Due Diligence? - "No Other Site" (Norwich ListServ)

Steve - It's past my bedtime, but I need to ask about your second paragraph as well.

Why on earth would the town acquire any site to host a tower?  Verizon and AT&T lease their sites.  VTel is proposing to lease our site.  Why would we ever consider buying a piece of property to host a tower? 

More puzzling to me, every tower lease agreement I've come across, in several states across the country, designates a leased area measuring 100' x 100' square.  The Verizon tower here in town leased a 100'x100' square and that lease bars the landlord from building within the "fall zone," defined as a 100' radius from the base of the tower.

In most cases, I was reviewing the title and offer terms on industrial or farm property which had a corner leased to a cell tower operator.  In every instance, the leases transferred with the property being offered for sale and were viewed as valuable additional rent income for the buyer.  In one case, the foreclosing bank sought to retain the 100' x 100' tower site and lease while selling the rest, but the buyer refused.  Verizon didn't buy acres to build their tower above Four Wheel Drive Road, they lease a little square in the woods. 

Your statement also confuses on the matter of an access road.  If you want to go buying "multiple acres," why would you need a right-of-way?  Any access road, if built on a right-of-way or easement, would, by definition, be outside the "multiple acres" you claim would be required.  (No one grants themselves a right-of-way across their own land.)  As in every other tower lease I've seen, if we lease a 100' x 100' tower site, the right-of-way to reach it would be part of the bargain. 

Again, excuse my skepticism, but I've spent months patiently listening to categorical statements why this tower must be as it is without anything more than a conclusory draft feasibility study offered in support.  If you have information that has not yet been shared with the public after all this time, please come forth with it now. 

I have some issues with the rest of your post, but they can wait until tomorrow.


From: Stephen Flanders
To: "norwich@lists.valley.net"
Subject: [Norwich] A towering question
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:57:30 -0400


What about a different site?
If the town were to acquire a different site on private land, it would have
to pay much more than the core cost of the facility that is soon to be
erected. Currently land is listed at a minimum of $100K per acre; typically,
multiple acres would be required. A road would have to be built over a
right-of-way to the hypothetical site for construction and maintenance.
Depending on the terrain covered, this too would be extremely expensive.
Security at a remote site would be a serious concern, as well.

Due Diligence? - "No Single Ideal Site" (Norwich ListServ)

Steve - I appreciate the time you took to post this afternoon. 

With respect to due diligence, could you please share with us all the source for your conclusion that "there is no single ideal site" for a tower in Norwich?  I am aware our Town Manager has insisted this is the case, but I have been asking for an engineering report or propagation study to substantiate this conclusion for months and no one has shared anything publicly up to this point. 

I'm also confused by the second premise of the paragraph below.  If we are creating a synchronized network with surrounding towers, why does this tower have to be so extremely tall and expensive?  If it only need complement the coverage provided by these other towers, surely, we could find a site for a tower more in keeping with the height restrictions our own zoning regulations set out and our town has already enforced upon Verizon when they built their tower seven years ago. 

Please, please, make public the engineering and propagation studies that substantiate the claims you've just made. 


From: Stephen Flanders
To: "norwich@lists.valley.net"
Subject: [Norwich] A towering question
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 13:57:30 -0400
Here are my answers to questions that CC and others raise:

What about a better site?
There is no single ideal site for a reasonably priced communications tower
in Norwich. That¹s why the town manager worked with surrounding towns to
create a synchronized network that will provide higher communications
reliability and coverage, using seven networked antennas. This means that a
Norwich antenna must only complement the coverage provided by other
antennas. If one antenna had to provide complete coverage in town, it would
have to be tall enough to look down into all Norwich¹s many valleys. It
would be extremely tall and expensive.

Second Tower Mistake - Advocacy Overshadows Management (Norwich ListServ)

I've been critical of the proposed Norwich DPW tower site as an answer set in stone before the questions had all been asked; resulting in an inflexible plan that may ultimately cost us much more than we've bargained for.

