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I'd never even heard of the phrase 'cancel culture' was until Izzy brought it up. But as Ann said, that only represents a very small number of frustrated, desperate parents in the midst of this larger situation. The majority of those protesting don't condone going after the man's business. Instead, they are using other forms of protest. In some ways that seems like a very small diversion or circus act to main problem at hand. However, it seem like that is really the only thing folks seem to care about, the side show. BTW, I went onto Yelp to see what all the fuss was about and didn't see anything negative stated there nor was there anything on his business FB page. I think its a bit overblown - a diversion.
In terms of trusting big corporations or the local city government to 'do the right thing,' I find that a lot tougher to swallow. If no one protested it would simply go right through, period. The city has already ok'd it, Verizon pays the owner who apparently offered that section of his land for the tower and its a done deal. But the parents of the children attending the school deserve a say in the matter as well. Isn't that reasonable, or is it really asking too much? Since they're not, many are frustrated (over 1000+ signatures on the petition) and a few are going off the rails. If the only concern is regarding the few going off the rails, then I think the main point is lost completely. That is the entire community working together on an acceptable solution to the main problem. Not focusing on the guys olive and oils business - the side show to primary issue at hand.
Derek
Last edited by MtnSurfer; 02-01-2020 at 09:49 PM..
I'd never even heard of the phrase 'cancel culture' was until Izzy brought it up. But as Ann said, that only represents a very small number of frustrated, desperate parents in the midst of this situation. The majority of those protesting don't condone going after the man's business. Instead, they are using other forms of protest. In some ways that seems like a very small diversion or circus show to main problem at hand. However, it seem like that is really the only thing folks seem to care about, the side show. BTW, I went onto Yelp out of curiosity and didn't see anything negative stated there. I think its a bit overblown.
In terms of trusting big corporations or the local city government to 'do the right thing,' I find that a lot tougher to swallow. If no one protested it would simply go right through, period. The city has already ok'd it, Verizon pays the owner who apparently offers that section of his land for the tower and its a done deal. But the parents of the children attending the school deserve a say in the matter as well. Isn't that reasonable, or it really asking too much? Since they're not, many are frustrated (over 1000+ signatures on the petition) and a few are going off the rails. If the only concern is regarding the few going off the rails, then I think the main point is lost completely. That is the entire community working together for on an acceptable solution to the main problem. Not focusing on the guys olive and oils business - the side show to the real problem.
Derek
I don't always agree with Stealth, but I do here. We live in a democracy not mob rule. There are democratic methods to govern and regulate land-use in our region. If the low frequency microwaves emitted by cell phone towers are a public health concern then they would be a health concern for every school in the city, or county, state, or country. I'm not convinced that they do. But if so, we should all be throwing away our cell phones because they emit the same frequency radiation as the cell towers. Likewise, pointing to a cancer cluster at some random school somewhere in the world that also has a nearby cell tower doesn't really demonstrate anything unless every other environmental and genetic variable is controlled for.
This feels more like the anti-vax hysteria than anything scientific. And perhaps some aesthetic NIMBY-ism going on by folks who just don't want an "ugly" tower nearby and are latching on to any excuse to oppose it. And who doesn't like to hate on Verizon. They annoy me too. But if there are indeed public health concerns about proximity to cell phone towers then the city or county or state should be taking up the issue and public pressure should be directed there rather than one single property next to one particularly affluent school in an affluent neighborhood.
I agree that going after the landowners business is inappropriate. It was a small handful of angry (? guessing) people that acted out.
Members of this community have united to work together to see if we can find a way to remain neutral and respectful to oppose this tower from being placed so close to the school. Many new friendships have developed as a result. This is a great town. Sadly, we have found the telecom giants and the FCC have made it illegal for us to voice our concerns with regards to health issues, harm to the environment or loss of property value.
I wasn’t saying Navidi was rich, I was pointing out the oil store is not his sole source of income as it was alluded to in another post. Never called him any names or labeled him as “evil”. Placement of the tower has some flexibility. Moving the tower behind some trees was not an option the property owner was willing to entertain, according to the paperwork filed.
He has the right to do what he wants with his property. But when his actions will expose 600+ students (K-5) to RF on a day-to-day continual basis, that creates a slippery slope as well as a lot of unhappy parents. No long-term studies have been done on children so one cannot say that it is safe. A 2-year study (5 days a week, 6 hours a day) on cell tower exposure was published recently by Meo et al. Findings showed that exposure to cell tower RF was associated with delayed fine and gross motor skills, spatial working memory, and attention among adolescents (13-16 years of age). Our FCC limit is 100 times more RF than what the students experienced in this study. Also, that tower was 600 feet from the school studied, the Camas school is 310 feet from the proposed site. These kids are our future, they should not be guinea pigs.
