According to today’s Pasadena Star News article, city council members asked staff to incorporate additional changes into its wireless ordinance. Still unaddressed are residents’ requests for justification studies for all wireless applications, separating the definitions for wireless and cable, opportunity sites in residential areas processed in a reasonable time period (not 30 days with no public input), and limits on multiple facilities at individual opportunity sites.
Changes the city is incorporating:
Allowing members of the public to appeal installations and having those heard by the City Council;
mandating justification studies for installations on public property;
requiring companies to pay to remove equipment they are no longer using;
notifying both property owners and residents near a proposed installations to ensure that renters are informed;
adding language committing the city to have the strongest ordinance possible within the parameters of the law;
and ordering a review of the ordinance a year after its passage.
Elise
Copy of my letter as per your request
It became apparent early on to those of us involved in the effort to regulate telecommunications in Pasadena that addressing our most serious concerns before Council and the various Commissions was counter productive – if not futile. These primary concerns included: the mounting evidence of the harmful effects of radio frequency emissions on human health, the potential safety hazards of the installations, the negative effect on property values, the detrimental effect on neighborhood aesthetics, the exclusion of public input in the permitting process, and finally the sad contradiction of an officially designated “Green City” surrendering to a massive ecological assault on its neighborhoods. All these issues taken alone or collectively appear to be insufficient in the face of the perceived violation of Federal Law and the threat of law suits against the City.
(I believe the real violation in this ongoing battle is a 1st Amendment one. The fact that we as citizens have been discouraged, admonished, and at times actually prohibited from openly expressing our honest concerns in a public forum is, in my opinion, unconstitutional!)
The list of recommendations presented to Council on February 2 represented a last ditch effort to convince city officials to authorize at least some regulations and restrictions that would provide a modicum of protection for our neighborhoods. These regulations are by no means sufficient. They are mere band aids and do not adequately address the real problem.
The real issue here is one of responsible technology. The program of proliferation of wireless equipment throughout residential neighborhoods currently proposed by the telecommunications industry is environmentally criminal. We as citizens and communities have the right to demand something better.
“Green” technology is the wave of the future. We are thinking to the future when we insist on something improved, more intelligent, safer.
Nadine,
Thank you for sending your very pertinent city council talking points to Sunroom Desk. I agree absolutely that we as citizens and communities have the right to demand something better.
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