The Scary White Dot

Is a white dot really that scary? Well, when it is painted on your lawn, it is.

Rewind a week and picture this. I came home from a business trip in New York to find the following chalk markings on the sidewalk right outside my house. “LOC” must stand for “location”, and “4’” probably means 4 feet or 40 feet. “R230”? Who knows.

About 50 yards up the street I saw a new telephone pole lying on the sidewalk. And a big ominous white dot was spray painted on my lawn (photo at beginning of this post). It looked like I was toast: a telephone pole or other utility was about to be installed on my lawn, obstructing my view of Lake Washington and Madison Park. Ahhhh!!!

Telephone poll up the street

The View in Question

After I stopped panicking, I sprung into action, but where to begin? Was it the cable company, the phone company (and if so, which one?), the street sign people, or some other utility that I hadn’t even considered? I called Qwest, Charter, and a few others — an hour wasted. Frustrated, I called the Seattle Mayor’s office. To my surprise, a very helpful operator put me in touch with an even more helpful troubleshooter. She gave me the phone number for Seattle City Light’s maintenance group. They gave me the phone number for the person responsible for construction in my area, who then gave me the phone number for the person who “runs work crews” in my area. Finally, I ended up on the phone with a “pole engineer” (no joke — that’s what he’s called) who apparently is one of two pole engineers in my area. He gave me the number for the other guy and, after 17 calls from beginning to end, I was on the phone with the right guy. He called me back this morning at 7am and to my shock, he said he’d come out to visit me in 15 minutes.

Sure enough, 15 minutes later, he drove up in his City of Seattle Prius with a co-worker. He happily told me that the markings on my curb weren’t theirs. Indeed, no new telephone pole was going to be installed in front of my house. He wasn’t sure what the markings were for, but he seemed pretty sure that it wasn’t indicative of a 40 foot pole about to be erected outside my kitchen window.

It’s not everyday that you have an interaction with city government that has a happy ending, so I was pleasantly surprised when it happened to me. I also learned that apparently you can pay Seattle $5,000 to have a telephone pole buried if it’s bugging you, or $50,000 if it’s a telephone pole with certain types of complicated wiring on it. Just in case you were wondering.

And it all started with a scary white dot.