As a rider who does, generally, pay attention to the state of the facilities, I'll happily go all-out to defend them not spending money on the poles if it means that money can go to projects like fixing the floor at North Station so there's not a million potholes where the tiles have come up (I acknowledge that this problem is one they are actually fixing) or cleaning the tunnels so passengers aren't breathing in so much brake dust.
I'm all for the "give a damn" maintenance efforts, but, personally at least, I'm fine with leaving the poles to rust at least until they replace all the busted light bulbs in the subway and update all the old maps that lingered for way too long. I think they finally got rid of the one at Oak Grove showing a connection to the E-Branch at Forest Hills and promising that Chinatown would be made accessible later in the 1990s. Ugly but otherwise serviceable poles go way down the priority line (and if the T asked me in a survey, they wouldn't even rate a mention).