By Sarah Lombardo
Pacific Bell Mobile Services is making a big noise in Saratoga, and it's not the sound of a phone ringing.
Instead, plans by Pac Bell to build antennas in four different locations in Saratoga are causing an uproar among residents who say not only are the structures going to be unsightly, but residents should have been given more information and allowed more say in the matter at the Saratoga Planning Commission's July 24 meeting.
Residents in the Congress Springs district are so angry the commission approved the project, they plan to file an appeal to bring the matter before the Saratoga City Council.
"Pac Bell wasn't flexible. The Planning Commission wasn't flexible. They just rubber-stamped it," said resident Anne-Marie Vogel, whose husband attended the July 24 meeting.
Madeline Chiavetta, who spoke at the meeting, said members of the Planning Commission seemed to have their minds made up. "They didn't bother to listen to me," she said.
The project calls for the construction of four 34-foot antennas and utility cabinets to be built at Congress Springs Park at Glen Brae Drive, on the West Valley College campus, on the vacant lot on Sousa Lane at Quito Road and on a commercial building at Saratoga Oaks Shopping Center. The Glen Brae Drive location is what the Congress Springs Park neighbors are appealing.According to Chiavetta, residents received notification letters only days before the Planning Commission's meeting on the issue. Vogel said some of her neighbors never received letters. But both women said that nowhere in the letter did it specify where the antenna would be placed.
"[The letter] did not show that the pole was going to be right on Glen Brae Drive," Chiavetta said.
"We're not opposing the technology," Vogel said. "We're opposing that it's right on the street."
Vogel said Sprint is also applying for a permit to build an antenna, but that it will be further down the road at the other end of Congress Springs Park. That location, she said, would be less of an eyesore and the commission should have considered moving the Pac Bell pole there.
But Sami Asfour, a member of the Planning Commission, said the issue is simply a matter of the residents not understanding the technology and having a "not in my back yard" mentality.
"Everyone wants the technology, but not near them," he said.
Asfour said because of the nature of the mobile telephone frequencies, the Pac Bell pole, to be located where Congress Springs Park connects with Glen Brae Drive, cannot be placed at the same location as Sprint's proposed pole, at the other side of the park near the tennis courts.
Asfour said the antenna could be built on the same pole, but then to avoid clashing frequencies, the pole would have to be 60 feet tall, so the antenna could be spaced adequately. And a pole that tall, he said, "would be ridiculous."
Vogel said she and her neighbors feel so strongly about appealing the antenna that even if they are unable to raise the $675 needed to file and appeal through fundraising efforts, she and her husband will pay the fee themselves.
"We're not asking for anything unreasonable," she said.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, August 7, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved