Assembly topples tower rules

PALMER — Faced with an opportunity to institute new regulations on towers and other tall structures, the Mat-Su Borough assembly Tuesday decided instead to erase the rules already on the books.

“I think this amendment … would eliminate all of the regulations for tall structures that the borough has,” borough planner Alex Strawn told the assembly when assemblyman Ron Arvin proposed amending a resolution to adopt a new tall structures ordinance.

Strawn quickly added that some pockets in the borough that operate under what’s called a special use district will maintain tower rules put in place in the legislation creating those districts.

The assembly — which had two new faces at Tuesday’s meeting, the first to include new members Steve Colligan and Darcie Salmon — asked Strawn why the ordinance it was facing included so many new rules regarding things like viewshed and setbacks from property lines.

“Planning staff is either a hammer or a screwdriver. They can pick it up and either start pounding nails or start ripping the siding off the house. We do what is the will of the assembly,” Strawn said. And, at the time the ordinance was being drawn up, there was a lot of concern from residents who seemed to suddenly have a tower blocking their views. “There were 100-foot towers going up and people were saying, ‘hey, why didn’t I have a say in this?’”

But the new assembly looked much less favorably on these new rules.

“I would vote to get rid of the damn thing right now,” Colligan said. “To me it’s hideous.”

Salmon noted that while most people who testified Tuesday seemed to be asking for tweaks to the ordinance rather than beseeching the assembly to kill it outright, he said he felt they were probably making a calculation that tweaks were the more likely thing for the assembly to agree to.

“They’re probably of the impression that this is going to happen, that the assembly is going to approve some variation of this,” Salmon said, arguing with Colligan in favor of killing it and eliciting a round of applause from the audience

“Please maintain order,” mayor Larry DeVilbiss urged the crowd.

The amendment that killed the new regulations while also repealing the old ones came from Arvin.

“I want to send this back to the working group” that came up with the original ordinance, Arvin said. “My goal is to send a message to industry that they have a business-friendly assembly now and when they sit down and talk (it should be) about what they need for a business model versus what they hope they can squeeze in and try to survive.”

Colligan added that putting another set of regulations on top of the communications industry where towers are concerned is unnecessary.

“There are engineering standards, national design standards,” Colligan said. “They’re heavily engineered, they meet all sorts of other standards without us being involved at all.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.