Community Watchdog

Business partners and neighbors Doug Wise and Michael Sweeney worked together to get an old utility pole removed from their street in Blue Point.
Newsday photo by Gwen Young

We try to help readers who have trouble getting quality-of-life issues resolved despite multiple tries, and who often end up in a bureaucratic tangle.

But Mike Sweeney and Doug Wise of Blue Point didn't need our help to fix their neighborhood problem. Maybe their story will help you solve an issue on your own.

If you’ve been able to solve a neighborhood problem yourself, tell us how you did it. Write to Newsday’s Community Watchdog, 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville, NY 11747, or email watchdog@newsday.com with the details.

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It took Wise and Sweeney 40 days to get this damaged pole removed from their street corner.
Photo by Michael Sweeney

Accidents happen. This one was at the corner of Eatondale and Park Avenues in Blue Point a few months ago, when a car slammed into the utility pole by Michael Sweeney’s house.

A new pole was quickly installed but the splintered pole was left there.

Sweeney and his business partner, Doug Wise, who lives across the street, started a marathon of calls to get the damaged pole removed but were stymied.

Sweeney contacted us for help, but ultimately, the two-man team got the job done within 40 days.

“Persistence wore down their resistence,” Wise says.

And they used a non-hostile approach. “We were nice,” Sweeney said, “very nice.”

They’d faced frustrations early. Whenever a repair crew arrived from LIPA, Verizon or Cablevision, workers ended up leaving the broken pole. “They’d say it’s the other’s responsiblity,” Sweeney said.

When a utility pole is replaced, all three companies have to move their wires to the new pole before the old pole can be removed. The last utility company to move its wires is supposed to take away the old pole. But travel around Long Island and you’ll see plenty of forgotten old poles next to new ones.

“Basically, you have to coordinate between LIPA, Verizon, Cablevision and the towns,” Sweeney said. “They don’t talk to each other.”

The partners were polite but relentless. “You gotta be nice. You gotta be persistent - no screaming, no yelling and just don’t give up,” Sweeney said.

Recording information is essential, said Wise. “Everybody I speak to, I make sure I get their names, the correct spellings...I speak to their supervisor, find out what their job entails and what they’re responsible for,” he explained.

When crews showed up, “We made sure we met them here, and we coerced them into doing their job. Had we not been here when they came, the pole would never have been taken care of.”

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Richard Fiorentino says the utility wires in his backyard need to be more taut so they don't hang so low to the ground.
Newsday photo by Gwen Young

I have been trying to have something done about the utility wires in my back yard for many years. The lines hang very low and I think they are dangerous. I have contacted LIPA, Cablevision and Verizon and all say it’s the other’s problem. There is also a problem with a circuit breaker in my yard that blows several times a year, causing a loud explosion and loss of power to the whole neighborhood.
--Richard Fiorentino, Hauppauge

Cablevision sent out a crew after we called and they confirmed the problem wires belong to Verizon.

After we described the problem to Verizon, a manager was sent to the Fiorentino home. “We did see that it was our cable that was drooping,” spokesman John Bonomo said.

The cable would be lifted to make it taut. “Hopefully that will be to his satisfaction," Bonomo said. "He was very appreciative that we were there today.”

Anyone with similar problems should call Verizon’s general repair number at 890-6611. No area code is needed in New York.

LIPA responded to the outage problems by sending workers house-to-house to determine the cause, spokeswoman Elizabeth Flagler said.

They decided there could be too many homes on one circuit and a solution would be to put half the area customers on another circuit. “That should take care of the loss of power,” she said.

Many of you email or write to us about the kind of problems we’ve addressed in our Community Watchdog column published in Sunday's Newsday.

We try to give a phone number or email address where you can write or call if you have a similar problem (sometimes it's town-specific).

For instance, whenever we feature a problem regarding a telephone pole, we get people who write in about a problem they’re having with a pole.

If your problem involves a Verizon pole, the number is 800 483 7988. Call and get a work order number from them and then follow up a couple of weeks later if the work hasn’t been done.

It pays to make sure it’s a Verizon problem. If it’s really a LIPA problem, there’s a good chance Verizon workers won’t tell you unless you ask them when they’re there.

We try to have a variety of different issues in the column, so it's unlikely we'll do a pole complaint every week.

The large chunk of wood caught in the wires behind Joanne Cintron has been removed.

This is in reference to countless numbers of phone calls I have made to Verizon’s repair department. In November I had a large tree removed from my backyard. One of the very large, thick branches had grown around the phone wires and became was embedded in them.To cut down the tree, the people I hired had to cut around the phone lines leaving a large portion of the tree branch hanging from the phone lines. This is posing a big hazard. I'm afraid at some point it will fall down, potentially harming an innocent child playing in the backyard. I called Verizon’s repair department numerous times and have documented the repair numbers they have given me.

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The wood’s gone.

Cintron had been told by utility workers that the wires with the trapped branch belonged to Verizon. But after we called the phone company, a crew was sent to Cintron’s home and determined that the affected wires belong to Cablevision, according to Verizon spokeswoman Heather Wilner.

Someone should have told Cintron that Cablevision was responsible, but obviously, that didn’t happen and she continued to call the wrong company thinking that the work order numbers she had been given meant that the job eventually would be assigned.

Almost immediately after we called Cablevision, the problem was fixed. "We did send a crew to the residence in Lindenhurst, and we did confirm that the branch was in our wires, and we did remove the branch," Cablevison spokesman Jim Maiella said.

Residents who have problems with Cablevision wires can call the customer service number on their bill, Maiella said. Or visit cablevision.com.

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