The I-Team is getting the bottom of a potentially dangerous problem in a Boston neighborhood. 

Ann Marie Ford lives in Dorchester and says she’s concerned about the streetlights along Gallivan Boulevard. Many look to be in in disrepair, and she says they could pose a danger. 

Ann Marie pointed out the cracks, rust and crumbling concrete telling the I-Team, “I was kind of shocked, because we just saw the one and then when we looked up, we saw them all down the median and it’s dangerous.” 

“Someone could get killed”

Potentially dangerous because the light poles are leaning into the street. We brought in Wentworth Institute of Technology Engineering Professor James Lambrechts who explained the danger. “Someone could get killed,” Lambrechts said. 

Lambrechts says it’s clear the poles are leaning towards the highway. “As it leans more, it bends more,” Lambrechts said. “Its foundation is going to be overloaded. That’s not good.” 

Lambrechts found the poles are not just leaning, but cracking. “These are not good things for the pole to have this problem and it shouldn’t be like this,” Lambrechts said. 

Who owns the streetlights?

Gallivan Boulevard is a state DOT road. The I-Team asked for the inspection reports for the streetlights. DOT told us DCR owns the road. It does not. State records show Gallivan Boulevard was transferred to DOT in 2009. 

DOT then said Eversource owns the poles and told us it has notified the utility company about possible safety or maintenance issues. But they could not tell us when the poles were last inspected or whether the repairs or maintenance had been done. 

“You got to come out and maintain these things every once in a while,” Lambrechts said. “They all need to be inspected, evaluated and replaced as necessary.” 

Eversource has received calls about streetlights

As for Eversource, it refused to provide the I-Team with any records, but released a statement: 

“Delivering safe, reliable energy service to our customers is always our top priority, and we are constantly working to maintain and upgrade our local electric distribution system across Massachusetts. 

With respect to the streetlights on Gallivan Boulevard, our maintenance responsibilities currently include maintenance of the pole, cable and luminaire. We also inspect these streetlights annually for stray voltage, and if we record an elevated voltage reading or other issue on a Gallivan Boulevard streetlight structure, we provide those findings and locations to the commonwealth. 

Our troubleshooters – who are out in our communities 24/7 – are also constantly evaluating the condition of infrastructure, including streetlights, as part of their daily work. If our crews observe that a pole’s condition poses a safety risk to the public, we work as quickly as possible to address that risk with the appropriate repairs, including replacements when needed. It is important to note that there are different considerations for concrete streetlight poles compared to a wooden utility pole, and if a concrete streetlight pole may have a lean, or visible crack, it doesn’t necessarily pose a risk to public safety. Gallivan Boulevard is a highly traversed state roadway with motor vehicle accidents that can cause such damage. 

Our customer call center has received a handful of calls about streetlights on Gallivan Boulevard this year, and any reports made to our call center about streetlight conditions get assigned for additional inspection. The City of Boston and our state agencies also have dedicated account representatives who communicate with those entities on a daily basis, and we have not received any separate recent complaints regarding streetlights on Gallivan Boulevard from state agencies or the city. When we do receive complaints, we have a process in place to coordinate with MassDOT and the City of Boston to quickly address any potential safety or reliability issues. Any decision to make a repair or to replace a pole is prioritized solely by safety and reliability.” 

Problem light poles in Boston 

Lambrechts says it’s their responsibility to maintain the poles. “If it falls over it’s not safe,” Lambrechts said.

The risk of light poles in poor condition falling is real. In September of 2022, a woman was seriously injured when a corroded streetlight fell on the Moakley Bridge in Boston. An I-Team investigation found the city knew about the problem as far back as 2017. WBZ also uncovered a state report from months earlier showing the poles required immediate repair, but nothing was done. After the incident the city removed nearly two dozen dangerous poles.

As for the streetlights on Gallivan Boulevard, Lambrechts says maybe there is a protocol to change these out, but if not, he says he would not drive on the roadway in a storm. 

Just weeks ago, DOT started a new program requiring inspections and the keeping of records for structures along their roadways, regardless of who owns them.

“I’m coming to Boston, I’m bringing hell with me,” Homan said at a political conference in February.

In early March, on the night before Mayor Michelle Wu was due in Washington, D.C., to testify before Congress about the city’s immigration policies, a group of activists had an answer for Homan.

