Mailbag: Stamping mad at LCF post office; Cost too high to put power lines underground

Stamping mad at the post office

OMG, I cannot believe Robert O’Brien’s letter last week regarding our La Cañada post office. Robert, you took the words right out of my mouth! I have had the same complaints about our post office for at least the last 10 years. Their service is unbelievably inefficient, understaffed, poorly managed and untrustworthy. I cannot think of a worse public office that I have ever dealt with.

As happened to Mr. O’Brien, we have had mail delivered to us that should have gone to a different address, we know that we have had mail that has gone missing, we have had vacation holds that went unnoticed or were not stopped on the day requested, and when we have gone to the post office to retrieve our vacation mail we have spent long wait times for the post office employee just to find it. I actually went out and purchased a locked mailbox to prevent theft because I do not trust that our mail will be stopped when requested.

If the post office were a company, not only would these employees be fired, but the management would certainly be leading their company, valuing customer service and trying to provide the best product available. How come the Montrose post office has that message when the La Cañada post office does not?

I know that the USPS employees are pretty much locked into their jobs, and maybe for that reason, they are not too concerned with performance. But man, something should be done to make that change.

Ellen Sherwood

La Cañada Flintridge

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The cost of going underground

This letter is in response to your article on a proposal for underground utility lines in my neighborhood around La Cañada Boulevard and Flanders Road. In the article, it is cited that the SCE study indicated this project is “feasible.” Of course it is. Anything can be done with enough time and money. But feasible does not mean practical.

If asked, most people like the idea of undergrounding. But asked at what cost, the answers are likely to be much different. Cost is what has been left out of this discussion, even though it is quite simple to conduct a search and find many examples of undergrounding projects.

My personal analysis led me to conclude that a minimum cost to each property would be $30,000, but probably more. This would be at least an additional $333 per month for 10 years to our utility bills.

What does the SCE report say? It is very specific: $7.3 million for an assessment area of 226 properties. That comes to $32,300 per property, and that does not include the costs of the cable and telephone utilities, or the hookups, or the design and community outreach. Think $40,000 to $50,000.

Most communities that look into undergrounding decide not to pursue it due to cost.

The lead proponents of this project want to soldier on, however, and to do so they want the city to pay for the next step: an engineering assessment. That’s right, $30,000, maybe $100,000 from the city to kick-start what is a vanity project for my neighborhood.

The proponents say they “want the city to pay its share, and the utility to pay its share.” What’s wrong here is that there is only one share, the PUC/SCE Rule 20 is very clear about this: the parties benefiting from the project have to pay for it. Period.

To help justify what is only an issue of aesthetics, the proponents also claim there is a safety issue. Ten minutes of Internet search turned up no statistics on members of the public being electrocuted by overhead or downed lines.

Why should my neighborhood be asking the rest of the city to fund this? Quite frankly, I’m embarrassed.

Jack Joy

La Cañada Flintridge