(Milford)– The city of Milford has pulled the permits of two companies installing fiber optic cable in that community. Mayor Steve Anderson says Public Works Director Kent Eilers took the action after city officials received multiple complaints. Anderson says they range from workers urinating in yards and city streets to crews not cleaning up and failing to use safety procedures. But he says there were some other things that happened that finally resulted in the permits being suspended…
“One we had a power line that was hit by an individual with a shovel. That blacked out a big portion of the city causing some damage to some properties. And then the following one was a water line that got hit by one of the boring lines and actually plugged up the sanitary sewer because it broke the sanitary sewer main and ended up flooding a house. And so with those utilities getting hit and a few other things that have happened in the past it was the Public Works Director’s decision was to pull the permits, bring them before the council so we could have a discussion and try to get some stuff under control and get an understanding on what things are going to look like going forward.”
Representatives of the two companies and their subcontractors were at Monday’s City Council meeting…
“Those permits are still on hold until some of the damaged properties are, we verify that those damaged properties are taken care of and then once that’s done then those permits will be opened back up for those facilities to hopefully get done this fall and then they’ll be hopefully out of the area after that.”
Anderson says he hopes the companies and their subcontractors got the message following Monday’s meeting…
“All the council members, myself, we’ve taken a lot of heat from the public which is what we’re supposed to be doing is to help make sure that everybody is being protected and it was Kent’s idea to pull those permits because he wanted to make sure that we were watching out for the public as well. As council and the mayor we can’t take action if we don’t know about it. Kent was keeping us informed about what was going on. The public has been keeping us informed about what’s going on as well, so. Hopefully after tonight they’re understanding where we’re coming from and things will get fixed up.”
In the meantime Anderson encourages Milford residents who are still experiencing issues to contact city hall…
“If you see damage in your yard and it hasn’t been cleaned up in a couple of weeks or a month or so, make sure you call city hall. We’ll have somebody come out and look at it and then we’ll try to identify which contractor did the work and get them back there to get the stuff put back to satisfaction.”
Anderson adds that if problems persist once the permits are reinstated, that the city will once again pull them.