“You can’t bring hell to Boston,” the artists projected in vintage typeface on the brick facade of the Old State House. “It’s been waiting for you since 1770.” Photographic evidence of the temporary installation quickly made the internet rounds.

Not by happenstance, that day was the anniversary of the skirmish that came to be known as the Boston Massacre, when the colonists’ disagreements with the British Parliament and King George III’s occupying troops boiled over into deadly violence. That kind of link to this city’s revolutionary past is what drives the folks behind Silence Dogood, the small collective that has staged about a dozen acts of protest with stealthy nighttime projections in and around Boston in recent weeks.

The group borrowed the name from the Boston native Benjamin Franklin, who used it as an alias early in his illustrious life. At 16, while apprenticing at his older brother’s print shop, Franklin adopted the pen name after James Franklin declined to print his young sibling’s letters in his weekly newspaper, the New-England Courant.

Benjamin Franklin imagined his alter ego to be a middle-aged widow, a defender of “the Rights and Liberties of my Country” and “a mortal Enemy to arbitrary Government & unlimited Power.”

Silence is “a bit of a busybody,” explained Diane Dwyer, who has become the default spokesperson for the Silence Dogood project.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Dwyer sat in a shared artist space on the second floor of an old brick building in the Fort Point district. Scale models covered most flat surfaces; artists’ renderings were pinned up across much of the available wall space.

Dwyer, who grew up in Maryland, moved to Boston a few years ago, after earning a master’s degree in narrative environments from the University of the Arts London. She has a background in theater, “and I’m a huge history nerd,” she said.

She was recently named a grant recipient of the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture’s Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston initiative, a public art program that solicits ideas designed to “spark conversations about public memory, monuments, and collective history.” Dwyer’s proposal, called On This Site…, will reimagine Boston’s 400 or so historic markers to be more inclusive.

“We’re inviting people to write their own plaques,” Dwyer said.

While she’s currently compiling a database of Boston’s existing markers — and noting the overwhelming prevalence of white men (there are, she says, as many references to Paul Revere as all women combined, and more than all Black people) — she still gets excited about making connections to the country’s founding fathers.

Silence Dogood’s projections have featured statements attributed to George Washington (“The cause of Boston now is and always will be the cause of America,” projected in the water at the base of the Boston Tea Party Museum), Joseph Warren (“May our land be a land of liberty,” at the Bunker Hill Monument, on the site where Warren was killed), and, yes, the aforementioned silversmith Revere (“One if by land, two if by D.C.,” projected on the Old North Church, though that’s not a direct quote).

The Rev. Dr. Matthew Cadwell, the vicar at Old North Church, didn’t know about those projections until he saw them on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Silence Dogood’s warning came during a busy week for the church, which doubles as an active Episcopal mission and a historical site. It was the 250th anniversary of Revere’s famous ride.

One of the projections borrowed from the last stanza of Longfellow’s mythmaking poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride”: “In the hour of darkness and peril and need…” The message implicating “D.C.” was “a little edgier,” the vicar acknowledged.

“In the main, people were very enthusiastic about it,” Cadwell said over the phone. “It was neat. It was a powerful capstone on that night of historic remembrance.”

To stage the Silence Dogood protests, Dwyer borrows state-of-the-art projection equipment — and sometimes enlists production help — from the small circle of Boston creatives who specialize in outdoor art. At one “activation,” an unexpected hailstorm sent volunteers scrambling to cover the expensive projector with their jackets.

In recent years, projection-mapping artists have fine-tuned the art of “temporary graffiti.” Some say the practice of projection mapping as a form of protest took off during the Occupy demonstrations of 2011. During the first Trump administration, multimedia artist Robin Bell made world headlines for projecting “PAY TRUMP BRIBES HERE” over the entrance to Trump International Hotel.

Another group, the Illuminator, has projected hundreds of simple messages around New York City: “Protest Trans Youth,” “Bans Off Our Bodies,” “Ceasefire Now.” In San Francisco, an activist trolled Elon Musk on the Twitter building after the billionaire acquired the social media company (now X).

In Boston during the racial reckoning of 2020, some of the city’s projectionists partnered with street artist Cedric Douglas after the removal of a Christopher Columbus statue in the North End. They created a temporary memorial to notable Bostonians of color — Mel King, Elma Lewis, the late rapper Keith “Guru” Elam — on the vacated plinth.

