Stripping poles catches city with pants down

Ron Seymour 2010-11-03 Kelowna Daily Courier:
Dozens of power poles will remain in place along Lakeshore Road once the current re-construction project is completed.  Previous plans to remove the poles and bury the wires underground, creating a more pleasing streetscape, have been shelved because of cost. "I‘m very disappointed we‘ve had to postpone this," Mayor Sharon Shepherd said Tuesday. "The power lines are old and ugly." That was a sentiment shared by Sheila MacLeod, a 64-year-old waiting for a bus on Lakeshore, when told the power lines were not coming down after all as part of the road‘s $3 million rebuilding and construction of a new multi-use pathway. "Really? That‘s terrible. They‘re very unsightly," MacLeod said. "I went to the (city-sponsored) open house on this project, and I‘m sure they had drawings showing no power poles." The cost for removal of the poles and burial of the lines was factored into the City of Kelowna‘s 2010 budget last December, at an anticipated expense of $820,000.  However, after more detailed analysis of the scope of the necessary work, projected costs had risen above expectations. There was also some concern that the time involved in burying the powerlines might extend the overall project‘s completion date by several months.  Under the terms of the federal funding received for the Lakeshore Road rebuilding, the project has to be finished no later than March 31, 2011.

With the powerlines remaining, some alterations had to be made to plans for the 3.6-metre wide multi-use pathway. Most poles are to the side of the path, but a few will be near the middle of it.  "They‘ve had to sort of work the path around the poles in places," Shepherd said. "That was hard to accept for me, but you have to be realistic about these things."  It‘s possible the power lines could be taken down, and the wires buried on the east side of Lakeshore in a few years, possibly when reconstruction of the bridge over Mission Creek takes place, Shepherd said. Given how the city fielded so many complaints from people about this summer‘s unprecedented roadworks project, Shepherd suggested there‘s no rush for that project to get underway."We‘re hoping to give people some rest from all the traffic (disruption)," she said.