Metro Tracy

Every morning when Bruce Cuthbertson

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backs his car out of his driveway to head to his Bay Area job, he sees the green

doghouse-shaped cable box on his front lawn and gets disgusted. Same thing happens

when he comes home from work.

Cuthbertson and his wife, Lonetta,

just can’t understand why the city would allow a cable company to install the

knee-high green box on his property without his consent. And, Cuthbertson said,

he doesn’t even subscribe to cable.

“The city just flopped on this one,”

Cuthbertson said Wednesday outside his home. “They let the ball drop, so to

speak, and let the cable operators have their way.”

Located at the corner of Cuthbertson’s

front lawn in the 2000 block of Tahoe Circle, the green box is part of Comcast

Corp.’s upgrade of the city’s cable system. But instead of being underground

like the previous cable box, the new one is above ground to allow Comcast to

install fiber-optic digital lines.

The company has planted smaller,

dome-shaped terminals in virtually every other lawn on Cuthbertson’s side of

the street.

Alvin Bettis, who lives two doors

down from Cuthbertson, said he came home one day and found the green dome in

the middle of his yard.

“I called them, and I said, ‘Please

remove it,’ ” Bettis said.

He said the cable operator told

him installers could move the dome to another part of his lawn. He said he told

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them to get it off his lawn and put the box underground the way it used to be.

“If not, I will drop cable and tell

all my friends to drop cable,” Bettis said.

City engineer Kul Sharma estimated

that the cable company will install about 2,000 boxes and domes.

Sharma said the cable company has

easement rights to install boxes on people’s front yards. In September, the

City Council accepted a report in which ATT Broadband detailed its plans

to plant the boxes and domes on homeowners’ yards. The council instructed City

Hall staff to work with the company on ways to conceal the terminals with plants.

Comcast purchased ATT Broadband in November.

“The majority of the people are

content, but some of them are really not happy at all,” Sharma said Thursday.

“It is owned by property owners, but (the cable company has an easement.”

Susan Gonzales, a spokeswoman for

Comcast, said the installments are part of the company’s multimillion-dollar

commitment to upgrade its cable system in California. Other cities, such as

Sacramento, already have the boxes, she said.

She said the equipment is sensitive

and can’t be placed underground without disrupting cable service.

“To put this equipment underground

is not in the customer’s best interest, because underground, there are natural

elements that affect their service,” Gonzales said in a phone interview Thursday.

Cuthbertson, who has five grandchildren,

said he’s lived in his Tracy home for six years and has never created a stir

with City Hall.

But that changed when a cable installer

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came to his house one day and asked if he could set up the equipment on his

front lawn, he said.

“I said ‘For what?’ ” he said. “He

said it was for a cable upgrade. I said, ‘No, I don’t want it here, and I’m

not going to let you put it here. ‘ “

He figured that was the end of the

conversation, and the cable installer would find some other house. But cable

installers returned later during a day when Cuthbertson was at work and asked

his wife, Lonetta, who also refused.

An argument ensued and ended with

a police officer showing up, telling Lonetta that the cable company had a right

to install the box and that if she was upset, she should contact City Hall.

Cuthbertson said city officials told him the same thing, but when he was at

City Hall, other residents were also complaining about the boxes.

Cuthbertson said he’s contacted

an attorney to see if there’s a way he can have the box removed from his lawn.

He’s hoping to find other disgruntled homeowners so he can file a class-action

lawsuit against the company to have the boxes removed.

“If nothing else, (the cable company

won’t be able to do this in another city,” Cuthbertson said.

To reach Tracy Bureau Chief Andy

Samuelson, phone 833-1141 or e-mail [email protected]

PHOTO:

BOXED IN: Bruce Cuthbertson is upset about the green cable box installed in

his yard and at the city for giving the cable company a permit to install the

boxes on homeowners’ properties throughout Tracy. Cuthbertson is trying to get

a class-action lawsuit to remove the boxes. (Record photo by DOUGLAS RIDER

Source: https://t-tees.com
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