As I've stated elsewhere, there is no question in my mind our Town Manager honestly and earnestly believes this tower design and location are the best way to protect citizens -- and the public servants sent to aid them -- given the "narrow-banding" changes mandated by the FCC.  Nevertheless, I am concerned he has pursued this solution in a manner that is beginning to undermine his credibility and raises a question in my mind whether he can steer clear of the administrator-as-advocate quicksand that eventually swallowed his predecessors.  I sincerely intend this as constructive criticism of a public servant who has demonstrated tremendous administrative skills this town surely needs but now risks squandering.  Uncomfortable as it may be, if we don't openly identify these issues we risk rekindling a political vortex here in town that we cannot really afford to indulge; in the process losing a talented public servant who, challenged on his decision-making, may prove to be far more open-minded and flexible than he sometimes appears. 

Put very simply, I think it's a mistake for a Town Manager to provide the Selectboard only a single solution to a problem rather than a range of options.

I don't doubt our Town Manager feels the need to champion a single tower solution because weighing options takes time and the FCC year-end deadline doesn't afford us very much. However, as we've seen these past nine months, putting all our eggs in one basket begs the question, at least for some in town, "why this particular basket?"  Pressing that question exposes a series of dubious political calculations that assumed we would all accept this one solution for lack of any alternative. 

And up to now it's worked.  Advocating a take-it-or-leave-it-198' tower-in-a-valley solution to our antiquated telecommunications infrastructure pressed a majority of our Selectboard into not simply approving the tower, but -- by the narrowest of margins -- letting a commercial telecommunications company have it and all the revenue it generates. Caught between an FCC year-end deadline and concerns that taxpayers might balk at the cost, a Selectboard majority felt it had no choice but to accept the only option offered them. A false choice such as this is not simply bad policy, it's bad politics. 

Selectboard members, faced with persistent criticism of the single-option plan they'd been handed, have been forced to choose between the known costs and capabilities of this prepackaged plan and the myriad unknowns of every other option.  Their plight has been heightened by the Town Manager's adamant refusal to entertain any other options.  In this, I'm afraid his uncompromising advocacy for his chosen solution to the narrow-banding deadline clouded his judgment about the risks in having all one's eggs in one basket. 

This week's bond vote has knocked that basket to the ground. 

Will he pick it up and soldier on through months of contentious permitting and growing public unease towards the VTel contract?  Or will he step back and explore his options -- our options -- for compromise on an infrastructure project that should otherwise garner broad public support? 

Whatever Town Manager any of us may think we need, these next few weeks will reveal the Town Manager we have. 

-    -    -    -    -

Dramatic, huh? 

It's not a good sign that a Town Manager's methods are once more the centerpiece of public debate.

It's time for our Selectboard to step forward and provide the leadership to explore a compromise that can focus on practical, cost-effective solutions.  That will require some imagination and open-minded discussion of what's possible.  Listserv posts, such as Ed Childs' from last night, telling bond vote opponents why they voted "no," instead of actually asking them why, aren't really what I have in mind.  

Wishing us all luck,

Watt Alexander

First Tower Mistake - Asking the Answer Instead of the Question (Norwich Listserv)

It's not easy to recreate the thinking that led us to this tower proposal and design. 

The primary artifact is a draft feasibility study, dated October 22, 2010, (click on "Radio Communications Study" at http://norwich.vt.us/applications-reports-ordinances/).  The report, conspicuously marked "DRAFT REPORT" on every page, inventories current emergency communications equipment and then concludes a tower sited at the Norwich DPW/Town Garage/Dump would provide better coverage than a similar transmitter currently operating from Hurricane Hill in Hartford.  There's really not a lot more to it than that; try to read it through if you doubt me. 

What's clear is this feasibility study never asks which site would best provide optimal emergency services communications in town.  It never considered the most basic development guidelines imposed by Norwich zoning regulation restrictions on tower height or siting.  It never mentions siting a tower on leased private land at all.  Instead, it reads as though the engineer was simply asked to provide a feasibility study recommending a tower on the Norwich DPW site -- not whether it was the best choice or even a good one among all possible sites in town. 