While redefining the nature of public protest, these artists have also been grappling with the unresolved debate about the legality of their protests. Some legal experts cite property rights and laws governing trespassing. Others argue that the right to free speech covers projections just as it does signs and banners.

Dwyer and her colleagues talk often about their First Amendment right to protest and the potential collateral damage to the other work they do, for advertisers, art festivals, and more. Dwyer, who heads her own venture, Stories & Spaces, has worked with clients from the Smithsonian Institute and the NFL to Universal Orlando’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

For her, the commitment to activist work came into sharp focus on a Friday in May, when she watched the live feed of a joint Town Hall meeting hosted by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell. The event featured four other state attorneys general from across New England.

“They were speaking to the coordinated resistance without hemming and hawing,” Dwyer recalled. After another period of despair, she said — “Who can remember the headline of the day?” — the Town Hall discussion fortified her.

It also made her feel, for the first time, like she’d become a bona fide Bostonian.

You just hope, she said, “that we’re not screaming into the void.”

James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.

There is no timeline for Jayson Tatum to return from his ruptured Achilles, and the Boston Celtics don’t anticipate having one anytime soon. At least the news is better on Boston’s other injured star, Jaylen Brown.

Celtics president of basketball ops. Brad Stevens held court with reporters late Wednesday night after taking Spanish wing Hugo Gonzalez with the No. 28 pick in the NBA Draft, but also gave a quick update on the health and well-being of Boston’s top two players.

Stevens said both Tatum and Brown have been training at the Auerbach Center on a daily basis and are fully committed to their rehabs.

“It’s usually the time of the year when I don’t see those guys a lot,” said Stevens. “They usually go and kind of rest, and get away, but they’ve both prioritized getting better and rehabbing, and after a long season, I appreciate that about them.”

No timeline for Jayson Tatum

Tatum ruptures his Achilles in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Knicks, but was able to undergo surgery the very next day. That is expected to expedite his return, though he’ll likely miss the entire 2025-26 season.

And the Celtics are not going to rush the 27-year-old back. Stevens was asked if there is a timeline for Tatum’s return, and said not to expect one for a while.

“We don’t and we won’t. We won’t put a projected timeline on him for a long, long time,” said Stevens. “As we look at it, there’s no reason to. It’s baby steps right now.”

Stevens said that Tatum has “progressed great” so far, but knows it’s a long road ahead for the six-time NBA All-Star.

“I don’t know what that means with regard to projected timelines,” he said. “That’ll be in consultation with him and [team trainers] Nick [Sang] and Phil Coles and everybody else to make sure that when he hits the court, he is fully ready and fully healthy. That will be the priority.”

Jaylen Brown expected back before training camp

Stevens gave a soft timeline for Brown, who had to undergo a procedure for a partially torn meniscus. Brown has already returned to limited on-court activities, and the Celtics are expecting him to be ready to go “well ahead” of training camp. 

“He’s doing great,” Stevens said of Brown. “His rehab looks good. He was actually on the court the other day doing some ball handling and doing some light work around the rim. Nothing big movement-wise yet.”

Priorities for rest of Celtics offseason

While the moves aren’t yet official, the Celtics are reportedly trading away veterans Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, moves that have put the team get under the vaunted second apron. Stevens couldn’t discuss the trades on Wednesday, but said the team has been focused on regaining flexibility and maximizing their assets and trade returns.

Now that the Celtics are out of the second apron and have some wiggle room to sign players, Stevens is making his priority for the rest of the offseason clear. It includes bringing back a pair of fan favorites to the Boston frontcourt in veteran Al Horford and reserve big man Luke Kornet.

“As you look at the rest of the team and what we’re trying to do, there’s no question our priorities would be to bring Al and Luke back. Those guys are huge parts of this organization,” said Stevens.

Both are free agents, and would likely have to take a team-friendly deal to return to Boston.

“They’re going to have, I’m sure, plenty of options all over the place, and that’s well deserved,” said Stevens. “But that would be a priority. At the same time, I don’t want to put pressure on them. It would be their call, ultimately, but we would love to have those guys back.”

The Celtics are scheduled to make the second pick in Thursday night’s second round of the NBA Draft — No. 32 overall — and a pair of promising big men remain on the board in Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud and Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner.