Mat-Su’s towering problem

PALMER — A Mat-Su Borough assemblyman and the mayor are both proposing changes to the way the borough currently handles tall structures.

Last November, the assembly was faced with a new tall towers ordinance. Instead of passing it, the assembly member said they chose instead to send a message to businesses by repealing the tower rules already on the books. Since then, a flurry of tower construction has happened around the borough.

Assemblyman Warren Keogh said 40 tower permits have been applied for and issued since that action, and permits aren’t even required, meaning there are likely more out there that didn’t go through any permitting process.

Keogh’s new ordinance and mayor Larry DeVilbiss’ new resolution aren’t necessarily competitors. They could both pass and work hand-in-hand, but they have very different intents.

Keogh’s, which is set to go before the assembly Nov. 20, seeks to re-establish borough regulations on tall structures.

“It’s a bit of a hybrid. It uses much of the language from the old tall tower ordinance that the assembly did away with and it incorporates much, if not all, of the language that we considered as amendments last year,” he said.

DeVilbiss seeks to put together a task force to study the various ideas for regulating tall structures like towers.

“I want a streamlined group of people that are already fully educated that can quickly review all the past and present proposed legislation,” DeVilbiss said.

His is the first to go before the assembly. It’s on tomorrow’s agenda. DeVilbiss said he thinks that if it passes, the assembly would likely vote to delay Keogh’s ordinance in order to give time for a board to be constituted and assigned to study Keogh’s ordinance.

Keogh said that bothers him.

“I think it’s just an effort to slow things down,” he said. “There’s been a considerable public outcry. People are calling for a new tower ordinance, not a new committee.”

And, he said, he doesn’t understand the need for a committee.

“We had one of those. We had a tall-tower working group,” Keogh said. “It was a large group of people that met 18 times over a two-year period.”

The group came up with the ordinance that was rejected and started the whole saga in the first place.

DeVilbiss said that the towers committee — made up of two industry representatives and three at-large members — would be different from the working group that labored for years on a towers ordinance.

“It was so bulky before it took years to get anything done, it was a very expensive process,” DeVilbiss said.

He said he wants a smaller committee passing along small, targeted legislation for the assembly to review. He has a few things in mind he thinks need to be re-instated.

“The area of public notice is something that we have to have on the books and I want them to look at that and anything else that’s in a minimal-sized regulation that we can track these things with,” DeVilbiss said.

Towers have sprung up all over the borough since the ordinance was repealed in November 2011. A number of those — predictably enough, the ones in residential subdivisions — have generated a lot of angry letters and emails directed to the borough and, sometimes, the Frontiersman.

DeVilbiss said he’s heard those complaints as well.

“Everybody’s upset when it’s got to be where they are,” he said. “But it’s just like a road or an electric power line. They are pieces of public infrastructure that have to be somewhere. Just complicating it immensely and making it more expensive doesn’t take them away — unless everybody wants to throw their cellphones away.”

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