Gov. Nathan Deal has signed HB 1299, which was the negotiated compromise between Committee Leader Rep. Chuck Sims (R - Ambrose) and Rep. Dr. Karla Drenner (D - Avondale Estates) when the bills introduced by Drenner to ban cell towers from school grounds were halted by Sims with questionable logic of unconstitutionality.
Sims has ties to the highly controversial group ALEC, recently in trouble for its support of the "Stand Your Ground" law that may play a role in the Trevon Martin shooting death in Florida. ALEC members seek to push forth a highly conservative agenda that favors big business interests, disguised as being for the citizens. ATT is one of the large corporate backers of ALEC that has not pulled out of the group recently like so many others have. For more about ALEC, see ALEC Exposed.
Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, McDonald's, Wendy's, Intuit, Reed-Elsevier, and others have dropped their membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Click here to tell other firms bankrolling ALEC to do the same.
More urgently for DeKalb County residents is that HB 1299 will result in a question being posed to voters on the upcoming July 2012 ballot. This question needs your NO vote. Warn everyone you know to show up for this election, or get an absentee ballot if they will not be in town, so that your area does not accidentally vote that you WANT cell towers at your schools. It will most likely result in your school being next on the list and may even result in an attempt to overturn our county ordinances already in place to protect our health and property values!
VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO!
26 "( ) YES NONBINDING ADVISORY REFERENDUM
27 Should the local or independent school system of DeKalb County or a
28 (X ) NO charter school in DeKalb County place or operate a telecommunications
29 tower on any elementary, middle, or high school property?"
VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO! VOTE NO!
LAST YEAR: July 2011 - the month when the School Board of DeKalb County voted to lease property to T-mobile over objections made by Get the Cell Out - Atlanta and others that communities were not properly notified and public opinion had not been duly considered.
Upon return to school in August 2011, the board began to hear exactly what we warned them about, an uprising of parents and community members began coming forward to complain that the decision was snuck past them in the middle of Summer when most families are not focused on school activities and many people are out of town.
THIS YEAR July 2012 - were there any lessons learned from past mistakes? No, in fact, if anything, the school board learned that July is a great time for them to sneak things past the school communities, so they plan to do it to us again. Not only will they hold school board elections during this Presidential Primary period, they will also add the question about cell towers, without calling them cell towers, and without the support of those who lobbyed their state officials in order to gain their help.
The unamimous support of the county commissioners should have been enough to stop the state from interfering. The attempts at state bills were not successful, largely because they were introduced too late in the session to make it through the committee process, esp. when stalled by the committe chairman Rep. Chuck Sims (R - Ambrose).
But, rather than stop there, the telecomm industry is pushing back against the wishes of the people. By introuducing a question onto the ballot that will do nothing to help the citizens, they are attempting to take control away from the citizens and override the power of local control in a very ALEC-sort of way. The power of this decision belongs with the county commissioners and the Office of Planning and Sustainability and the Office of Public Works, as headed by the DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis.
What will CEO Burrell Ellis do? We asked him this question MONTHS AGO. To hear his response, check out our blog entry and YOUTUBE video from the CEO's Town Hall Meeting back in November 2011. We even wrote to him long before this entire issue got out of control: our letter here.
The FCC Telecommunications Act of 1996, the one that the telecomm gurus like to quote so often, actually speaks to the fact that the ultimate power should always remain under local control when it comes to the placement and design of cell towers. While it does state that a local municipality cannot deny a cell tower SOLELY on the basis of environmental factors if it complys with FCC regulations, it does not state that they must approve anything that is contrary to local zoning ordinances already in place.
In fact, we have sent a letter to CEO Ellis with backup of a legal case from Cobb County where a federal court upheld the rights of the local government to uphold its own regulations. We will be posting that letter in the next couple days once we have confirmed receipt by all the intended recipients.
Social media and person-to-person networking is going to have to work overtime the next few months if there is any hope of beating these folks at their own game!
Please, tell everyone you know: VOTE NO on the ballot question about "telecommuications towers on school grounds." What they are really asking is whether you wish to have your county commissioners' opinions ignored and your local ordinances disobeyed so that they can put a cell tower at YOUR school in YOUR neighborhood. They want YOU to be next!
And write to CEO Burrell Ellis asking that he uphold the county ordinances in DeKalb for safe siting of cell towers AWAY from residentially zoned communities.
Contact CEO Burrell Ellis:· CEO Burrell Ellis
Chief Executive Officer
DeKalb County Government
330 W. Ponce de Leon Avenue, 6th Floor
Decatur, GA 30030
· Email: schedulingceoellis@dekalbcountyga.gov
· Or ceo@dekalbcountyga.gov
And, sign the countywide petition at: www.thepetitionsite.com/1/GTCO-ATL
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