With all due respect to StealthRabbit, unless I’m misinterpreting your post, it seems you are just as fired up as the people of this town.
Texasdiver, its nice to see you and Stealth agreeing on something. It seems like he and I tend to see eye to eye on many other issues. And in a way, yes, I'm playing devil's advocate since I don't have a dog in this fight - no children attending the school. The whole conversation just seems so lopsided to me, only focused on what a small group of very frustrated parents did who are 'the mob' in your analogy, rather than the legitimate concerns of the larger group of protesters and parents. And they are exercising their democratic right to protest along with freedom of speech since we do not live in a dictatorship. The gov't for the people, by people. Just because old laws are on the books does not mean they do not need to change. In fact, grass root movements like this are many times the seeds of change to antiquated health, safety and environmental laws. But that doesn't occur overnight and most certainly not in time for this decision.
There are definitely a number studies which point to problems with the proximity of cell towers to young children, not simply random events which have occurred elsewhere. Otherwise, there would be no concern. It's not just superstition as some seem to imply. Though that whole debate is for another forum, not this one, and will no doubt continue for many years to come. Regarding the aesthetic NIMBY-ism, I think Verizon promised to disguise it as big green metal tree. They've played this game countless times before. Haha. So, I highly doubt that is the issue. There are uglier eye soars to deal with in the city limits and urban boundary if that was really the motivation. No, parents of the children have real concerns, and disregarding them is the true problem, plain and simple.
Derek
Last edited by MtnSurfer; 02-01-2020 at 11:43 PM..
This feels more like the anti-vax hysteria than anything scientific. And perhaps some aesthetic NIMBY-ism going on by folks who just don't want an "ugly" tower nearby and are latching on to any excuse to oppose it.
Like the situation in Hockinson a bunch of years ago.
Like the situation in Hockinson a bunch of years ago.
And here in Camas the last time a T-Mobile cell phone tower was under review in 2016 right here on 18th Street at the top of Prune Hill next to the water tower:
Earlier this month more than a dozen people spoke in opposition of the permit application during a public hearing in front of Hearing Examiner Joe Turner, who will be making the final decision on the issue.
Many of those who testified expressed concerns about a wireless telecommunications tower’s visual impacts, health issues related to exposure to radio frequency waves, and the effects on migratory bird patterns.
Real estate agent Francine O’Shaughnessy said the wireless tower will block her view of Mount Hood and property values will be impacted.
“Everybody in this room is thinking the same thing as I am: There goes my property values,” she said. “I pay $7,000 per year in property taxes. Most people in my neighborhood pay upwards of $10,000 a year in taxes. I’d like to know what the city is going to do about this.”
James Christensen said citizens of Camas should have a say in whether a project that visually impacts an area, moves forward.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ann29c
Thanks for the welcome, MtnSurfer.
I agree that going after the landowners business is inappropriate. It was a small handful of angry (? guessing) people that acted out.
...
With all due respect to StealthRabbit, unless I’m misinterpreting your post, it seems you are just as fired up as the people of this town.
I happen to have spent 35+ yrs supporting the community and it's needs, and have made commercial
and extensive volunteer investments in Camas and taken personal risk to do so. (As I did in Colorado (and Hazel Dell) before being chased from there by newcomers who made it impossible to stay as a local resident / business owner.
Moving a farm (3x) takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, a lot of semi trucks and 10+ yrs to re-establish soils, orchards, fences, barns, water systems, sustainable erosion practices... Then a bunch of people from outside the area will be sure to come ruin your community and livelihood. (count on it)
easy for them to move... 4 hrs and a uHaul...
Remember who it was who invested their lifetime, personal values and dollars to make nice places, the nice places they became... Consider many of those very people have been 'displaced' by irrational and imposing newcomers. Yes, volunteering with seniors and hospice I see this frequently (including Camas), just had the funeral for a previously influential Camas community volunteer this week. (they were displaced 20 yrs ago)
It's a crying shame.
I just brought this subject up to avail some dialog for the future readers of this thread who are making informed decisions on their next investment into a community.
I happen to have spent 35+ yrs supporting the community and it's needs, and have made commercial
and extensive volunteer investments in Camas and taken personal risk to do so. (As I did in Colorado (and Hazel Dell) before being chased from there by newcomers who made it impossible to stay as a local resident / business owner.
Moving a farm (3x) takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, a lot of semi trucks and 10+ yrs to re-establish soils, orchards, fences, barns, water systems, sustainable erosion practices... Then a bunch of people from outside the area will be sure to come ruin your community and livelihood. (count on it)
easy for them to move... 4 hrs and a uHaul...
