Neighbors still angry about a 100-foot Pacific Bell Wireless tower built in March near their north Chico homes
took to the sidewalks Saturday, urging boycott of a store selling Pac Bell wireless service.
Six members of Citizens for Community Justice,
a group formed to fight for removal of the red-and-white striped tower, held picket signs for around three hours toward drivers passing the wireless phone outlet on Whitman Avenue.
"We're still just as angry as we were when all this started.
The (tower) is just a constant reminder to us of our cause," said Chris Perske, who has worked for months to fight the tower she can see from the bedroom window of her Silver Oak Drive. Perske's sign, in red, white and black paint, told passing drivers:
"Pac Bell violates our civil rights with lies" and "Pac Bell:
Boycott them now."
She said the store, owned by Cellcom International, Inc.
and an authorized agent of Pacific Bell Wireless service, was the
ideal spot to protest the tower,
especially given its spot on a busy street across from Costco. "This store is selling wireless products ... and they're part of this whole wireless thing," she said.
"This is just a convenient place in our community where people can be educated."
A salesman inside the store said he didn't notice any decline in customers during the picketing.
In fact, he said, some people who shopped Saturday said the picket signs alerted them the store was there.
But Perske's biggest goal is simply for the tower to come down. Neighbors' complaints that the tower hurts their quality of life and lowers property values helped lead to a recent ordinance by the county Board of Supervisors that bans communications towers in residential neighborhoods, among other provisions. But the law doesn't mean anything for the Mariposa tower, which was built after the county planning commission approved a use permit in February.
Still, Supervisor Mary Anne Houx was surprised to hear Saturday the group was still pushing for removal of the tower. "We just passed the toughest cell tower ordinance, that I understand, in the United States," she said. "We told them from the get-go that whatever we did was not retroactive, and there was never a promise made that the tower would come down." Houx said several community meetings were held, attended by members of the group, where it was made very clear that anything the Board of Supervisors could do would be for the future and not the past.
"I feel awful about the Mariposa tower, and I wish it would come down, but there is nothing I can do to force it to come down," she said. "I think they have a right to be upset. I think it's one the ugliest towers I have ever seen. I would be upset if it was in my neighborhood ... I think the industry has a responsibility to make them less obnoxious. "Placing them in neighborhoods is unacceptable, and our ordinance has said that ... It's not appropriate for these companies to come into what they view as rural counties and just do whatever they want." She said she hopes the City Council will follow suit with an ordinance to regulate communications towers.
Mariposa tower neighbors agree, but Saturday demanded something be done about their own eyesore. "We want them to take that tower down and move it to a more appropriate place and not do this to anyone else," said Maggie Van Dame, whose sign read, "Pac Bell is a bad neighbor" and "Pac Bell destroyed our neighborhood on Mariposa Avenue." "There's a direct shot when I'm in my backyard and I can't get away from it ... It is 104 feet tall and it's candy-striped with a light on top of it ... It looms over this neighborhood like a huge industrial smoke stack. It's so ugly.
"I think we're getting a pretty good response from people. They're honking, giving us a high-five sign ... I think this is a good way to educate people." Perske said she wouldn't take the Board of Supervisors' response that nothing could be done. "I think they feel if they just stonewall us long enough, we'll go away - but we won't go away," she said. "Some people, when they feel grief or they feel angry, they feel that there's nothing they can do. Other people ... they fight. And that's what we're going to do."
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