Sunshine is the Best Disinfectant

A stalled 911 radio tower in south Manatee that is badly needed to complete a $35 million multi-county public safety project will come back before the Manatee County Commission on Sept. 25. There seems to be little chance that the nearby residents who were deliberately kept in the dark about the site will have any meaningful role in the process, and that appears to be the way the county wanted it all along.

In late May, the BOCC voted to stop construction of a nearly $1 million tower that is badly needed to address a communication dead zone hampering first responders in the University Parkway corridor because of a lack of public input. Commissioners expressed a desire to see county staff engage in public meetings with the surrounding community but did not take a vote in order to build consensus to do so.

Staff ignored the unofficial directive, and when the issue came back before the BOCC in August the public still hadn't been involved and 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 secrecy as well. Recently revealed emailsdating back as far as 2015 show that staff had been given ongoing advice from the county attorney's office on efforts to strategically avoid the need for a public hearing.

The site for the tower, which the county had purchased in 2001 as space for a park, had been selected by the county via administrative procedure–as in, without public notice. Most residents didn't even find out it was being built until construction had begun. At that point, the opposition grew quickly.

Paul Alexander, Manatee County's director of information technology services, defended the county's actions to the board, insisting that all procedures had been followed. This was because the tower had been classified as a "Public Use Facility" rather than a "Personal Service Wireless Facility," the former of which is not required to go through the public hearing process, as per the county's Land Development Code.

However, the project doesn't seem to neatly fit into either, and the emails make clear that while some staff had concerns about the lack of a public hearing given the close proximity to residential properties, the efforts to use the classification was largely to ensure that such a hearing wouldn't have to happen. In fact, when it was suggested by the CAO in 2015 that the public facility classification wouldn't fly, the idea of an amendment to the LDC was floated.

This should have all been solved in May when commissioners made it clear that, regardless of the LDC's ambiguity, they wanted public input. All seven of them were rightfully outraged when they were caught by surprise by way of a chamber full of angry constituents wearing yellow shirts at the August meeting. Commissioners voted to continue the item so that more effort in finding a compromise could be undertaken, but it nonetheless seemed clear that the sunken costs had put the project beyond the point of no return (though one resident has filed suit seeking an injunction).

Don't get me wrong, I can certainly see why, for the purpose of expediency, those charged with completing this massive project would be tempted to sneak it by. Everyone wants blanket cell phone coverage everywhere they go, but no one seems to want a cell phone tower anywhere near their own home in order to facilitate the utility of the permanent fixture on their ear. Locating new ones in the best places is always a difficult process, and the tower's necessary proximity to the nearby SRQ airport complicates the matter much further, as there aren't too many locations in the area that can allow for the 185-foot height. If the height is lowered, every foot will reduce the system's effectiveness. As it is, deputies and firefighters who go into concrete buildings in south Manatee County often lose radio signals completely, putting public safety at risk.

But the residents who showed up last month weren't against the tower, per se, which they note in their petition drive here. They largely opposed the specific location chosen, but what really seemed to have most of them creased was the deliberate effort to subvert a public and transparent process. Yes, dealing with the Not in My Backyard effect can be frustrating I'm sure, but it goes with the territory of being a public servant.

Conducting public business out in the open is not only necessary to maintain citizen confidence in the processes of local government, but it is also the tried and true way to get the best results most often. The more stakeholders, voices, and brainpower that's in a room, the more likely a creative and mutually satisfactory solution is to be found. Had that been done, the tower may well have wound up exactly where it's currently planned, but at least most citizens would have felt as though their concerns had been considered and alternatives had been exhausted. I suspect that would have made it much easier to accept the eventual reality than the opaque-end around they instead received.

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 he also served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Dennis' latest novel, Sacred Hearts, is availablehere.