Thursday, December 31, 2009

Big Egos Make For Flawed Decisions

I've learned a bit in the last two months about politicians. City Councilors are elected to represent the taxpayers. I’ve learned that when elected, they magically become experts in whatever comes their way. Their egos swell as they become all knowing, comfortable, and confident in their every decision. We expect them to responsibly weigh the issues, and seek additional information or advice if an issue is complicated. And if they have little to no knowledge of the subject, they should defer to someone who does.

But when you become so self important that you disregard citizen input without investigating it, you become ineffective to the people who asked you to represent them.

When you give greater credence to sales pitches from developers over legitimate citizen input, you are no longer representing those who elected you.

I oppose the proposed cell tower that was granted a land use variance on East Superior Street. Prior to the vote, I sent a detailed email warning the City Council that Fish and Wildlife expects us to consider migrating birds when siting towers. This site is the probably the greatest migration path in the western Great Lakes.

Did our councilors read the email carefully? Did they contact fish and wildlife for clarification? Did they bring up migration during the meeting? Did they question the AT&T representative about whether they were following the guidelines? Unfortunately, no.

Last week, our City received a letter of warning from US Fish and Wildlife. In a nutshell FWS does not want to see a tower there. If it goes there and birds die, they will enforce the law and levy fines.

Who actually, did our Council listen to? An AT&T salesman who told them that AT&T’s objective for this site is to improve poor coverage. Did any of the Council happen to check the coverage map for this area? I did, guess what it says. GOOD COVERAGE for the entire 2.5 mile area that this tower will cover. Who is AT&T lying to, the customer or the city?

Most of the Council was convinced by the salesman that 911 calls could originate at Brighton Beach and go all the way to Bayfield. Supposedly this would cause a delay because they’d have to be rerouted. I told this to a communications engineer, he laughed. Fish and Wildlife also laughed, and wondered why they didn’t bring up Homeland Security, as this is one of the currently fashionable reasons cell companies use to justify towers. Letters of proof presented from emergency service agencies in Wisconsin are form letters that do not address this specific area. One letter says: “when calls for assistance are received from Minnesota valuable time is lost confirming the callers location and transferring the calls to St. Louis County or other appropriate dispatch center.” The letter says “Minnesota” is this proof that calls regularly originate from the proposed area? Minnesota is a big state. The second letter says “Bayfield County communications center routinely receives wireless emergency calls from the north shore of Minnesota. Our dispatchers expressed the need for Lake County to be on “speed dial” due to the frequency with which they need to relay emergency information” Lake County? This tower will service a site in St. Louis County. Is the problem with Lake County or St Louis County? If you read both letters you can clearly see that they are form letters. Both letters contain exact text in the exact same areas in the body of the letter: “… County also receives wireless 911 calls from neighboring counties in Wisconsin.” And “…is committed to work with cellular providers to increase service to our citizens. Please let me know how I may be of further assistance.” I wonder how many other Cities got these letters as justification for a tower. Did our Council even read the letters? Did they delve into this emergency call issue further? Did they ask for proof or data to back up the claim?

Nope… they swallowed it whole and voted yes.

Perhaps the Politicians should have swallowed their pride and listened to citizens who provided plenty of proof of their claims. Claims that were verified in the warning letter from the Federal Government. Nope, they were duped again by a party who stands to gain quite a bit of income, and the taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Kelly:


Very good point about most politicans. It does not seem to matter what level they are in most become num to public. They care more about special interest groups.

I don't know enough about the cell phone tower issue to comment on the specifics.

Kelly Boed said...

Thanks John, you have the fine distinction of being my first commenter! Oh boy...the cell tower, if you have any questions I have 3 months of research behind me, and a few conversations with Bob Russell from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a bigger deal than most people realize, birds are protected by law and we should be respecting that.

Unknown said...

Kelly I read the articale in the paper from us fish and wildlife department. The thing I found interesting is they don't get involved in towers this size normally but because of where this one is located they are.

That should send questions off in everyone's head.

Kelly Boed said...

John, You are absolutely right! They were willing to get involved BECAUSE this is such a drastically bad place.