CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A leaning utility pole had some residents worried for their safety and the safety of children who walk to school.
Bishop Police Chief Edward Day wasted no time contacting Frontier Communications after 3NEWS brought the concern to the front steps of his department. He says that residents have resources they rely on.
You could say Celmente Vela was leaning on hard times after a utility pole on the intersection of West Third Street and Avenue E can be seen inching closer to the road.
"The only thing that is holding it is that wire," the concerned resident said.
Vela said what made matters worse was that it could potentially be dangerous for children.
"You can see the kids walking by," Vela said. " It's an elementary school, I actually went to the elementary school myself."
3NEWS took the concerns to Chief Day on Monday. He then tracked down the owner of the pole, Frontier Communications.
Two days later, and the pole was replaced and secured.
"It is a telephone and cable pole and not an electric pole, so that kind of eased our concerns as far as public safety goes," Day said.
The police chief said that when it comes to situations like these, things can get a bit technical.
"At the end of the day, there's really nothing the city can do because that property belongs to the utility company, so we can't even put stabilization braces, nothing like that," he said.
When it comes to spotting problems in the community, day said that solutions could be a simple text away.
"In Bishop we do have a service called "Text My Gov," and they can send pictures in and it'll actually be routed to the appropriate department," he said.
3NEWS caught up with Vela after he saw the new status of the pole, all in all, you could say he has no complaints.
"It makes me so happy beacause I was worried about those kiddos," he said.
As part of our reporting we reached out to AEP, Spectrum and Frontier to try to track down the owner of the utility pole. AEP and Spectrum responded saying it wasn't theirs.
Frontier never responded, but they did fix the pole after the sheriff contacted them.
This story was brought to our attention from a tip left to our TELL3 line. If you have a story tip like this one make sure to tell us at tell3@kiiitv.com
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