Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Double Poles topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Municipal leaders press for stronger enforcement to remove utility "double poles"; utilities warn fines could reroute resources
Summary
City and town officials told the committee that double utility poles are a persistent safety and project‑delay problem and urged statutory authority for stronger municipal enforcement to accelerate removal.
City and town officials told the committee that double utility poles — poles left standing in street rights‑of‑way after service transitions or upgrades — remain a persistent safety and project‑delay problem. They asked the legislature to give municipalities a clear enforcement mechanism to accelerate removals.
"It is a ginormous source of frustration for individuals that we just can't get to it faster," Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll said when outlining the bill's enforcement approach. Municipal speakers described sidewalks blocked for years, delayed grant closeouts and ADA compliance problems, and projects that required paying utilities for remediation yet still encountered delays.
Public works leaders gave local examples: Yarmouth reported multiple poles left for over a year that interfered with shared‑use paths and forced the town to pay utilities and still wait; Athol said coordination often stalls while multiple pole owners and attachers point at one another.
Municipal witnesses supported a statutory enforcement option that would incent faster action, while administration witnesses said the bill's timeline changes reflect negotiated stakeholder adjustments and emphasized the goal is pole removal rather than revenue generation.
Verizon, testifying remotely, urged caution about penalty‑based enforcement. The company provided a statewide figure — roughly 26,000 double poles out of about 1.3 million total poles — and said utilities remove 10,000–12,000 poles per year through coordinated scheduling. Verizon recommended improved, consistent use of the National Joint Utilities Notification (NJUN) database, more project coordination and training, and warned that punitive fines could shift utility resources away from critical transmission and broadband expansion projects.
Municipal leaders asked the committee to adopt a solution that gives towns and cities leverage to get poles removed in a reasonable timeframe while preserving the ability to coordinate complex multi‑owner removals.
