Subject: [NEXTEL-1] When an Antenna’s a Shaft- Secrete Meetings, Lies, Back Door Politics and Twelve 500 watt Antennas On The Oaks Theatre.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 06:25:15 -0400

When an Antenna’s a Shaft- Secrete Meetings, Lies, Back Door Politics and Twelve
500 watt Antennas On The Oaks Theatre.

 By CONNIE and KEVIN SUTTON

Dear Mayor Bates and Council,

We have been disappointed to learn that yet another neighborhood has become
completely disillusioned with city staff and Berkeley politics around this
senseless drive to install more transmitting antennas in residential
neighborhoods. Virtually the same thing happened to our neighborhood when we
fought Nextel’s attempts to install an array of twelve 500 watt antennae on the
Oaks Theater.

We were told many times by city staff and our own Councilmembers that neither we
nor Nextel could lobby them in any way while the appeal was pending, in order not
to prejudice them. Then, at the hearing, one of Nextel’s lawyers grandly thanked
the Council for meetings he had had with them in the previous weeks. We were
amazed to learn that Councilmembers had been secretly meeting with Nextel staff at
the same time they were instructing us that they would not even talk to us, the
citizens of Berkeley. We subsequently learned that Nextel had also hired another
attorney who lives in the Berkeley hills (and has long been active in the old BCA
politics and current campaigns) to lobby the mayor and council.

We learned that Nextel had very cleverly used their corporate lawyer to lobby the
more moderate members of the council, and at the same time used this local “BCA”
lawyer to lobby the more radical members of the council! All this at the same time
that Berkeley citizens were instructed not to even talk to anyone on the Council!
You can imagine how disgusted our neighborhood group was when we learned this.

We also experienced the inexplicable bias that city’s planning staff and attorneys
have against Berkeley’s citizens. Staff would not accept a single issue that we
raised as valid, while supporting and endorsing everything that Nextel’s hired
guns presented. Only the testimony of Nextel’s hired “experts” was accepted as
valid, even though we discredited many of them. We all worked on our own time for
the good of our community while Nextel’s representatives said only what they were
paid to say. We found that our written objections were basically emailed to
Nextel, and Nextel’s replies were cut and pasted into the city’s documents as
though they were responses done by city staff. (After this happened several times,
we suggested that the city should bill city staff time on the dispute to Nextel,
since our own city employees were essentially acting as employees of Nextel.)

The mayor and Council can be sure that even more of their neighbors and
constituents will develop a sense of betrayal towards the city’s politicians, and
contempt towards city staff, unless things change. We for example were actually
very moderate and supportive of our city staff and politicians until we had the
temerity to question their blind support of Nextel. The whole process was quite an
education for us and for our neighbors.

It’s even more ridiculous that the Council and city staff alienate whole
neighborhoods over the issue of antenna placement. As we have established many
times, based on testimony from telecom companies’ own engineers, these
transmitting arrays can be installed in the industrial section of the city or on
highrises downtown, and can provide essentially the same service from those
locations. After Nextel was denied the Oaks Theater, they simply built their array
on a commercial building along San Pablo Ave in Albany, apart from any residential
neighborhoods. This site provided them the same coverage to the Berkeley hills as
the proposed array on the Oaks. Sprint can do the same, and find an acceptable
site that is not in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Finally, we cannot resist noting that the increased capacity that these companies
seek is not for basic cell phone use. It’s to provide capacity so that cell phones
can be used for web surfing, video streaming, music, gaming, and all the other
relatively useless junk the companies are trying to market now.

Why city staff and our own City Council would side with this industry against the
citizens of Berkeley remains a mystery to us.
Connie and Kevin Sutton are Berkeley residents.

http://www.berkeleydaily.org/opinion_article.cfm?issue=08-26-03&storyID=17260

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for Your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at Myinks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/l.m7sD/LIdGAA/qnsNAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/