To the community,

On July 22, 2011, I sent a letter to the publisher. This is a follow up to this situation.

At the time we were waiting for permission from the power company to remove some trees using a crane over there power lines. The contractor had told us there would be a charge for the power company to shut down power and stand by but he was not sure how much it would be.

Well, we found out that the charge would be $1,200, later reduced to $900 because the contractor told them it would not take very long.

This is a new policy by the power company and my contractor said that he had never been charged before. As you can imagine I had to think this one over as the contract to remove the trees was only $2,400. This added 50 percent to the contract.

After a while I decided to go along with this project as there was no alternative.

My contractor is Cook Tree Service; a local respected business which I have used before with great results. It looks like every time I need a job done the local utility or the city has put a road block in the way and then they are always crying about no jobs in the area.

If there is a policy that needs to be changed, this should be first one.

Well, the trees are down and it took Cook Tree Service about two hours to do the crane work.

I will complete this project despite the problems, but there has to better way.

David DeWitt, South Lake Tahoe