In the final minutes of last night’s 3 ½ hour Assembly committee meeting, one member tried to kill the proposed cell phone tower ordinance through a legal technicality, and the city clerk used duct tape and cardboard to resolve another technicality.
City officials have been working on a comprehensive cell phone tower plan on and off since about 2009. Residents have taken issue with the towers’ impact on their views, property values and light pollution from aviation warning lights.
After about an hour of discussion on the topic last night it seemed that the Assembly would move the ordinance for a final vote next week. In July, the ordinance was up for a final vote, but critical public testimony pushed it back to committee. Some residents were unhappy the ordinance wouldn’t apply to existing towers, and one industry representative warned some parts of the ordinance were too broad.
The Assembly committee voted 5-3 to advance the ordinance last night. Assemblymembers Randy Wanamaker, Jerry Nankervis and Carlton Smith voted against moving the ordinance. Assemblywoman Kate Troll was absent. After the vote, Wanamaker attempted to have the whole ordinance thrown out on a technicality.
“We violated the public notice rule by going past 9 o’clock,” Wanamaker said. “And I believe that this ordinance deserves to be left dead and the staff should go back and do this the right way.”
City Clerk Laurie Sica noted that the meeting agenda only had a start time listed. Wanamaker responded that the meeting was scheduled online from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sica agreed that was true and after the meeting explained that the city website has to have an end time because the automated meeting schedule feed on the site requires it.
But was the meeting actually illegal because it went too late? Sica said to be sure she’d need to check that the doors hadn’t been programmed to automatically lock at 9 p.m.–they had.
Assemblywoman Mary Becker, who was running the meeting, asked city attorney Amy Mead for her opinion.
“If we barred people from entering the meeting, if someone wanted to come into the meeting, then that would be a violation of the Open Meetings Act. I don’t know if that was the case,” Mead said.
Becker, who voted to advance the ordinance, was quick to accept that the vote was improper and the ordinance invalid, but Mayor Merrill Sanford didn’t agree. Mead clarified her opinion.
“This doesn’t kill the ordinance,” Mead said. “The only thing it would do is to void what the last motion was which means the discussion continues to your next regularly scheduled meeting which would be on Monday.”
So now the ordinance is scheduled to be heard again next week.
Assembly members had discussed in a previous meeting the possibility of requiring existing towers to meet the new regulations– that requirement is not in the current version of the ordinance.
Before Assembly members could leave for the night, clerk Sica had to prop open the locked door with duct tape and a piece of cardboard. With the locked door now open and the meeting accessible to the public, Becker adjourned.
“Is it acceptable that we adjourn this wonderful meeting that has been very enlightening? We are adjourned.”
Jeremy Hsieh contributed to this report.