Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Nextel permit sent back for revisions

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 10:04:45 -0400

Nextel permit sent back for revisions
By Kate Grafel

Staff Reporter WAHOO – The Saunders County Board of Supervisors Tuesday denied Nextel’s
application to build a communications tower.

The action came after three motions and two votes.

The cellular telephone company wants to put a 400-foot tower about two miles east and one
mile north of Cedar Bluffs. Glen, Alan, Gary and Betty Jane Jessen own the property.

The initial motion to approve the permit failed 3-4. Supervisor Dick Jurgens made the
motion and was joined in voting yes by Kenny Kuncl and Leroy Hanson.

Nays came from Chairwoman Doris Karloff, Steve Clark, Joan Moore and Scott Sukstorf. The
proposed tower location is in Sukstorf’s district.

After a brief recess, Karloff called for a follow-up motion. The question was still on the
table after the failed motion, she said.

Kuncl moved to approve the application with the stipulation that the tower go in the
northwest corner of the property.

He withdrew his application after Sukstorf told him the elevation there was too low.

The final motion, the one to deny the permit, also came from Kuncl. It passed 6-1.

Jurgens cast the only no vote, saying he didn’t want Planning Commission members to think
the Supervisors were going over their heads.

Attached to the motion was a recommendation that the tower go just across County Road 14
on another parcel belonging to the Jessens.

That location would put the tower at the greatest possible distance from homes in the
area, Sukstorf said.

Should Nextel pursue putting a tower in that location, the company and landowners would
have to file a new application because the land is in a different section.

Sukstorf said he had thought all along that the tower would go either in the northwest
corner of the property or across the road. When he told neighboring landowners he would
vote in favor of the permit, he meant he approved those locations, he said.

"I don’t like that somebody told me they were putting it somewhere, and then they move
it," he said after voting no on the first motion.

He said his information had come from Gary Jessen, not from Nextel.

Sukstorf said he would support putting the tower in the location that he suggested.

The proposed tower has provoked opposition from neighboring landowners, the most vocal of
which are Marlene Simanek and Kim Jirovsky.

"I don’t complain unless there’s a reason," Jirovsky said during Tuesday’s public hearing.

Simanek’s complaints included potentially decreased property values, a ruined view from
their homes, appearance of equipment shelters and weed control around guy wires.

Jirovsky said she didn’t like the agreement that Nextel would drop litigation against the
county if the board approved the most recent permit application.

Zoning Administrator George Borreson addressed the litigation agreement, which Jirovsky
said she saw as a deal made over residents’ heads.

"We could not guarantee that they would get a tower here," Borreson told her. "We could
not guarantee that they would get a tower anywhere. We said one of the conditions to get a
permit, no matter where they put it, they would have to drop the lawsuit."

The permit application had come to the county board after a May 5 recommendation to
approve by the Saunders County Planning Commission.

It follows a failed application to put the tower on Edward Hanzel’s property west of
Highway 77 and south of County Road W. That application faced similar opposition.

Nextel has sued the county and the supervisors in federal court over that denied permit.

A second application for a 370-foot tower in the same location remains on the Planning
Commission’s table pending the litigation.

http://www.wahoonews.com/WAHOONEWS/sites/WAHOONEWS/0120edition/myarticles538041.asp?P=538041&S=512&PubID=8740

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