Well, uh just wanted to uh um uh open the double utility poll task force uh meeting.

Uh it is Thursday, Gune the 11th.

And um uh let's see, we have uh Christine Long, our other task force member.

Um hopefully our other colleague Janet uh Liam Bruno will um join shortly.

Um let's see, we'll just go around or everybody kind of introduce yourselves um their utility partners.

Uh my name is Carrie Morris.

I'm uh senior manager over at Comcast for Government and Community Affairs.

It's really great to be here tonight and and officially meet you all.

And I have one of my colleagues here with me as well, uh Lewis.

All right.

And I guess Lewis, you can go next.

Is he here?

I saw him on air.

You should be.

All right.

We'll go to uh Ellen.

Um go ahead, introduce yourself.

Good evening, Ellen Cummings, Verizon State Government Affairs.

Uh Peter Bowman Everest.

Excellent.

All right.

So um yeah, uh uh thank you for everybody meeting, and we had to, you know, move some dates around and whatnot, and I appreciate everybody's um, you know, uh flexibility and whatnot.

So um so I just wanted to also thank y'all for just you know, it's been a while since we've met, so um, I really appreciate it.

Uh you know, we're back in business and uh ready to just um uh try to um tackle all these um bloody polls and um and see where we can go.

I know it's been over about a year or yeah, over a year since we met, I believe, right, Christine.

Yeah.

It's been a while.

Seeing the year.

So I appreciate these meetings a lot.

You you're not even uh mincing words.

Yeah, yeah.

Well when I was when we were building a building in Newton, I was meeting with the utility people constantly.

So every every couple of times a year is good enough, right?

Yeah, well, yeah.

So although I will say that, you know, the giant double pole outside my next door neighbor's house is pretty ugly.

Oh, do you want to start off saying anything about that?

Yeah, no, it's actually a recent edition.

Okay.

I think it's at number, I'm at 1098.

So it's like at number four, Hemingway.

This a double reinforced poll there that got installed a few months back.

And uh honestly, are we ever just gonna go underground and get rid of these polls?

I know that's a major thing, and that probably would have to uh involve an enterprise fund for utilities or something that we'd have to create, the city would have to create because I've talked about this when I was chair of public works years ago.

And we've talked about it in the past in this past, yeah.

It's just, you know, well, I'm from Wales originally, and Wellesley's always been underground, and you know, framing him, it just gets tiring to see polls everywhere, and then double polls to support the poll that needs a poll.

And you know, it's just and in some cases, in very few cases, there's a triple poll.

So don't even say that.

So um, so I just wanted to in the interest of time, just um uh I'll get off my few remarks.

Um thank you again.

And um uh I don't know how far we've actually uh gone.

just get tiring to see polls everywhere and then double polls to support the poll that needs a poll and you know it's just and in some cases in very few cases there's a triple pole so don't even say that so um so I just wanted uh in the interest of time just um uh I'll get off my few remarks um thank you again and um uh I don't know how far we've actually uh gone it it it I think it feels like to me and Christine you can chime in if you want like it feels like we're stagnated now I mean we've made some progress in the you know in 23 and 24 and and it seems like um the total I think has gone up a bit um it's now 252 the last engines report that I got or um yeah and correct me if I'm wrong on that number um if you know because that that engines report was like in May and it was probably like three weeks ago so Ellen I don't know if that's the same I mean it's probably pretty accurate um there could be I you know I was looking at ours so once they come in our court like I've said before we have an internal number to hit don't let it sit with us for more than 30 days and I think we've been sticking to that because we have seven double polls currently in our court um so I would say that that number is give or take a poll is is still correct.

Okay.

Yeah so um but I I believe like last year when we met or sometime before that I know that this number was lower.

It was probably in the neighborhood 220 230 ish in that that range.

Yeah I I think that that was about right yeah yeah so that to me is a little concerning and it's like you know we were making progress and we were meeting and everything and then 24 and 24 and definitely last year there was hardly any movement.

So um so I guess the um the setup here is that um I I really like to see us like getting back to a a plan I I know we had a a good plan to get polls out of like really critical areas thank you Peter for that thank you Ellen it's like that we we kind of tackled that back in you know 23 24 and everything but I just did like a general like cursory look at I Route 9 um route nine has 27 poles um Concord and edge all are the next highest number of polls I got 13 on Concord 10 on edgel and then central street is eight that that's the most in in framing him that I counted um significance that of course so um I think at least from my standpoint was chair and like again Christine we can chime in um I think I would like to do that kind of um honing in on certain areas again like we did two years ago um and just start peeling away at some of the really the the worst the worst which is to me right now is it's Route 9 by far.

Except for the guy that just took down a couple of those polls not long ago yeah yeah and I have oh and I have something about that too because yeah I I went out there saw that new poll that they put in because of that accident but we'll get to that um so yeah so Christine you have anything to chime in about the strategy or where we should like really focus so you know I know what this entails because I was like I said I was doing the utility coordinator Newton for projects we'll work on and you know the problem a lot of the removing these polls has to do with coordinating with all the different subcontracts that sit on those polls you know and I don't know I I want to see them reduced because I I just feel like everything underground period but you know I know that the double polls get installed for purposes of support correct if I'm not correct but there's a couple of things I mean so back in November and I forget when we met last I think like you said uh Novel to a while ago so in November of 25 there was a uh a new contract between uh Verizon and Eversource so Ever source now is setting all the polls in framing him and Verizon is removing them once all the transfers are complete.

So the setting of the polls are you know either like you said you know Christine that they're old and they're just you know uh at life and so you need to put another poll in so we're doing a lot of that work now is looking at polls at the end of life and if we find them we're replacing them.

They know uh a new business goes in, there's new demand for power, and the 40-foot pole won't work, you need a 50 or 55 or whatever.

So basically those are the things that are you know that to create the need for the upgrade, and and then like you said, it's then ultimately it's the coordination, you know.