Government

Commission Seeks Feedback On Cell Tower Proposal

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New Canaan residents are invited to public hearing to be held at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Town Hall to share their views on a proposal from the Utilities Commission to install 110-foot tall cellular towers at Irwin Park and West School. For the past several years the Utilities Commission, under the direction of the Board of Selectmen, has been studying various approaches to improving wireless coverage in town. The northern sections of New Canaan, in particular the northwest quadrant, suffer from serious wireless coverage gaps—some as large as 10 square miles—due to the town’s unique topography. Not only is this an inconvenience for residents, it also presents a serious public safety risk, as the town’s police, fire and EMS services all rely on cellular technology for emergency communications. During Thursday’s Town Council meeting, Police Chief Leon Krolikowski said “there have been incidents in the past where people have tried to make 911 calls from the north section of town and have not been able to get through.” He said a few months ago, a tradesman who was working in the northwest corner of town seriously injured his leg and almost bled to death because he was unable to reach 911 using his cell phone. “There have also been incidents of motor vehicle accidents where people couldn’t get through,” Krolikowski told the council members, adding that people who have been in accidents have sometimes had to “drive toward town until they get a signal.”

Wendy Dixon Fog, captain of New Canaan EMS, added that emergency medical technicians rely on the cellular network to get data and information about patients while they are on scene or in transit.

News

‘A Major Setback’: New Canaan Officials Withdraw Application for Monopole in Stamford To Improve Public Safety Radio Coverage

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Facing opposition from neighborhood residents, town officials said Wednesday that they’re withdrawing an application to erect a tower just over the Stamford border that had been designed to improve emergency radio communications in northwestern New Canaan. The decision followed conversations that included the highest elected officials of both municipalities and a city representative of the north Stamford residents who live near a proposed monopole on Aquarion property, according to New Canaan Police Commission Chairman Stuart Sawabini. The upshot was that “it would be extremely unlikely that the city of Stamford would ever approve an antenna” on the corner of Reservoir Lane and Laurel Road (see map below), Sawabini said during a regular meeting of the Police Commission. The development “was a major setback, sadly,” Sawabini said at the meeting, held in the training room at the New Canaan Police Department. “We have other locations that we had considered and rejected, but that we are reopening for reconsideration.

Government

Online Petition Opposing Cell Tower Proposal Garners 100-Plus Digital Signatures

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More than 100 digital signatures have been added to an online petition urging residents to oppose an early-stage proposal to improve cell service in New Canaan by installing towers in a public park and on school grounds. Posted through a Change.org account with an anonymous username, the petition describes the proposed 110-foot towers as “gigantic monopoles”—though just what type of towers they would be, if approved, is undecided—that will spoil views and property values. Though neighbors who attended a public meeting this week of the Utilities Commission—the advisory group of volunteer residents charged with proposing ways to improve cell service in New Canaan—put questions and concerns about the towers directly to its members, the petition makes the assertion that “the town will not allow the safety of these towers to be debated, believing that the government’s proclamation of their safety has laid that argument to rest.”

In truth, the Town Council is expected to hear from the Utilities Commission at its own April 20 meeting. During their meeting Wednesday night, members of the Town Council discussed the best way to sequence and accomplish the twin goals of supplying information to residents and soliciting their feedback—preferably in that order, in hopes that accomplishing one may improve the other. Unsigned by its author, the petition appears under the rather ambitious username ‘New Canaan Residents, Tax Payers and Voters.’ It had garnered 129 signatures as of early Thursday evening, and among those who commented on the petition, more than 80 percent identified themselves as New Canaan residents.

Government

‘Maybe There Is a Better Area’: Neighbors Voice Concerns about Prospect of Cell Towers at Irwin Park, West School

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Kevin Clark, a resident of Wahackme Road, built his house 20 years ago, past the footpath that loops around the back of a 36-acre parcel known to New Canaanites today as Irwin Park. When locals debated the acquisition of that parcel as public land, Clark recalled, he sided with those in favor of the purchase “because [former First Selectman] Judy Neville and the Town Council assured us that it would be set aside as beautiful parkland and preserve the integrity of the landscape and preserve the integrity of the quiet residential community that has existed there for 100 years.”

Faced now with the prospect of a 110-foot cell tower near the park’s southwest corner—a draft plan whose development has been overseen by the New Canaan Utilities Commission—Clark said he is concerned that those assurances had been hollow. “I do not think any of you would want an 11-story tower in your backyard,” Clark told members of the Utilities Commission during their regular meeting, held at Town Hall. “Where it is sited right now, I will open my shade in the morning when I wake up in my bedroom and I will see the tower. It is just not the way a town like New Canaan should act—in a responsible way for its citizens.

Government

‘It’s That Dire’: Town Pursues Backup Plan To Erect Standalone Cell Site by Water Towers at Waveny

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Saying the owner of the Waveny water towers appears unwilling to renew leases with four wireless carriers whose antennas are perched atop one of them, town officials on Tuesday pursued a backup plan to erect a new standalone cell site in the same area. The Board of Selectmen voted 3-0 to amend the town’s contract with a Danbury-based wireless solutions company so that it can design and build a tower or other infrastructure there that not only provides cell service to a wide swath of the town but also carries New Canaan’s primary radio transmitter for all emergency services. It appears that Aquarion, which owns the towers and the land they’re built on “has no appetite to renew” its leases with AT&T Wireless, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile, First Selectman Rob Mallozzi said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “This is the right and proactive approach that the town must take so that we are not caught in 2018 with not serving one-third of our community with cell service and the entire community with radio emergency,” he said. “It’s that dire.”

Flagged by town officials last summer and made public in September after Mallozzi and others worked for months to facilitate communications between the two parties, the threat that wireless service gear will come off of the water towers grows more real as time passes and the end of the carriers’ leases approach.