No Accountability on Radio Tower Fiasco

Manatee County citizens sat by in frustration on Tuesday, as county commissioners threw their hands up in defeat after the county administration painted the board into a costly corner regarding a decision as to where to locate a much-needed radio tower.

In late May, the commission voted to stop construction of a 185-foot tower that is badly needed to address a communication dead zone hampering first responders in the University Parkway corridor, after learning that there had been no attempt to involve the public in the process. Commissioners told the staff that they would like to see public input before the item came back before the board.

The administration ignored the commissioners, and when the issue came back before the BOCC in August the public still hadn't been involved in any meaningful way. Residents from the area surrounding the proposed site showed up in mass to voice not only disapproval of the location–adjacent to Kinnan Elementary and less than 90 feet from some residents' property lines–but for the lack of transparency.

The board refused to lift the construction stoppage at the August meeting and, after dressing down staff members and county administrator Ed Hunzeker, made it clear that they wanted staff to work with both the vendor (Motorola) and the public to explore viable alternatives.

When the item came back before the board again at Tuesday's meeting, it was the same old song and dance. It's too late. It will cost too much. Nowhere else is ideal. For additional pressure, commissioners had been told that voting against resuming the construction of the million dollar tower could see them on the other end of a $35 million dollar lawsuit slapped on them by Motorola and Sarasota County, who is partnered with Manatee on the project.

Motorola engineers estimated that it would cost $3 million at this point to move the tower to a different part of the same parcel, and that the two-tower design commissioners had asked them to explore would cost an estimated $6.2 million. In the end, commissioners voted 5-2 (DiSabatino and Baugh dissenting) to resume construction of the tower at its current location. Motorola says the delays will cost the county more than $33,000.

Commissioner Robin DiSabatino actually moved to fire Hunzeker, County Attorney Mitchell Palmer and John Barnott, director of building and planning services at Tuesday's meeting. Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said that she had completely lost faith in Hunzeker's leadership, but neither she nor the rest of the board went along with DiSabatino's motion.

What struck me most about Tuesday's meeting was the condescending tone expressed by county leadership, which again seemed unable to hide disdain for the public process. As I noted in a column two weeks ago, emails indicate that staff had been working with the county attorney's office since 2015 to navigate the rules in order to avoid a public hearing. This isn't necessarily new, but what was different on Tuesday was watching a majority of the board so publicly surrender their role as representatives of the people and acquiesce to unelected officials who have no accountability to taxpayers.

Why have a county commission at all if bureaucrats can simply do as they will and tell those elected by voters that it's too late (read too expensive) to check their actions once they've occurred? When they can subvert the oversight of the board with impunity, what motivation is there to submit to such oversight, especially when they so clearly don't believe it's warranted?

It's bad enough that a majority of the board routinely looks like the lapdogs of the developers who put and keep them in office. To see them lying prostrate before the administrator that supposedly works for them might have elicited pity, or at least embarrassment on their behalf, had these same commissioners not been the very ones who'd told us on multiple occasions that the clocks would stop ticking and the Earth would cease to spin if he were allowed to retire as scheduled.

It's hard to say exactly why, but it seems as though one thing was perfectly clear–at no point was that tower ever going to go anywhere else. Be that as it may, as I previously noted, imagine how much happier those citizens would have been if the county had still just made the effort and engaged them in an open and public process in which their concerns were heard and discussed, alternatives explored, and decisions made with thoughtful deliberation. No one was arguing they weren't needed, and all involved professed support for making sure that first responders got what they required. However, when you don't answer to voters and the public officials you ostensibly answer to do not reign you in, unaccountable power is known to run amok.

Residents of the neighborhood, along with the staff, teachers, and parents at Kinnan who are all worried about exposure to RF that the microwaves from the tower will emit, learned just how much their elected officials were worth on Tuesday. They also got a lesson in what you might call practical civics, as in who really runs the show. Had this been a simple act of the commissioners' will not being executed–mere insubordination–there would have been consequences. There wasn't, and that should tell you all you need to know.

Dennis Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County governmentsince 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University, where he earned a degree in Government, and also served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Clickherefor his bio. Dennis' latest novel, Sacred Hearts, is availablehere.