This conclusion-as-a-premise was then compounded by a series of arbitrary and unilateral decisions about the tower design:

- Because the Norwich DPW site lies in a valley, the tower itself needs to be as high as possible to broadcast over the intervening hills and ridges; 
- FAA regulations require a flashing light on towers over 200 feet so it was decided, to avoid neighbor backlash, to restrict this tower to 198 feet, though that limits coverage; 
- The Fire/Police station was considered a candidate to improve signal propagation up the valleys that feed into downtown, but it was concluded a 198 foot tower, even without a flashing light, would elicit too much opposition in the more densely populated downtown.  

As a result, we have a proposal for a very tall tower sitting in a valley.  No effort was made to evaluate possible sites on higher terrain where a smaller tower, as urged by our zoning regulations, might provide equivalent coverage or better. 

Worse still, the feasibility study acknowledges, "Additional remote transmitter sites may be required to improve coverage in other areas of Town experiencing deficient coverage, such as the southwest portion of Norwich.  Our recommendation is the system should be evaluated for realtime coverage (from the Norwich DPW and Hayes Hill in Hanover) prior to implement (sic) supplemental solutions." 

In other words, until the Norwich DPW tower is up and running for a while, we won't know how well it works -- it's "realtime coverage" -- and so won't know whether additional towers may be needed to address "deficient coverage." 

My efforts to persuade the Capital Facilities Committee, the Selectboard, and the Town Manager these past nine months to go back and do a proper, unrestricted, engineering study seeking the best site for a tower to serve the most people have all been rebuffed on our Town Manager's insistence that his own experience in this field tells him there is no such site. Ask to see the propagation studies that substantiate that opinion and you're redirected to the feasibility study that never asks at all. 

How can this be when the very top of the proposed Norwich DPW tower will stand less than 950 feet above sea level while all the surrounding hills -- in fact 15,000 acres, more than half the town -- stands higher than 950 feet?  If elevation doesn't matter to signal coverage, then the town should reduce the tower to 80' -- just 20' above the surrounding tree line as our zoning regulations request -- and go get their Development Review Board permit.  But if elevation does matter to overall coverage why on earth build a tower in a narrow valley when your own feasibility study acknowledges doubts about coverage adequacy?  This is a matter of public safety after all. 

Why? 

Because we're under time pressure to get a tower built before the FCC narrow-banding deadline strikes on January 1, 2013.  The race to meet this deadline has placed expediency above all else.  As a result, a series of arbitrary, unilateral decisions have been made that we, as taxpayers and townspeople, are expected to live with for the next 60 years.  Decisions to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on long-term infrastructure the feasibility study itself acknowledged may require "supplemental solutions;" decisions to ignore local zoning regulation height restriction guidance as an avoidable inconvenience; to rebuff all inquiries whether other sites might prove a better long-term investment for the town; and, most recently, to give this half-baked tower site to VTel for sixty years in the name of thrift. 

I want to emphasize here that I do not, for a moment, doubt our Town Manager's earnest and diligent belief he is doing the best he can to meet this FCC deadline.  He's a highly intelligent man absolutely dedicated to meeting what he sees as a fundamental obligation to protect the community.  Unfortunately, fixated on that deadline, his intransigence towards all efforts to broaden the scope of our tower investment has painted us all -- selectboard, town manager, townspeople, and now VTel -- into a corner with little time left and waning public support. 

Ultimately, this tower proposal suffers from a hasty, ill-conceived foundation.  It's time to stop shoring it up and recognize this controversy is undermining confidence in the architects.

There is still time to undertake an engineering study focused on siting and designing a tower to address our long-term telecommunications goals.  A proper study will cure many of the missteps already made and help restore public confidence that this is a shared effort to solve our narrow-banding challenge, avoiding another futile bond vote such as we had this week. 

Civic Virtue (Norwich ListServ)

I'm baffled. 

On paper, we probably have the most talented and even-tempered group of Selectboard members I've seen since the early 1990's. 

On paper, at least, this is the most qualified Town Manager we've ever hired. 

The rancor and ill will of the last decade finally seemed to have subsided and yet, in practice, this group has got themselves in a tangle over this tower that is only just beginning. 

