbors don't say what they think. But is it sad because they are unwilling to be upfront, or because they are too scared to be upfront? If they lack the nerve, shame on them, but if they are worried about what Mac Odell, Nancy Flinn and "Tom" might do, well shame on those three for being bullies. I'm not going to put my name up here, I'm not so stupid as to get in the middle.
As a Georgetown resident for some time, it is fair to say that many people, with some justice, see the Citizens Association of Georgetown (CAG), the Georgetown Board (the In-Architects Club), the DC-Inspectors and DCRA (Taxing by Fines) as the enemy, groups devoted to making home ownership in Georgetown a bureaucratic, almost Kafkaesque nightmare at times, who spend their time dictating the shape of gates and doorknockers and the minutiae of permits, but never address real issues like the Poplar Street wire hammock discussed here (there are a few more nearby small streets, lanes and alleys with the same problem, but perhaps a few less wires and few houses facing on to them), who harass the small stores in Georgetown out of business, and make it impossible to find a small quiet bar, while allowing raucous sports bars to take over, and pat themselves on the back for their alcohol license moratorium which misses the point.
It is worrying that at least one poster here sees another as responsible for getting neighbors into trouble with these bodies. In Georgetown calling the Georgetown Board or DCRA down on people without a really good reason is pretty un-neighborly. It costs so much to defend even a meritless complaint that it is usually cheaper to just pay a fine of hundreds or even thousands of dollars even if paying it stinks or making the changes demanded costs as much. When I moved to Georgetown an old real-estate attorney friend of mine warned me about this and called "diming people out to DCRA is the local sport in Georgetown." I was saddened to find out he was telling the truth and that his description of the Georgetown Board and DCRA as power-crazed but stunningly petty was in fact very far from an exaggeration.
At the last CAG meeting I attended there were earnest discussions about how awful it was that people were leaving their trash out for collection before 7am (i.e., as they left for work - a point people were to scared to utter) and the need for some sort of rule to stop this, and a report from the Georgetown Board on the desirability of further restricting by a no-exceptions rule what people might do with their back gardens, all driven by what appeared to be retired people (no need to get the trash out at 7am) or those with gardeners and big budget "landscape architects" and no children households. I left in disgust.
Anyway, if people want this fixed they need to fix the issues between them first, so they can all argue the point together that the wires need to be buried once and for all. I would not hope for anything from the Mayor's office, the Neighborhood Advisory Board and CAG if everyone on Poplar, P and O does not agree with the proposal and sign on to it.
So well put - thank you
Tom has it exactly right -- burying the wires is the only logical solution and Verizon has a responsibility here as the owner of the poles that carry the wires. Everyone's property value in the neighborhood is adversely affected by these ugly wires. No other street anywhere--and we've walked the streets all the way across town as far as Shaw/Howard University, has this kind of mess that we've ever found. Thus the city has a responsibility to require Verizon to bury the wires. We're all in this together. All our properties are affected even though Nancy's property has clearly been directly and physically affected even more than most of ours. Nancy, I know everyone on Poplar Street is behind you. Keep up the good fight.
I also invite the rest of our good neighbors on O, P, 27th, and 28th to join us, too, since anything that drags down values and brings ugliness anywhere in our larger neighborhood affects us all. As soon as the weather gets warm (and I get back from Tanzania), please join us at our 'Poplar St. Cafe' for my grandmother's famous ice tea and let's work out some agreement on next steps -- for the benefit of the entire neighborhood.
Like I've said here, personally to most anyone I've ever met in the neighborhood, and in all press press comments that I'm aware of (though people do get misquoted)-- let's sit down together as neighbors and talk about these wires... and while we're at it, perhaps we should talk about the underlying issues that have been festering here for years since long before I came here in 2007.
To my knowledge I have never--in print or in person--pointed any fingers at anyone on O or P street--and I certainly have never made "endless complaints about the look of... neighbors' homes (wrong shape gates, wrong wood)..." I love this lane and virtually everything about it--except those poles and wires. But if something I said can be interpreted that way then I sincerely apologize. But we are united in attacking the ugly wires and calling for collective action from the City and the concerned utilities.
I also have nothing but respect for all our neighbors--on O, P, 27th, 28th and take exception in the accusation about "nasty comments about folks on O & P Streets," Please re-read what I actually wrote--which was drawn on both written history--including property deeds and census records going back to the turn of the century--and also taught me by long term residents in the neighborhood who have family roots going back generations, I have nothing but the greatest respect. Here's what I said:
"...Poplar Street was always a 'back alley' for over a century--formerly home for servants to the better-off families in the area. It has a long history of being used by the City, utility companies, and folks on O and P streets as their place to park cars, dump trash, and bring in services. Now it is a lovely cul de sac lane with flowers and trees and cute houses that are a credit to Georgetown--and we have many good friends around us on O and P and 27th and 28th who bring their dogs and kids and join us at our open air 'neighbors table' for coffee, wine and conversation--all are welcome...."
Now, if this history is wrong, then please set me right... Poplar Street, I'm told, and have read in Georgetown history, was an alley which was abused in the past--the city even tried to raze the homes we now live in, but good folks in the neighborhood -- including lots of civic-minnded folks from O and P street -- got together and saved it. Individually and collectively they have beautified it, and it's now "a lovely..lane." That was positive collective action from which we all benefited. My apologies if anything I've said inadvertently opened old wounds or could be construed as negative about any neighbors--never intended. Let's have more of the same positive energy and action that saved Poplar Street from the bulldozers, leave the old wounds and finger pointing behind us, and join together against those wires and poles that are the real issue here.
What you guys need is to come up with a proactive consensus on what all the people with property on Poplar Street - the Poplar Street, P Street and O street residents want it to look like - what people can should do with their yards. The ideas need to be win-win, that is to say everyone needs to benefit. One big benefit is by having a plan and pushing it hard it makes it easier for people with the permit police such as the Georgetown board, because their petty demands and efforts to ensure the in-architects are hired will run against what the neighborhood has already said it wants.
The problem in Georgetown is the love of spending other peoples' money, or grabbing other peoples' property. The 2700 blocks of P Street, O Street and Poplar Street are not rich Georgetown - they are all smallish houses that even if extended will still be small houses. No one there will spend a fortune to do anything and if the regulatory burdens are driven up nothing will happen. People in Georgetown increasingly avoid doing anything with the outside of their houses because it involves expensive permits, visits to the Georgetown board and the endless interventions of the Georgetown busybodies association. There is so much secret renovation being carried out inside though that it is rediculous.
Bury the lines already!
What is the phone number and email or contact information for Verizon regarding removal of the old pole and wires? Please let us know as a massive movemetn from the public can often times get the old poles and wires renoved!
Post new comment