In Spokane, ‘Fruitful Tower Talks Avoided Lawsuits’

This is a case of cooler heads prevailing. In an opinion-editorial published on Friday the 13th, the Spokane Spokesman-Review gave kudos to the community in a column that began “What, no lawsuit.” The piece explained: “Spokane City Council Member Mike Allen in March gave odds of 99 percent the city would be sued when a unanimous council imposed a six-month moratorium on cell phone tower construction. The action halted projects already in the works, a step bound to provoke service providers trying to boost capacity and eliminate blind spots in their networks.” But what happened after that was unusual. The community came together in a collegial way, and worked out differences. Citizens learned more about the proposed tower project and the four carriers stepped back, answered questions and did not unleash the lawyers. Sure, a lawyer or two were hired by the town folk but “the companies did not run off to the courthouse.” People talked. Without phones.
“After six months of congenial negotiating that continued right up to the council vote on Monday, the companies, the city and (Patricia) Hansen’s (a citizen who hired a lawyer) attorney delivered an agreement that allows the city to develop a “hierarchy” of locations and require “stealth towers” that blend as best as possible into the surroundings. How blended? If intended to resemble a tree, it must be a native tree.”
But common sense also played a big part in human behavior in Spokane. The editorial pointed to the fact that “eight years ago 80 percent of cell traffic was talk or texting. Today, capacity-hogging data make up 80 percent of the traffic. Much of that demand is coming from the households and neighborhoods that most object to the tower next door. The technology, doubtless, will advance and increase the capacity of the existing cell infrastructure. But consumers hungry for more services and applications will continue to push networks to their limit.”
The editorial continued and ended on an even keel: “There almost certainly will be conflicts in the future, but at least there is a framework for finding a resolution, with no more dropped connections.”