Tall tower ‘open for business’ travesty

To the editor:

Your property rights are in jeopardy. Cellular telephone companies have the power to place a cell tower any place they want regardless of your wishes. All the cell company will need to do is hold a couple of public meetings under the toughest proposed regulations before the Mat-Su Borough’s Tall Tower Advisory Committee. No permit required. No appeal available.

Aaron Downing’s original plan was to grant cell companies eminent domain over your property, but he lost on that one. His modified proposal allows cell companies the same authority utilities have when they build major high-voltage electric transmission lines and high-volume gas lines. The difference is that cell towers do not have to be in a specific place whereas power and gas lines do. So why allow them this much freedom?

The need for a cell tower in your neighbor’s yard trumps your need for freedom from fear that a tower, loaded with ice, might fall on your house in a strong Matanuska or Knik wind, or your need for an unobstructed view from your window. The borough places more importance on cell towers than on your property values.

Our borough mayor and assembly’s “open for business” slogan proves to be nothing but a license for companies — gravel, coal, waste disposal, cellular, multi-family speculators, you name it — to run over our rights as citizens and property owners. In their latest fiasco, the assembly had to backtrack on its hasty decision to bar the public from commenting on large apartment developments, but only because the way they did it was illegal.

Let your assembly members know that being “open for business” does not authorize our government to abdicate its constitutional and statutory duty to protect and promote the general welfare and rights of its citizens, including our private property rights. It is OK to be open for sustainable businesses that make good neighbors. It is not OK to let special interests run over every little person who gets in the way.

Next time you vote, vote for the candidate who will represent you and your best interests. We need to dump the guys with conflicts of interest who never vote for what is in our best interests. We elected them, but they sure as heck aren’t working for us.

Sid McCausland

Butte