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Replacing light poles costly for city

Published 12:04am Sunday, May 27, 2012

NATCHEZ — Natchezians may start seeing fewer and fewer decorative light poles around the city.

Natchez City Engineer David Gardner said the expense to replace poles knocked over by drivers is becoming too much to maintain without an adjustment to the city budget.

Gardner said the black poles installed in stages in the last few years are made to collapse or breakaway when hit, to prevent serious injury to drivers.

Gardner said the city can fix some poles, but sometimes poles have to be replaced.

Replacing the poles, Gardner said, costs an average of approximately $3,000 to $6,000 and can be a hassle.

“We try to get accident reports and work with the driver’s insurance company, but we’re having trouble getting the insurance to pay all the expenses,” Gardner said.

Gardner said the city has claims for expenses for four or five light poles currently pending with insurance companies.

Another problem, Gardner said, is hit-and-run drivers.

“We’re doing the best we can, but we have no way of knowing who the hit-and-run drivers are, so that expense falls on the city,” he said.

The decorative light poles were originally placed on the state highways in the city limits by the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

They have replaced older, metal poles in many places.

Gardner said the placement of the poles near the road leaves little room for error for drivers.

“Cars can easily maneuver off the road just a few feet and — bam — they hit it,” he said. “Some of them are also right in the curve where big trucks have a tendency to get over a bit.”

Since there was no memorandum of understanding or discussion of who would maintain the poles between the city and MDOT, Gardner said the expense has fallen on the city.

“We had spare poles, but we have already used all those,” Gardner said.

Gardner said he believes the city will need to create a budget line item for the poles, allotting funds to replace the four to six poles that have to get replaced each fiscal year.

“We need to allocate at least $10,000 a year,” he said. “That will just be for damages to poles. In a couple of years, we’re going to have to start replacing bulbs and other parts. It’s something we need to think about.”

Gardner said he hopes the city and MDOT have a complete understanding of the cost and responsibility of maintenance on future projects before they are started.

“It’s important that the city knows what it’s getting into,” Gardner said.

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  • Anonymous

    They haven’t even finished putting the new ones up on Sergeant Prentiss drive and we can’t afford to fix/replace the ones that are damaged. What is wrong with our city? I’m just so tired of hearing….”we can’t afford speed bumps’, ‘we can’t afford to repair the streets”, …”we can’t afford ANYTHING”….Where are our tax dollars going???? Unless we get a grant for something, nothing gets done….

  • Anonymous

    This is only one symptom of the aftermath of the multiple grants the city is guilty of living off of over the past years and as touted by mayoral candidate brown for the future.  The city is left with downstream maintenance cost as we will do so with other pending projects, e.g. Bridge of Sighs, recreation complex, etc.  As rolling suggests, what is happening with the tax revenues if we can’t even cut the grass in our medians or get the trash picked up off our streets, parks and roadways in the county?  I believe the city attorney needs to earn his keep in pursuing full reimbursement from insurance companies on replacing poles when the person causing damage is known.  Where the person causing damage is not known, we can thank the gift from mayoral candidate brown’s MDOT during his tenure and add it to our budget.  Poor engineering planning occurred when these light standards were designed to be placed too close to the roadways, and I feel our city enginee.  I just hope the public is intelligent enough to require operating expense spreadsheets for the proposed rec. complex before that money gobbler gets built.

  • Anonymous

    Further, the answer to all the city’s money woes is not the new casino.  That revenue will simply be replacing the closure of the Isle of Capri after a few months of competition.

  • Anonymous

    It is a shame that the grass in the medians looks so bad.

  • Anonymous

    Once again, this forum shows some very accurate insights and observations. What has been said is absolutely true. I just don’t understand why- when the city gets all these “free” make-overs such as mentioned by the others- that there is NEVER a plan put into place regarding the upkeep. Liberty Road exchange is a prime example! ( And by the way- have you noticed how good the area looks since Gardner, Carter and others got some clean-up done? Thanks, guys!)
    Some of the city employees refer to those light poles as “car magnets”.

  • Anonymous

    And most of the casino monies goes out of Natchez anyway.

  • http://www.facebook.com/denver.mullican Denver Mullican

    “but we are having trouble getting the insurance company to pay all the expenses…the city has claims for four or five light poles pending with the insurance companies..cost is $3000-$6000 a pole”. So the city has $30,000 in claims with names of who is responsible?  If the driver’s insurance does not cover it, you go after the driver. What is the problem? Also, a few complaints to the State Insurance Commissioner

  • Anonymous

    Surely butch has a plan afterall, he was the head of mdot when we got these lights. However I don’t believe that any money will be coming here from MDOT for the length of butch’s term after the way the commissioners ran him out.

    Not getting insurance companies to pay is a sorry excuse. The state minimum is $25,000 for property damage, report these companies to the insurance commissioner, if they still don’t pay put a tax lien on the drivers. The real problem is most likely the drivers do t have insurance, start more checkpoints for insurance. Not only will you find most don’t have insurance bust a lot don’t even have a license.