Back last December 9th, I posted a lengthy critique of the proposal to site a 198' tower in a valley along the drainage that borders New Boston Road.  In the past nine months, I've spent dozens and dozens of hours writing to the listserv and selectboard, appearing at capital facilities committee and selectboard meetings, and pursuing extended conversations with individual selectboard members and our town manager pleading with them to slow down and revisit the basic premises of a misconceived tower project that is now, perhaps, unraveling before our eyes. 

Over the next ten days, I'm going to post a steady stream of sometimes pointed critiques of how we got into this mess.  I hope to persuade those town officials, townspeople, and taxpayers who still need persuading that we need to reject the VTel contract and get on with building a tower that actually is designed to serve the community for the long-term. The VTel tower proposal was designed and managed in a manner that has, I feel, diminished town institutions and now threatens to discredit the selectboard members and town manager who have -- in the earnest belief they are doing the right thing -- championed it.

For now, I just want to relate one important lesson -- the essential civic virtue -- I've learned these past nine months: 
Embrace the opposition. 
Try, in good faith, to understand what they are saying, however shrill or close-minded they may seem, simply on the off chance they may see something you do not. 
Give them a listen because we don't know what we don't know and it's often the least pleasant experiences that teach us the most. 
And in a democracy, trust in compromise with those who oppose you because, over time, unilateral decisions simply don't survive.

One of the best examples of this civic virtue in action can be found in our chief of police, Doug Robinson. 
For those who recall a few years back, Chief Robinson, fairly new to the job and working under an earlier town manager, found himself and his department raked across the coals for being out of touch with the community he was meant to serve.  The difference in his response and that of his boss was marked.  Doug went out of his way to meet with concerned citizens wherever they wanted to talk; patiently explained his views on difficult topics and showed flexibility as he came to understand opposing viewpoints.  He listened then and has since exhibited that same wisdom and good judgment in some very difficult settings, in the effort becoming a chief of police who completely nullified the concerns many townspeople had expressed about the size and mentality of our police force, becoming an exemplary public servant and a true asset to the town. 
His boss, less flexible and more confident in his own road, has since moved on.

Most of the mistakes made in this tower misadventure, I believe, are the result of haste and a fundamental misjudgment -- made nine months ago -- that the looming FCC deadline justified trying to bull through the opposition.  Our current town manager is an individual of exceptional talents and, with due respect to his predecessors, his capabilities far exceed even what we thought we might find when we first recommended creating a town manager position a decade ago. I strongly believe this town manager can also become an exemplary public servant and long-term asset to the town if he can learn to trust this same civic virtue. 

Our efforts to present a practical alternative to the current proposal -- based on demonstrated community standards and designed to serve both public safety and broadband telecommunications goals that may well be more cost effective and more functional -- has fallen on deaf ears these past months.  It's time to stop dismissing those of us who live near New Boston Road as NIMBYites and those who live further off as vocal cranks.  Time is running out, there's important work to do and the mistakes made today in the name of expediency will, in retrospect, seem incomprehensible errors this town will have to live with for decades. 

i vote no (Norwich ListServ)

I too plan to vote "no" on the tower bond tomorrow, not because I think a "no" vote actually matters, but precisely because it doesn't. 

It should be plain to anyone paying attention that we are simply going through the motions of democratic review of this tower.  The $275k figure was based on a tower design and ownership structure that a majority of the Selectboard abandoned weeks ago.  If the bond is approved, the Town Manager has conceded he doesn't need a third of the authorized figure.  If this bond is voted down, the Town Manager will no doubt find that $85k through grants elsewhere. 

Back in early July, at the Town Manager's urging, a majority of the Selectboard approved this bond language.  Linda Cook alone voted against it claiming, rightly it turns out, that it made no sense asking voters to assume debt without firm plans on how much would be needed or how it would be spent.  The majority that evening justified this bond-vote-without-a-plan as an opportunity for the public to weigh in on the overall tower proposal.  In the meantime, they decided everything themselves.  Ten days ago, I stood before the Selectboard and asked how this bond vote could provide a meaningful opportunity for the public to weigh in on the tower proposal if the tower specifics were already decided in their minds and the VTel contract makes the bond vote meaningless?  No one could say, but we're urged to vote "yes" nonetheless. 

Not me, I value my vote too highly.