WARREN — One of the key questions posed to representatives from Ohio Edison, Brightspeed and Spectrum at city council’s public utilities meeting Tuesday was what each company considered to be a reasonable amount of time to correct a two pole condition.

Justin Wooden, senior manager of engineering and construction with Brightspeed said, “If it’s hazardous, meaning it’s a danger to the community, it’s got to be within like a day or two.”

Councilman Greg Greathouse, D-3rd Ward, and chairman of the public utilities committee, said a two-pole condition occurs when a utility pole in the city is damaged and the owner of the broken pole temporarily attaches it to a new pole.

Frank Dillon, construction coordinator with Spectrum, said his company usually addresses emergency two pole conditions within the same day.

“If not, usually, roughly, about a week,” Dillon said.

With more than 300 double utility poles in Warren, some of which have been in place for several years, Wooden said part of the issue with the transfer of equipment and removal of old poles has been communication between the owner of the utility poles and all of the organizations connected to them.

“Everything tries to be electronic but doesn’t do it very well,” Wooden said. “Ohio Edison has their own system for reporting pole conditions to everybody … We’ve got all these different power companies, they all have different systems.”

For Britespeed, Wooden said the utility has changed its name about six times in the last 10 years. He said there are likely alerts regarding double utility poles sent to defunct emails which Britespeed has no way to access.

“It really is a communication problem,” Wooden said.

Ohio Edison Manager of External Affairs Troy Rhoades said there is a notification software application called Spatially-enabled Permitting and Notification System, or SPANS. He said the software is supposed to be used by all Ohio utilities.

“When the first message comes in that Ohio Edison replaced a pole, that individual comes back, does their job, enters it into the system, it goes into SPANS and in that SPANS, it’s going to identify potentially the pole and from that pole, it should alert who is that joint-use partners on that pole,” Rhoades said.

Rhoades said he is not sure if the other organizations are “proactively ensuring that people are being responsive,” to those notifications.

As the double utility pole information has to be manually logged into the reporting system, sometimes, people do not enter the information, Rhoades said.

“If we’re in a storm response kind of mode where we’re out there removing poles or replacing poles, those work orders get lost,” he said. “Sometimes, that’s the issue. There could be a two pole condition out there that everybody’s pointing to the other person that they need to repair that pole when nobody ever entered it into the system to begin with.”

Wooden said if Britespeed is aware of a two pole condition, the company will come out and handle its part of the agreement. But, if the utility is unaware of the issue, there is nothing it can do.

Warren Safety / Service Director Eddie Colbert said he plans to make arrangements for the city’s operations department to contact Ohio Edition and then Britespeed and Spectrum when there is a utility pole problem.

Wooden said now that he is aware of the 363 double utility poles, Warren can expect to see Britespeed employees “crawling like ants” across the city to address the situation.

Dillon said Spectrum has already started a program using SPANS to try to “whittle down” the double utility poles in Warren.

Previously, Lauren Siburkis, a spokesperson for FirstEnergy, told the Tribune Chronicle that whoever is the last to move their equipment over to the new pole is responsible for removing the old pole.

Dillon said Spectrum typically does not remove poles. Rhoades said any other fiber optics utility using the infrastructure typically does not remove the old poles either.

“It truly goes back to whoever the initial owner of the damaged pole is,” Rhoades said.

Wooden said in Warren, about 60% of the utility poles are owned by Ohio Edison and 40% are Britespeed.

In terms of a timeline for getting all of the 363 double utility poles in Warren fixed, Wooden said he does not know how long it will take. He said the city will see progress from Britespeed immediately.

When pressed by Greathouse for a guess regarding how long the project may take, Wooden said “90 days give or take 30.”

Wooden said Britespeed will keep the city updated on its progress regularly.

Greathouse plans to have another public utilities committee meeting on Oct. 29 to revisit the issue.