I don’t know, this sounds like really bad judgement. And the fact they weren’t trying to fix the problem is awful. Business interests vs. safety. Business interests win, of course. I think the city should require them to post notices on everyone’s doors when this happens, or to have a text alert system. And, they should have to get city permission to do things like this.
From Alder Mike Verveer sent to staff:
I believe you would be the best person from TE to explain why dozens of State Street area streetlights were out of service Saturday night/Sunday morning with no advance warning. It presented a very dangerous situation in my opinion. Below is a summary from a MPD sergeant’s observations last night to illustrate the scene. To put it mildly, the State Street area was packed with people at the time. I received many complaints and inquires.
When I called the 911 Center last night to ask if TE electricians had been notified they called me back to report that it was a MGE issue and nothing could be done to repair the situation until Sunday afternoon. Even worse was the response from the MGE call center that it was a “planned outage” and MGE would do nothing to provide immediate relief.
Please get to the bottom of this. I am most concerned that we apparently received no warning of this outage… be it “planned” or not. Certainly alderpersons and the MPD were not notified. The 911 Center dispatchers did not know either. I recall that MGE at least gave the City several hours notice when many downtown street lighting circuits would be out of service last August 1. Why was yesterday any different? How can we improve future communications?
Thanks,
MikeFrom MPD:
“. In short, it was an extremely busy night. There were more people out than a Badger football game day. It kind of felt like Mifflin St block party night. Lots of intoxication, fights, disturbances, CDTP, etc…It was the perfect storm: St Patty’s day on a Saturday, perfect weather, Badger basketball had a night game, and high school state tournament. The extra bodies from DSI helped patrol a lot. We took a lot of calls and I think we made 3-4 trips to jail booking people, in plus write multiple city ordinance violations.
The 600 blk University (Johnny O’s) was a mess. A few hundred people were constantly standing on the sidewalk. Roof top was open and bottles were tossed from the top. We also had a call of someone having a gun inside. We contacted suspect, but no gun.
City staff response:
Afternoon Alder Verveer, Everyone
I have discussed with Staff and can provide you the following: The work was done as part of the street reconstruction and involved MGE disconnecting high voltage power to a City vault near the intersection of Fairchild and W Washington. TE was informed in advance by MGE that they were doing this work on Saturday and that the work would be done in very short order, during daylight and not involving an overnight outage for City street lights. Apparently on Saturday when MGE proceeded to do the work they found it was more involved than they had planned. MGE made the decision to proceed and do the work and shut the power off to our SL circuit on upper State St. We were not part of MGEs decision to proceed with this, if we had we would have not recommended proceeding on a weekend night. MGE did not apparently realize the impact of City lights when they decided to proceed. When our electricians were notified, it was already Saturday evening, with power irreversibly off for the night.
We will work with MGE to make sure that in the future they contact our on-call electrician to discuss impacts in events like these.
Not a very satisfying answer, eh? And I kinda doubt much will change. Not cuz of city staff, but because of MG&E. And um, “MG&E did not apparently realize the impact of City lights when they decided to proceed”? Seriously?
Also, none of the street lights were working on State St so it was almost dark which did not help. “
