What does a woman have to do to get rid of a thick strand of wires dangling across the roof of her garage?
It helps to have a bundle of patience.
One of the problems we regularly hear about from readers who live in the inner city are poles and wires in unwanted places, like backyards and in proximity to garages.
To make matters worse, the wires often belong to utilities that do not provide services to homeowners who are unwilling hosts to poles strung with wiring.
Imagine if you bought an inner-city house with an ugly, wire-laden pole in your tiny backyard. Then you figured out it is owned by a utility that does not provide any services to you and it refuses your request to remove the pole.
No doubt you’d be outraged. But it happens more often than you’d think.
Shelley Kline emailed us about a bunch of heavy-duty wires that came down on the roof of her almost-new garage, on an alley behind her home on Booth Ave., after the freezing rain we had a few weeks ago.
“These tangled utility wires in the alleyway, non-Hydro unfortunately, have sagged and are now resting on the roof of my garage,” said Kline. “How do I get them off? Who do I call?
“I am neither a Rogers or Bell customer,” she said, referring to the utilities likeliest to own the wires.
We went there Tuesday and found the wires still adorning the roof of her garage. We also spotted many other loose wires dangling from the central strand of cables running between poles along the alley, as if someone had snipped them but didn’t bother to remove them.
Kline told us that a pole to which the wires are attached broke during the ice storm, causing them to sag. She said she recently persuaded Bell Canada to send out a service person, who confirmed that the wires belong to Bell.
But she said she was told that until wires belonging to another utility are moved to a new pole, the Bell wires can’t be lifted off the roof of her garage.
STATUS: Jacqueline Michelis, a spokesperson for Bell, emailed late Friday that they moved the cables earlier in the day. Problem solved.
What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca . Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.
What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca . Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.
The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