Remember who it was who invested their lifetime, personal values and dollars to make nice places, the nice places they became... Consider many of those very people have been 'displaced' by irrational and imposing newcomers. Yes, volunteering with seniors and hospice I see this frequently (including Camas), just had the funeral for a previously influential Camas community volunteer this week. (they were displaced 20 yrs ago)
It's a crying shame.
I just brought this subject up to avail some dialog for the future readers of this thread who are making informed decisions on their next investment into a community.
I tend to agree to a point with what Stealth is saying. Newcomers should at least be aware of the norms and traditions of the area they are moving into, and be sensitive to how they may be displacing people, customs, and traditions. But I also don't think longevity gives one veto power over change. Otherwise we would have to give this whole region back to the Chinook Indians who were here very first. But a whole lot of really crappy planning and built environment around here is also completely home-grown too.
My biggest complaint with the greater Camas area is that they allow private developers to build endless stand-alone subdivisions with no connections to each other in terms of roads, trails, greenbelts, parks, or anything else. Decades ago towns use to plot out the roads and trails and park networks in logical fasion long before the first developer was allowed to start construction. Which is how old subdivisions in Portland are all interconnected and new ones in Camas are not. The current construction on Brady Road near Prune Hill Elementary is a case in point. To avoid this one bottleneck you have to drive 3 miles out of the way to the east via 192nd, or cut through a maze of winding surface streets along the base of Prune Hill that is impossible to navigate without GPS unless you have done it 20 times before. This is all because the city just let that whole part of Camas develop a bunch of independent subdivisions without having any kind of rational street grid in place first. One could block off 3 or 4 key intersections in Camas and basically bring the city to a halt. In Portland no one would hardly notice because the grid provides infinite numbers of alternate routes. The city is poised to allow a whole lot of new development north of the Lake. I'm not optimistic that development pattern will be any different. Most likely a dozen new isolated subdivisions that all funnel onto the same two through streets with no inter-connectivity of streets or trails or anything else.
One thing I have noticed after living all over the country. Is that no place is ever static. Towns and cities are either advancing or regressing. And attempting to free a place in time and space simply guarantees that it will start declining from that point forward, as people and the economy changes but the town is too brittle or ossified to change with it. Camas is going to change. It will never again be the papermaker mill town of the 1950s. What that change looks like is really the question.
I tend to agree to a point with what Stealth is saying. Newcomers should at least be aware of the norms and traditions of the area they are moving into, and be sensitive to how they may be displacing people, customs, and traditions. But I also don't think longevity gives one veto power over change. Otherwise we would have to give this whole region back to the Chinook Indians who were here very first. But a whole lot of really crappy planning and built environment around here is also completely home-grown too.
My biggest complaint with the greater Camas area is that they allow private developers to build endless stand-alone subdivisions with no connections to each other in terms of roads, trails, greenbelts, parks, or anything else. Decades ago towns use to plot out the roads and trails and park networks in logical fasion long before the first developer was allowed to start construction. Which is how old subdivisions in Portland are all interconnected and new ones in Camas are not. The current construction on Brady Road near Prune Hill Elementary is a case in point. To avoid this one bottleneck you have to drive 3 miles out of the way to the east via 192nd, or cut through a maze of winding surface streets along the base of Prune Hill that is impossible to navigate without GPS unless you have done it 20 times before. This is all because the city just let that whole part of Camas develop a bunch of independent subdivisions without having any kind of rational street grid in place first. One could block off 3 or 4 key intersections in Camas and basically bring the city to a halt. In Portland no one would hardly notice because the grid provides infinite numbers of alternate routes. The city is poised to allow a whole lot of new development north of the Lake. I'm not optimistic that development pattern will be any different. Most likely a dozen new isolated subdivisions that all funnel onto the same two through streets with no inter-connectivity of streets or trails or anything else.
One thing I have noticed after living all over the country. Is that no place is ever static. Towns and cities are either advancing or regressing. And attempting to free a place in time and space simply guarantees that it will start declining from that point forward, as people and the economy changes but the town is too brittle or ossified to change with it. Camas is going to change. It will never again be the papermaker mill town of the 1950s. What that change looks like is really the question.
I see that same problem throughout Clark County. So it makes me wonder if it is more of a statewide epidemic, anti-pattern and tradition. Or at least a western WA problem. Cities and counties do not seem to have real master plans for all the amenities, infrastructure and support services needed for its citizens such as parks, adequate roads, sidewalks, biking lanes verses overly narrow single lane roads with no shoulders and no lighting. Then add telephone posts right next these narrow roads. This results in too many avoidable accidents with little to no margin for error. Then add in poor visibility with no street lights and low visibility weather (rain, fog, ice, snow). I think a young teen just died recently on such a road in Vancouver.
