Clarification About Permits / Shining a Light on the Truth

An update about what we know about the permit process...  the permits that were posted on www.antennasearch.com and also mentioned on this blog are what we believe to be FCC permits, not DeKalb County permits.  At this time, we do not know of any formal permit applications with the county, however the signs of soil testing, electric testing, lines being run, tress being run over, etc. appear to be the first steps in the process. 

If you are planning to seek legal help, you should take photos of these events.  You should also try to photograph the "balloon test" from the perspective of your own property when/if you are able to capture it when it happens.  The balloon test is when they fly a weather balloon to the height of the tower.  They will use their photos to show how your property will barely be affected, while you can show a different angle than their's in order to prove otherwise.

To Brairlake:  Everyone involved with GTCO-ATL has been trying to help you in the best ways we can.  We do not live in your neighborhood, but we do know many people who do.  We have alerted everyone we can think of and we even asked reporters to meet us at your school in August, where we did an interview with FOX News stating that even though we had been successful in getting our school, Brockett Elementary, off the school board's initial list (with the help of many, many neigbhorslk), we still did not think the other communities were alerted and that was not fair.  So, we have tried and tried to let you know what has been going on, from our perspective.

We have no other intentions than to get the TRUTH to you so that you have every opportunity to protect yourselves, your home values and your children.  We feel this way about all the schools invovled and we have tried our best to travel to each and every community either personally, or through the help of other volunteers who have assisted us in our efforts.

We have searched for an attorney who would help us either pro bono or on a condition of payment only if it could be collected from T-mobile in a victory, but we have not had any luck so far.  That does not mean that you should give up.  Our time and resources are limited, just like anyone else's would be.  By spreading the word and working together, everyone has a better chance of finding the right solution and the right help.


We have been asked why we continue to state that Briarlake and Lakeside wanted the towers.  Clearly, we do not believe this to be true of the massive amounts of uninformed homeowners and parents in either of these communities.  That is our point - this decision was made without proper notification and without letting the community decide what would be best in their own neighborhoods.  The voices of a very few were somehow given more weight and credibility than common sense, which would tell you that no one would want a cell tower this large, this ugly, this dangerous and this controversial in their backyard, front yard or at their school.  I doubt anyone is really comfortable with how close we see these towers to our grocery stores, drug stores, doctors' offices and hospitals either.

But, if you would please WATCH THE VIDEO as we have asked so many times - where the July 11 vote takes place at the school board.  It is mentioned there that there are two schools who WANT the towers.  And, everyone we know agrees that Lakeside WANTED the towers and kicked off this entire request.  But, do the Lakeside residents feel the same way?  Do they know how many towers they currently have in a 4-mile radius?  This community is living under constant radiation from more than one hundred towers already!  Why do they need MORE? Why do they still have problems with their simple voice service?  How can MORE towers possibly solve this problem?  Isn't it more likley that the number of towers match the level of competition there is for this area of our county that has some of our wealthier residents?  Doesn't it sound likely that the towers match the competition and they are drowning each other out, interfereing with each other's signals, and fighting for the top position as the best provider?  We do not think MORE is what is needed here.  We think the county ZONING department needs to step in an insist on a wireless PLAN.  With a reasonable GRID that will divide up the space and ensure equal access for all carriers, the number of towers could likely be REDUCED significantly and the overall ongoing levels of RF radiation could be LOWERED while cell service could be IMPROVED.  Again, we are not experts here - but if we lived there, those are the questions we would be asking.  We hope someone in that area will pick up this issue and take it to the proper channels they need to in order to get some results.

Cell towers used to be structures that could carry a signal as far as 5 - 15 miles when we all used our phones for voice-only.  The 4G revolution is all about heavy data content, high intensity graphics, steaming HD quality movies.  Do we NEED these things on our phones while we are mobile?  Do these "luxuries" have to be wireless for us to enjoy them?  And are we all comfotable making this decision, not just for ourselves, but for everyone in our entire community and for children who have absolutely no voice in the matter whatsoever?

We do not know how a school board in this or any county could even consider placing a structure like a cell tower next to children who are required by law to attend school.  We, as parents, are upset and angry that they expected us to be okay with a decision like that.  We have learned, from our own experience at our school and from talking to other people with similar experiences at other schools, that there were one or two PTA officers who either knew about what was going on ahead of time, attended the T-mobile meeting, or learned about the true intentions of that meeting after the fact.

We do not know specifics about what they did or said after they learned about the cell tower proposal.  We only know what we did.  We alerted as many of our neighbors as possible from the very first moment we found out.  We made up flyers and distributed them.  We started send out emails.  And we do not even live within eyeshot of the school.  We went over to our school and knocked on doors of every property owner with adjacent property and we distibuted small flyers to every other door we could in the very short timeframe we had.  We spent our own money, used our own resources to get the job done and we were cut out of any former communications circles we had been a part of before because the people at the school were not happy with what we were doing. 

We did it anyway.  This issue is that important.

We don't know anything about how other schools reacted and why they did or did not spread the word to the community the way we did.  We called the national PTA to find out their position and they told us they were starting a committee to review the subject.  We have not heard anything further.

When we alerted the community at Briarlake, the PTA got involved and took over the campaign to inform the rest of the neighborhood.  We thought they were doing a great job and they told us they did not need our help.  Unfortunately, it looks now like they are not passing the information along to anyone who can actually help and they are not doing much more than just making a lot of noise, but they are not passing along information that can actually help.  We do not think they are being truthful on a lot of issues.  Those are the issues we are trying to point out here.

We have no alterior motives.  Our child is no longer enrolled in public school.  We are not in the position to accept special favors, not that we would if they were offered to us.  We care about our community and we have many friends who live all over this county.  We don't want to see this happen to anyone.  We hope everyone who comes here understands that we have done everything we can think to do that might help others.  We have had nothing but honest reasons to be good neighbors and set a morally acceptable example for our child that will hopefully help her understand why we had to take her out of her school after only a year.

If we were acting in a selfish or self-serving manner, we would have shut up and moved on a long time ago.  Without a cell tower, our neighborhood would stand to benefit if some of the other communities nearby ended up with towers in the middle of them, but we still speak out.  By keeping quiet, the school our child could one day attend might be the recipient of a lot of the cell tower funds, making it a better place for her future educational needs, but still we speak out. 

Think of it like this:

If you saw someone else and you thought they might be in danger, would you at least try to alert them to watch out?  Or would you turn the other way and just be relieved that you were safe?  That was the question we were faced with after Brockett in Tucker was removed from the list.  Do we keep quiet and be happy we can move on with our own lives?  We didn't think we could possibly do that and watch as towers continue to pop up all around us.

What T-moble is doing here is nothing new.  It has happeend and contiues to happen all over this country.  It has happened in Cobb County, Fulton County, Cherokee and others.  People everywhere are getting more and more angry, but we cannot give up.  We have to keep speaking up to our elected officials and let them know this is not okay.  And, we have to back up what we say with how we vote.

We urge everyone concerned about this issue to please stay involved.  Do what you can to tell the people you know, bring this topic up in conversation and educate others who are unaware of the problem.  Look out for your family and help those around you.   And, please, don't shoot the messenger - we don't like the message any more than you do!  And we wished this would have never happened to us, either.