Daryl Baker

This is from our NEW neighborhood president here in Kiestwood.

Our issues:

1		After 50+ years, you REINVEST in the system, not just do BandAid approaches.

2		After 50+ years, you pay for the infrastructure and not executive salaries and bonuses and stockholder returns.

3		After 50+ years, you insure there is SYSTEM EQUITY and make sure older customers have the same good poles and wires as newer customers.

Think about it -- if it were not for the OLD customers (their BASE), there would be no NEW customers! We deserve the latest and greatest technology and as the newer areas and the suburbs!

Darryl Baker

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From:   Raymond Crawford
To:      david.neumann@dallascityhall.com
Subject:   Kiestwood Historical Homeowners Association
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:06:18 -0500

Councilman Neumann,

Today, I contacted ABC Tree Service and talked with Jennifer about the scheduled departure of their crews from our area. She told me that they would be "wrapping up" their stay on Thursday, July 17th. I called her today after driving around town north of the Trinity, thinking and photographing.

Sadly, the Kiestwood area and some adjacent neighborhoods have had their beautiful trees "disfigured" to the point of sadness and embarrassment. Over the weekend, I noticed there are literally hundreds of trees that are growing into all kinds of electrical and communication lines. These areas of town would be Uptown, Royal Lane area, Park Cities, Highland Park, Stevens Park, Kessler and Wynnewood.

To be fair, I did notice that trees had been trimmed in pockets of the Wynnewood and Kessler areas sometime in the past six to nine months. There has been some growth, but you can see where the trimming was done. But, in the Park Cities area and most areas on the "north side" of the river, the trees and wires happily coexist.

If you use the theory that the trees needed to be trimmed so as not to create a situation that would cause electrical blackouts in the future, then the entire city of Dallas needs to have these crews in town for many weeks going forward. Some trees do cause electrical shortages. It is apparent to me that Oncor is satisfied with the other trees in town growing wildly into the wires. One can assume that in these other areas of Dallas, electrical blackouts do not have a chance of happening.

My concern is that Oncor is spending revenue to do the quick, easy, and inexpensive tree work while not spending enough revenue on the "hardware" of the system in the Kiestwood area. My particular situation is that every Spring, from the house next door and for the next 12 houses going east, the power goes out. All of our neighbors for blocks stay lit. This has occurred for 30 years and is the family joke.

I'm tired of laughing.

Our particular power outages usually have nothing to do with trees but instead with transformers that are tripped. Having waited in the darkened house by the hours and then watch the line man flip the switch with a pole,(a two minute job) something tells me that it's the hardware not the trees that need attention.

Going forward, I would ask that your office, all of the other city council offices, and the mayors office talk with Oncor very soon and demand the following.

1		Oncor should do a complete revue of the city's electrical grid and present it to the city council.

2		The city should consider also hiring an outside survey of the city's electrical grid and make recommendations.

3		The next time Oncor hires out a tree trimming service to come into the city, each separate truck crew has a "qualified trained arborist" and works with each crew in order to do as little damage as possible.

No, they will not like to pay for it. But, when you consider that they operate a "no competition enterprise", it should not be difficult.

In 1955, I lived in Chicago when we had the power outage for days and 700 people died as a result of the heat. With the crazy weather we are currently living with, a repeat of the 1978 Dallas ice storm could always make a reappearance in the near future.

I would welcome the opportunity to give you and your staff a personal tour of our damaged trees.

Sincerely

Raymond Crawford, President

Kiestwood Historical Homeowners Association