Without a unified master plan, new developments go up without adequate supporting services needed for the larger community and its future growth. This includes health and safety features for families, pedestrians, etc... There's not much forethought vs. simply building them and then popping more out. So the roads remain the same, parks and so on. This includes plans for adequate cell coverage vs. the add hoc method wherever a telco gets lucky and locates a lessor/seller even when right next to an the elementary school. Everything is done in this stovepiped, 'one-off,' knee jerk, disjointed fashion.
I'm not sure how Portland city planners have done a better job. But I have noticed a difference in parts. Though many others cities throughout the US put much of the PNW to shame in this area. This includes many cities in the south, southwest, midwest, east coast, etc... I know there are excuses as to why. But I don't discount simple lack of planning and enforcement of them as one of the main factors. Unfortunately, turning a quick buck can drive decisions. More taxpayers = more $$$, so squeeze 'em in!! More infrastructure costs more $$$ and deliberate, thoughtful planning. And its always harder to 'fix' infrastructure problems after all the building is done and the dust settles, unfortunately. But here we are.
Derek
Last edited by MtnSurfer; 02-03-2020 at 08:35 PM..
I see that same problem throughout Clark County. So it makes me wonder if it is more of a statewide epidemic, anti-pattern and tradition. Or at least a western WA problem. Cities and counties do not seem to have real master plans for all the amenities, infrastructure and support services needed for its citizens such as parks, adequate roads, sidewalks, biking lanes verses overly narrow single lane roads with no shoulders and no lighting. Then add telephone posts right next these narrow roads. This results in too many avoidable accidents with little to no margin for error. Then add in poor visibility with no street lights and low visibility weather (rain, fog, ice, snow). I think a young teen just died recently on such a road in Vancouver.
Without a unified master plan, new developments go up without adequate supporting services needed for the larger community and its future growth. This includes health and safety features for families, pedestrians, etc... There's not much forethought vs. simply building them and then popping more out. So the roads remain the same, parks and so on. This includes plans for adequate cell coverage vs. the add hoc method wherever a telco gets lucky and locates a lessor/seller even when right next to an the elementary school. Everything is done in this stovepiped, 'one-off,' knee jerk, disjointed fashion.
I'm not sure how Portland city planners have done a better job. But I have noticed a difference in parts. Though many others cities throughout the US put much of the PNW to shame in this area. This includes many cities in the south, southwest, midwest, east coast, etc... I know there are excuses as to why. But I don't discount simple lack of planning and enforcement of them as one of the main factors. Unfortunately, turning a quick buck can drive decisions. More taxpayers = more $$$, so squeeze 'em in!! More infrastructure costs more $$$ and deliberate, thoughtful planning. And its always harder to 'fix' infrastructure problems after all the building is done and the dust settles, unfortunately. But here we are.
Derek
I think it is just reflective of different time periods. Most of Portland proper was platted and developed by the 1910s and 1920s along street car lines and before freeways. It was an entirely different era. If you poke around in newer parts of the metro area like Happy Valley, Wilsonville, and Tualatin it is just as bad as Clark County. In fact, traffic congestion is universally worse.
After WW2 the county just went car and suburbs happy and with cars you could drop a subdivision in a cow pasture anywhere and people could still get to it. In the 1920s street-car era people built close to transit and cities stayed compact because who wanted to commute by horse or on foot way out to the country and then back just for eggs or milk? That is why older neighborhoods in Portland are so much more compact and connected. Even very upscale ones like Laurelhurst and Eastmoreland.
I don't know if Clark County is worse than anyplace else. It's certainly not worse than anyplace I have ever lived or seen in Texas which is the epicenter of sprawl. Clark County does do a somewhat better job of requiring things like sidewalks and bike lanes and such where new construction is happening. But there is still a lot of old stuff that is not up to standard. You don't even see that in new construction in much of Texas.
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It seems like he and I tend to see eye to eye on many other issues. And in a way, yes, I'm playing devil's advocate since I don't have a dog in this fight - no children attending the school. The whole conversation just seems so lopsided to me, only focused on what a small group of very frustrated parents did who are 'the mob' in your analogy, rather than the legitimate concerns of the larger group of protesters and parents. And they are exercising their democratic right to protest along with freedom of speech since we do not live in a dictatorship. The gov't for the people, by people. Just because old laws are on the books does not mean they do not need to change. In fact, grass root movements like this are many times the seeds of change to antiquated health, safety and environmental laws. But that doesn't occur overnight and most certainly not in time for this decision.
