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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