Mayor breaks tie with vote to create tower board

PALMER — On a tie vote decided by the mayor, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly decided Tuesday to move ahead with plans for an advisory board for tall towers.

The five-member board was the brainchild of borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss. Assemblyman Warren Keogh, who has a pending towers ordinance of his own, was among those who voted against creating the board.

“I’m going to oppose this resolution,” Keogh said. “We’ve done that already. We had a committee that included various members of the public, the telecommunications industry and others. They met 18 times over two years.”

Indeed, when that board came back to the assembly with a list of recommendations for how to change the rules for towers, the assembly rejected those changes and, instead, in November 2011 repealed all of the existing rules for tall structures.

“Since then, we’ve had no ordinance and there has been an undetermined number of towers erected in the borough,” Keogh said.

He said he tried to come up with an estimate, but the only number he could get was that 40 applications had been filed for tower permits. But since permits aren’t required, he said he doubts that’s the full accounting. Still, he worries that a new board would only delay putting an ordinance in place.

“To do this is not only duplicative, it’s a waste of time,” he said.

DeVilbiss, who, in his role as mayor, is tasked with keeping meetings on track, actually cut Keogh short as he was laying out the detailed history of how the assembly had arrived where it did Tuesday.

“I don’t think we need to rehearse all the tower details at this point,” he said before letting Keogh continue.

In a subsequent podcast on the borough’s website, DeVilbiss seemed pleased that the tower board had been approved and contrasted the five-member board to the prior board the borough disbanded.

“This is a streamlined five-member board that will be three residents and two industry people,” DeVilbiss said. “It’s not going to take the time that they have in the past to get legislation to us.”

DeVilbiss said that he prefers small, targeted regulations to big, overarching regulations like the rejected tower ordinance.

He has said that he wants to see the towers board send to the assembly proposed rules that would require notice to nearby homeowners and that would involve the public in the tower process.

DeVilbiss has said he thinks that the assembly, when Keogh’s ordinance arrives Nov. 20, will likely choose to delay it so that a tower board can be established and given time to review Keogh’s proposal, which has already received the green light from the borough planning commission.

DeVilbiss also has said previously that he sees towers as akin to roads — everybody wants them, except when it comes time to build them and they end up close to where they live.

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

Should the borough form a five-member board to advise the assembly on changes to rules for tall towers?

• Steve Colligan: YES

• Jim Colver: NO

• Vern Halter: NO

• Warren Keogh: NO

• Darcie Salmon: YES

• Noel Woods: YES

• Larry DeVilbiss: YES