>Proposal for a Moratorium on Wireless Telecommunication Facility Development Pending Creation of a Special Committee
Dear Neighbor,
In the Village of Ridgewood and immediately adjacent to it, on the Ho-Ho-Kus border, there are presently proposals for the construction of three cellular towers (“wireless telecommunications facilities”) within approximately one mile of each other near North Maple Avenue between Glen Avenue and Sheridan; these are supported by T-Mobile, Verizon and our own Village. These three current tower proposals exclude the existing monopole tower by the Shell Station off of Route 17, and a wireless telecommunications facility already approved and operating in the business center of Ridgewood, both of which currently already support numerous telecommunications carriers.
Further, there are rumors that one to two wireless telecommunications facilities are currently being considered for construction on the west side of Ridgewood to address coverage gaps. It also appears that during the March 2, 2011 Village Council Meeting, Village Manager Dr. Gabbart stated he is currently considering several other Village properties for the installation of additional cell towers.
Please note that if they are located on municipal property, or if the Village chooses to exercise its right under eminent domain law to claim a resident’s property for municipal use, the Village will be exempt from the zoning and planning board approval processes. This will leave them free to construct cell towers immediately after bidding them without proper notice to residents (for example, we received only hours of actual notice before the bids officially were approved by the Village Council on July 6, 2011 for the Fire Station Headquarters lot). Further, it creates a circumstance that deprives all residents the right and opportunity to have input into matters of individual and community concern, such as the aesthetics, health and safety, necessity, redundancy of coverage and environmental impact of such facilities.
Several years ago, a cell tower in Ho-Ho-Kus was denied zoning board approval on some of these same bases, and their zoning denial was upheld by the Third Circuit appellate court# when several carriers challenged them. However, if the Village exempts itself from its own zoning requirements applicable to every other property owner in its jurisdiction, these considerations will never even come up for public review and comment – such as with zoning and planning board meetings – as the project will automatically go straight to construction/permitting after the lowest qualified bidder is selected by the Village Council. In the case of the Fire Station Headquarters site, the bid proposal was approved by Village Council and released for bid during the 4th of July holiday week, and it requires that a lease must be signed within 30 days of July 27, 2011. This shows that that the Village can get a cell tower bid, with little effective notice to residents, leased and ready to build in about 60 days – without any mechanism for a resident to impede it. This can happen to anyone in this Village.
Clearly, this is an issue that affects us all as residents and taxpayers.
Our voices should be clearly and fairly represented in such monumental decisions, the consequences for which we pay through our tax dollars and which directly and profoundly impact us for decades into the future, if not longer. For every tower that is constructed in this Village, not only do we have to pay through our taxes for the cost of defending the litigation that inevitably comes with it, we also pay for the Village personnel, legal and expert fees attendant to it. Further, we suffer collectively due to the dramatic drop in property values for those homes within sight-line of the tower. This reduction of property values will correlatively lower the tax assessment values collectable by the Village. Moreover, the adverse impact upon our Village property values as a whole will be compounded by the fact that potential home buyers would find it highly undesirable to live in a municipality that would deny them any say in what happens to their property, and that could put up a cell tower in their backyard without so much as the opportunity of notice or power to stop it.
The depreciated property values for each neighborhood within sight-line of one of these facilities will diminish the overall amount of tax revenue that can be collected from those properties, which are used to support all Village activities and services we rely upon.
For instance, should the property values be worth half of what they would have been worth but for the tower, and that number is multiplied by the number of properties affected for each tower, it is highly unlikely that Ridgewood could generate enough revenue from the desired $30,000 annual lease income from a municipal tower to make up for the shortfall. This is not even including the costs attendant to litigation that will draw from our Village coffers. Please note that the municipal tower currently out for bid at the Fire Station Headquarters is 140 feet high, which as a point of reference is about 10 feet shorter than the height of the Statue of Liberty, from toe to torch. As we all know, we can see the actual Statute of Liberty from Heights Road; it is clear the adverse visual impact will leave few unaffected in Ridgewood.
During the July 13, 2011 Village Council meeting, we will propose a moratorium on all wireless telecommunications facility application approvals, and the rescission of all wireless telecommunications public construction contract bid proposal requests until such time as the Village Council can create a special committee to look at all of these essential factors.
This committee should be comprised of not only Village employees and current board/council members, but also representatives/delegates from various neighborhoods within the Village. Such factors the committee should consider are: availability of sites, the Master Plan, redundancy of coverage, historical impact, environmental impact, floodplains/flood zones, impact upon traffic and parking, aesthetic impact upon property values, health and safety concerns (i.e., any new findings in light of the World Health Organization report about the effects of radiation on human health, and the potential injury to person and property due to structural integrity of the facilities), the range of structural design options and alternative site locations (i.e., rooftop installations, stealth options, utility pole single antenna repeaters – which are small antennae that can amplify signals in place of more towers), any technological advances that may render cell towers obsolete in the future, and the cost-benefit analysis of wireless telecommunications facilities – per proposed site.
The purpose of this proposal is to ensure that decisions and actions regarding the development of wireless telecommunications facilities in Ridgewood will be transparent and serve the interest of the Village as a whole. The actual benefit, in light of the mitigating costs articulated above, of the currently proposed municipal tower to Ridgewood residents is something that is unclear from any of the public information that has been made available.
This proposal and signed petitions from Ridgewood residents will be submitted for consideration at the July 13, 2011 Village Council meeting, along with a brief statement requesting this become an agenda item for the following week’s meeting. In the interim, we have been, and will continue to be circulating petitions to all interested persons. Further, we are looking for resident support to attend that meeting. Please email [email protected] if you wish to support these efforts.
Respectfully submitted for your consideration,
Gina M. Damasco
