From the Womack / Briarlake transcript: please read below:
Womack: One of your neighbors, I discussed it with him because he, uh, came. And I asked him, “what’s your interest?” And I said, “are you concerned?” and he said, “Oh, no. no.” He said, “I’ve put cell towers up all over the country. Now you may know who I’m talking about, somebody right around here. I live, not quite as close as you are. I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t know why you didn’t know it because we tried to get the message out.
If you are looking to help Briarlake, it is important you try to identify who this person might be... a reported resident of your own community who attended the T-mobile meeting and apparantly puts up cell towers all over the country! Is this the voice of the community? Is this the person who convinced the school board that you wanted the tower so badly that even when Donna Edler tried to remove "all schools," she was corrected because some schools wanted the towers? Her proposed ammendment ended up asking to remove all except Brairlake and Lakeside. Why? Who was it that was so convincing from your own community that the board members elected to represent you did not think twice about stating that you were in favor?
This is a big piece of the puzzle! We have our own beliefs, but we will keep them to ourselves for now as we do not wish to publically call out anyone unfairly. We just hope this question will bother you as much as it bothers us. We hope you get answers before it is too late!
For part of this transcript, refer to: http://www.getthecelloutatl.com/2011/09/meeting-with-paul-womack-at-briarlake.html
For the remainder of the transcript and full audio, please contact nobriarlaketower.org as they have an original audio recording of the meeting and have refused to release it. We hope they will do so now as it may have more information that can help the community.
It does NOT matter what this person said or was quoted as saying -- he did not have authority to speak on behalf of the school or community --- note: he did not claim to be representing the community at this meeting either and so he was most likely just trying to talk respectfully to Paul "in the beginning" & obtain information ---think about it....get more bees with honey. It certainly is much easier to play Monday morning quarterback & hindsight truly is 20/20. Also, for the record...the school took donations at Open House for its Foundation (you could simply ask for the financial records if you'd like to know)...stop implying they took money from the county....that didn't happen and again *all your hard work is discounted when you when you make false assumptions. Really....and despite this, definitely no hard feelings or anger...just wish you could either 1). stop doing it or 2). admit you might be wrong....thinking #2 might be harder for you than #1. Appreciate the excellent research you have presented, though..the factual part. Please keep it up.
ReplyDeleteNo, actually, in this case it is not easier to play Monday morning Quarterback. It would have been much easier to have actually been at these "public input" meetings so we would know exactly what transpired.
ReplyDeleteBy talking to the people who were there, YOU might gain some insight about how the tower was approved for YOUR backyard!
It has been stated by a few PTA officers and by Jesse Cunningham (board member) during their meeting at MLK that they actually "took a vote" and that was how the community input was gathered. Why would it be wrong to assume that the same thing might have happened at the other schools? That might be a question for your friend Paul, not us.
We do not think it was right for the few attendees who showed up to have the authority to speak for the school. But, that's the power the board gave them, not us. And, if they were given this kind of authority, wouldn't it be more likely that they would have elected to say "no" and not risk upsetting their neighbors? What would you have done? Or were you there? Perhaps that is why you are not as curious as we are about what happened.
If you are truly interested in stopping the cell tower from going up, how can it hurt you to know as much as possible about how the tower was approved in the first place? Knowledge is power.
If you do not have the facts or they don't add up, then by all means keep asking questions. Otherwise you are just fighting in the dark with your hands tied behind your back.
If you are suggesting that the "get more flies with hooney" approach is working, then it would be interesting for the rest of us to find out exactly what you are getting out of all of this. It does not appear to be working if your goal is to stop the cell tower as the site testing appears to be well underway and right on target for a December or January build.
You don't think it is significant if either A) someone who puts up cell towers all over the country happens to own property adjacent to the school? Coincidence? The same person just happened to hear about a meeting that no one else in the entire school or community was alerted about? And, that person can only be called "unknown" by the PTA when it should have been a pretty important detail to have the only attendees sign in or at least introduce themselves to someone before sitting down to hear the plans of T-mobile. The people who did attend did not alert their neighbors? Aren't you curious about why? Maybe they heard something that convinced them the tower would be good for the community? Wouldn't you want to hear that news?
Any time we make a suggestion about where the money might be going or who might have been involved, it is just that - a suggestion worth checking into for anyone who might be trying to find out what really happened. We would be thrilled to be wrong and we have stated that on many, many occassions.
We would love to be wrong about the dangers of cell phones, cell towers and RF radiation. We would love to be wrong about the intentions of the people who were involved in placing this issue before all of us and then forcing a decision upon us and our neighbors.
Thirty years is a long time. One day, our children will grow up and they will want to know what we did when this issue came up. The only answer we can live with is that we did everything possible to alert everyone we knew about what was happening.