To the Editor:

I hope to be understood that my family is as pro-wireless communication as anyone in Cashiers. Verizon needs to find a new place to put its antennas because the tower currently hosting its antenna will have to move sometime late next year.

All the other carriers serving Cashiers have their antennas on a different existing tower behind Freeman Gas. That tower has room available and is willing to host Verizon’s antenna. Colocating there is the best place to put them, instead of on a new tower 12 stories tall to be constructed in the Gana Sita neighborhood.

Even if our neighbor’s 20-acre tract in Gana Sita were the best place for a new tower, it doesn’t have to be put in the far corner, next to two of our property lines. There is ample room. They have 20 wooded acres in which to work. It doesn’t have to go so close and in such an exposed place within our view corridor of surrounding mountain peaks, and that is exactly where it is currently proposed.

Alternate sites on the same parcel were reviewed by all interested parties last summer at the bidding of the Jackson County Planning Board. We felt a compromise was struck by moving the tower site only 250 feet southeast (or further), embedded in the woods and just slightly off the ridge line.  

It was and still is a reasonable compromise.

We were surprised to learn that, even after Jackson County Planning Board suggested that we find a compromise and consider moving the tower site, the big corporation that wants to build it refused to budge, even though it hurts our property value deeply.

We are asking the Jackson County Commissioners to deny the application for the proposed site, but not necessarily alternate, less harmful sites in the middle of the same parcel if Verizon doesn’t colocate on the existing tower behind Freeman Gas, or a less intrusive site for a new tower cannot be found.

We can do better when it comes to site location than what this global corporation wants to ram down our throats. We can still have good Verizon service in the Cashiers crossroads area without damaging neighboring properties. 

Please come to the public hearing at 11 a.m. on Dec. 10 and and the judicial hearing at 1 p.m. on the same day at the Cashiers Library. The public is welcome and so is your opinion.

Rick Barrs

Cashiers