With raised voices and accusations flying, dozens of residents turned out to oppose a new cell tower in Hancock on Wednesday.
They called the tower a “monster” and a “giant evil robotic structure,” saying it would disturb the rural and historic feel of Hancock. They criticized the planning board, saying they didn’t feel heard and didn’t trust its decision process to act in their best interest.
The backlash became so intense that the chair of the planning board, Kevin Murphy, resigned on Friday.
“The contentious nature of these proceedings, including personal attacks, has impacted my wife’s health and I am choosing to prioritize her,” Murphy wrote in a brief resignation letter. “I have also been impacted by a lack of support to mitigate this issue.”
Some residents had requested he recuse himself from the decision, arguing that he showed bias toward Industrial Tower & Wireless LLC, the company proposing the cell tower. Murphy denied those claims at Wednesday’s meeting, and the planning board unanimously voted that he did not need to recuse.
The town is up against a federally imposed deadline to approve or reject the site plan and conditional use applications. Federal regulations on cell towers impose a 90-day decision window, which is set to expire Aug. 16 but can be extended for a short period.
Planning board members opted for the extension and agreed to commission a third-party peer review of a real estate value study submitted by Industrial Tower & Wireless, which concluded that a cell tower would not diminish nearby property values. Residents had raised concerns about its accuracy and said they didn’t trust a report submitted by the company itself.
The peer review is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 2, when the public hearing will continue into a fourth meeting.
As the process continues, however, residents said they distrust it. It’s roiling the town, said Dave Carney, who called on the planning board to throw out the application and force the company to return with more information.
“I think you’ve got to be careful of trying to repair this broken process,” Carney told planning board members. “I think long-term impact on Hancock and our civic engagement is going to be really poor and ripped apart if you always keep going down this route.”
‘Nowhere near a finalization’
On a sunny Saturday morning in July, curious residents of Hancock ventured around town, trying to spot a red balloon floating 150 feet in the sky. It marked the would-be location of the proposed cell tower off Lee Farm Road.
Katie Sysyn-Bolduc didn’t have to go far. She propped up a picture taken from her doorstep at a public hearing last week, showing the balloon hovering over the trees near her driveway. She said she dreads the idea of having a cell tower there.
“When I wash my dishes, that’s what I’m going to see. When I drive home, or leave or let my cat out … that’s going to be my life. I can see that from every spot on my property,” she told the planning board Wednesday. “It makes me really sad that my community thinks that we aren’t worth more than that. This is an industrial structure.”
The balloon test was part of the planning board’s review process for the tower. Industrial Tower & Wireless argues it would bring cell coverage to a large swath of town, where service is sparse. The company’s plans show added coverage for the village center, the surrounding area and along Route 123 to the west. The eastern part of Hancock, near Route 202, is largely covered by a cell tower on Norway Hill Road.
While cell coverage is listed as a priority in Hancock’s master plan, which encourages efforts to expand it for drivers and home-based businesses, residents were divided over how important it is. No one spoke in favor of the project.
Some said they want better service but not at the expense of a location they feel is too close to town. Others, like Steve Ryans, who works from home and lives close to the proposed site, said Hancock doesn’t need another cell tower.
“Who cares about cell phone service?” Ryans said. “Get a landline.”
Pictures taken by the company at 38 locations within a two-mile radius of the proposed site evaluated the visibility of the would-be cell tower, with the balloon visible at only seven of those locations.
“Most of the locations where the balloon could be seen, the visual impact was minimal,” said Kevin Delaney, vice president of site acquisition and development. “It would likely go unnoticed by the casual observer unless they were specifically looking for it.”
Residents, however, questioned the angles of the photos and how those locations had been chosen. Delaney did not respond to inquiries from the Ledger-Transcript about how those were selected prior to publication.
Several residents said they didn’t trust the planning board’s procedures thus far and that they haven’t felt heard. They accused the board of favoring the company, although public hearings are ongoing and research is still underway. Deliberations have not yet begun.
“Merely because we haven’t made a decision doesn’t mean we’re going to make a decision the way you want it or not the way you want it,” said board member Earl Carrel. “There’s a lot of study that needs to be done. We are nowhere near a finalization process.”
