10-23-00 Public Works & Property Vacation & Utilities & Residential Neighborhoods

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Joint Meeting of the Public Works &Property Vacation Committee, Utilities Committee & Residential Neighborhood Committee October 23, 2000 Page 2 * October 4th: FD Dispatch Center report to AEP of live wires down across from the Mayor's house creating a reverse feed-AEP response was 1 1/2 hours later. In both instances,AEP stated that they did not know when they would be able to respond. Council Member Kirsits urged AEP to address these growing public safety issues resulting from the lack of AEP timely responses. Council Member Aranowski noted that the Keller Park area may have an entire grid system out which has raised many public safety concerns. Mr. Coffee stated that for the past 1-2 weeks AEP has been implementing solutions to these concerns. He stated that he met with the Mayor in late July to discuss these many of these items. He noted that there are two (2) kinds of street light designs: 1: individual photo control; and 2: single control over 15-30 lights. The majority of the City's system is under a single control. It was established at the meeting with the Mayor that a 2-3 day response time would be implemented with a 24-hour response being preferable. Mr. Coffee stated that the task team has determined that bulb outages make up 56% of the problems. Other items discussed in July included dedicating one (1) AEP employee full-time to South Bend service needs; and identifying repeat bulb outages which would be tracked and causes identified. Mr. Coffee noted that there were 190 outages as of October 9, 2000 which will be worked down to zero. He noted that within 1-2 weeks AEP should be down to one (1) person handling the outages since they now are using a second employee on overtime to address the current outages. He noted that some of the problems may be underground and that they may desire to partner with the City to address problem areas under sidewalks,etc. Dr. Varner suggested: 1. AEP designate a local number instead of using the call center; 2. Replacing all burned out bulbs immediately;and 3. That AEP should put in writing to the Common Council their commitments. He noted that many of the street light outages in the Fifth District have been out for 3-4 months which is totally unacceptable. Mr. Coffee stated that meeting the expectations of the City will be the goal of AEP and that they will see that there is action to their commitment. Council President Pfeifer suggested that the AEP representatives return to the Council at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, November 27th. She further requested a breakdown of street light outages listing those which are bulbs only and those which are underground problems. Council Member King thanked the AEP representatives for their input and for coming to the joint Committee meeting. He noted that we must determine what would be an acceptable average downtime in light of the reasonable expectations of the public for this service;