  • Anonymous

    As I see it, it’s just another financial black eye Butch Brown endowed the city with. Most of his ideas of making Natchez-Adams County a welfare grabber is making the tax payers pay out big time. And some of you insist on putting him back in charge???? Go ahead and vote, but remember a vote for him is a vote to waste your tax dollars on his foolishness. Four years from now many of us can say, “We told you so”  

  • Anonymous

    We’ve become the welfare city of Mississippi. Ain’t that nice????. We really have a lot of pride in that don’t we???? After all it’s ‘FREE’ money. The excuse the stupids use is, “If we dont’t get it someone else will.” STUPID STUPID STUPID

  • Anonymous

    Too many sticky fingers in the cookie jar, it seems to me.

  • Anonymous

    Put a tax lien on the driver because their insurance company won’t pay up?  Go the commissioner?  Are you serious about these two statements?  Please.  The insurance commissioner, if I could prove it, isn’t on the side of the premium payer.  As far as the driver is concerned, if they are insured and PAY a premium for this type of coverage, the city should go directly after the insurance company.  

  • Anonymous

    IF they don’t get it from the insurance company, then they certainly won’t get it from the driver.  Who has 3-6 grand just laying around.  I am not excusing the drivers and it shouldn’t be construed that every accident with a pole is the fault of the driver, but the city should do a better job at collecting from the insurance companies and not just settle for, we don’t cover that.  Also, like drivers, can’t the city pay for underinsured or uninsured protection??? 

  • Anonymous

    Here is an idea.  Lets not buy anymore of these “High Dollar” Piece of Junk Light poles.   Go back with what lasted 30+ Years.  Concrete bases with a REAL Pole attached to them.  Mickey Mouse lights are a waste of taxpayers money.  

  • vilou09

    Two words I hear oh-so-often…. PAYMENT PLAN!!!!!

  • Anonymous

    I’m very serious about personal responsibility. If the insurance company will not pay, take it to the commissioner who as an elected official is very much so on the side of we the people. If the poles don’t get repaired/replaced, whether by an insurance company or put of the pocket of the driver, then we the city need to do everything in our power to get the money due to us.

    You believe that drivers shouldn’t be held responsible for their damage to property? Are you serious?

  • Anonymous

    Yet the latest (in a looong line) of “freebies” that cost us a fortune

  • Anonymous

    Who is at fault if the driver isn’t?  If the accident is caused by another driver forcing the impact driver into the pole, the other driver should be at fault, but likely by insurance standards, isn’t since theirs was not the car that actually hit the pole.  Thus, guilt by association.  Pretty much the same as the driver who hit someone in front them that pulled up short, as in the case of the recent multiple car/school bus accident near Lynda Lee Drive.  Guess whose insurance was tapped for that one?

  • Anonymous

    Stop reaching.  NO WHERE in my comment did I say driver should NOT be held responsible, especially in a case where they may be drunk and hit a pole or simply aren’t paying attention and hit a pole.  If their insurance won’t pay, then yes, go after the driver, but still, good luck with getting money from the average one.  I am very serious about personal responsibility as well, but if someone swerved to not hit a pedestrian who should not have been in the road and hit the pole, instead of killing someone, the city should carry insurance to cover these incidences.  It’s so easy to sit back and throw the book until of course, it’s thrown at us.

  • Anonymous

    You are trying to re-write insurance responsibility.  If you car hits it, your insurance is to pay.  Read my comment on rear ending when one car ahead pulls up short in response to your other comment on this article.

  • Anonymous

    I’m not reaching at all, you asked if I was serious about going after the drivers to pay and reporting the insurance companies to the department of insurance. When you call into question the seriousness of my beliefs in personal responsibility, you either: 1. Disagree with me, or 2. Don’t understand how debate works.

    Now after I called you out on it you dream up this story about dodging a pedestrian and hitting a pole. It don’t matter if you were dodging the Pope, you hit the pole, you fix it. If you don’t have insurance, or don’t have the cash, we garnish your wages or take it out your crazy check, I don’t care, but it’s high time the public be responsible.

  • Anonymous

    OH PLEAZE!!!!!!!!! Nothing in this rat hole would ever change if Butch Brown had not grabbed the bull by the horn and gone for the gusto… Yes, tax payers money is in short supply around these parts…. I’m totally for limited government, but in Natchez case, everything BB did was to our benefit. The Liberty Road interchange beautified a horrible eye sore of any area, the convention center and convention center hotel are a tremendous asset to our downtown area, not to mention the visitors center near the bridges…. Natchez already gives the impression of being ran down and poverty stricken…. Take away what Butch has done to better his hometown, and we would really look like a third world community…. Go ahead and keep bashing him….. I have tried to get several family members to retire here, but they don’t like the way politics/ race relations are handled, not to mention the lack of beautification/ maintenance around our city. We only shoot ourselves in the foot when we fight over improving our historic city’s appearance…. We just don’t seem to get it, do we??

  • Anonymous

    For one thing, “decorative” light poles that no one researched enough to know were expensive and fragile…

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