Victory! No Cell Towers on School Grounds!
The head of Get the Cell Out - Atlanta Chapter thanks DeKalb County residents for voting no on a referendum regarding cell phone towers on public school grounds.
Yes! You voted no! Thank you, DeKalb County voters!
So far, 71,690 voters have agreed! No cell towers on our school grounds! Victory by 60 percent or more!
The resolution may not have legal bearing, but it has a moral lesson that should not be ignored.
And, that leads us to the next order of business: the nine approved schools that have now been reduced to eight total signed lease agreements. When will T-Mobile get the message that we do not want them to build cell towers on our school grounds? When will they exercise the "out clause" that only they can do and escape any futher financial obligation to the school system as the inability to gain a permit is a just cause for the lease termination. They wrote the lease, so they likely expected that it might be possible to get this far and have to back out. So, what are they waiting for?
We need more than just a promise from our current board of education that they will not entertain these cell tower offers again. If Montgomery County, MD, can get a resolution passed by their board, so should we!
If they plan to build eight or nine towers before school starts on Monday, Aug. 13, that sounds like an impossible timeline. T-Mobile and AT&T are well-known for pressuring their workers to make unrealistic deadlines. That pressure has led to many tower workers losing their lives trying to meet the demands of their $10-11-per-hour job. For more on this subject, see the in-depth article titled: In Race For Better Cell Service, Men Who Climb Towers Pay With Their Lives.
What can we do to make sure our local construction crews are safe? We must continue writing and calling the office of the CEO, Planning & Sustainability, Public Works and our county commissioners. We have to tell them to put an immediate moratorium on all cell tower construction countywide so that it will not be possible for the towers to go up in an unrealistic time frame.
If the permits are not in place, we need to ask our represenatives to tell us the truth. Will these permit applications be accpeted? Will there be a chance for public comment? What is being done to disucss alternative methods of provding service to our county without having to take up valuable school grounds and pay off our corrupt school board members?
If the ballot question was writen by the telcomm industry and its lobbyists, then we are very proud to see that their plan to find out where the opposition might be located has backfired.
Instead, it has showed them that there are many, many people from all parts of our county who agree that these towers are not wanted and are not OK with us. And, if anything, a breakdown of the "yes" votes may help show us where there may be corruption.
No matter where you live, we hope all residents of DeKalb will take note of this huge accomplishment. Isn't it good to know that, when motivated to work together, our county can come together for the sake of our children and for the sake of each other?
Think about how great we could be if we could learn to work together like this on other issues, too!
If you live near any of these schools, please report any signs of cell tower construction tosayno2celltowers@yahoo.com:
- Jolly Elementary School, Clarkston
- Smoke Rise Elementary School, Stone Mountain
- Princeton Elementary School, Redan / Lithonia
- Martin Luther King, Jr. High School, Lithonia
- Flat Rock Elementary School, Lithonia
- Briarlake Elementary School, Decatur
- Narvie J. Harris Elementary School / Panthersville Stadium, Decatur
- Lakeside High School, Atlanta
- Margaret Harris Comprehensive School, Atlanta
No comments:
Post a Comment