Cell tower causes fracas in Palmer area subdivision

PALMER — In what is likely the first big test of what it means to live in a borough free of regulations on tall towers, a subdivision near Mat-Su College is up in arms over a cellphone tower installed on Duchess Drive.

Brenda Lampton, who lives immediately next door to a tower Verizon Wireless put up, said its installation surprised her. For three weeks or so, she said, workers put in a pad, laying the groundwork.

“I saw activity over there, but we just thought it was going to be a home,” Lampton said, standing in her front yard Thursday. “I went to work and then I came home and it was there.”

On Tuesday, Lampton and her father testified before the Mat-Su Borough Assembly.

“If your neighbor wants to do something that will adversely affect your property you usually have some kind of recourse,” her father, Bill Slater, testified.

But that is no longer the case. Assemblyman Warren Keogh addressed Slater to explain why.

“This borough had at one time an ordinance regulating the construction and sitting of tall towers. November of last year we evaporated that,” he said.

Prior to the rollback of borough regulations, Verizon announced plans to enter the Alaska cellphone market. In March, Matanuska Telephone Association announced a partnership with Verizon to roll out a 4G data network in the Valley.

Lampton and her husband, Doug Lampton, said they didn’t even receive notice a tower was going in. They say they’re the only resident homeowners in their neighborhood; their immediate neighbors are renters.

At the time the tower ordinance was repealed, the man who proposed the repeal, Ron Arvin, seemed to indicate that the complete lack of rules for towers was to be temporary.

“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,” Arvin said at the time.

On Tuesday, Keogh said he was working on some kind of reinstatement of tower rules.

“Though it doesn’t do your daughter any good,” he told Slater, “I’d just like to make you aware that I will be introducing legislation here sometime soon to reinstitute some sort of tall tower ordinance so that local government will have some sort of regulatory authority.”

At the very least, Keogh said, he wants to get a provision in the law that tower installers have to give notice to nearby homeowners.

“I hope that we reinstitute something that works for this assembly and prevents the kind of problems and issues that your daughter has had,” Keogh said.

“It’s good to know that there is somebody on the side of the little people here in this Valley,” Slater replied.

But Assemblyman Steve Colligan said he doubted any new regulations would look much like the old ones. He called for a tower commission made up of three industry representatives and two members of the public to be established to come up with new rules.

“I would like to affirm that there was never a direct intention to subvert the public process only to enable industry to build out their networks in what had become a completely stifling, commerce-halting bureaucracy,” Colligan said.

He pointed out that most of the tower opponents included cellphone numbers in their contact information and that lots of Alaskans no longer maintain a landline phone.

“These services require infrastructure,” Colligan said.

That everyone wants to use the services, but no one wants to live next to that infrastructure, he seemed to imply, is a bit hypocritical.

“When push comes to shove, it’s just ‘not in my backyard,’” Colligan said.

But Keogh pointed out that the whole tower ordinance discussion began with an idea to add to the codes and strengthen them, but ended with a repeal of what was already on the books.

“We tossed the baby out with the bathwater last time,” Keogh said. “The result of having no legislation was, from my perspective, entirely predictable.“

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