Cell-Phone Tower in Mesilla??

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” (Was Paul Newman watching Mesilla blow up over a proposed cell tower?)

People told me Mesilla Mayor Nora Barraza was pushing a 60-foot Verizon cell-phone tower within Mesilla’s historic zone – and stifling dissent.

Few would want such a tower: unsightly; undermining the historic ambiance Mesilla takes great pains to maintain; noise and light pollution; even possible health issues (Verizon’s insurers refuse to cover health risks); and it would violate decades-old ordinances.

At a recent public meeting, The Mayor cut each speaker’s 3 minutes to 2; abandoned the usual practice of letting folks yield part of their time to someone else; and left passionate residents with carefully-constructed comments in the cold. Information on the tower situation was hard to come by. Officials said, “We can’t talk because of litigation.”

The ordinance outlawing such towers provides, “public property owned or otherwise controlled by the Town may be exempt.” Folks feared The Mayor would use that language to push through Verizon’s tower. Curious, I called Mayor Nora Barraza and asked to meet. I had questions. I also thought that the ordinance created no automatic exemption, but meant a specific project could be exempted if the Town so chose, through its board of trustees following normal procedures.

We had a pleasant talk. The Mayor denied wanting to push the deal through. She provided context: an earlier lawsuit that I’d just heard of wasn’t over. As I later learned, last November the U.S. Magistrate overturned the Trustees’ denial of a Verizon application and remanded the case to the Trustees for further proceedings, which meant Mesilla and Verizon had to talk. The Town has asked Verizon for alternatives.

Mayor Barraza told me that the Board of Trustees would have to decide the matter. The ongoing litigation limited what she could say; but she did not plan to jam this through. (I’m assuming that she never intended to jam this through, not that the uproar caused her to retreat.) She also said the tower would help with public safety.

People had such different views that I wondered how that had happened. Cutting the public’s comment time, which Barraza justified as necessary so everyone could speak, angered folks and seemed to disregard their concerns. Explanations such I’d received)  were apparently not offered to citizens generally. (Likely the litigation complicated communications.) Residents should know that this issue, will recur. Federal law favors Verizon, but takes local factors into account. So watch out – and speak up when necessary.

After interviewing the Mayor, I attended the start of a planning and zoning meeting. Twenty people were there to speak against the tower during public comment. Some had been informed that they could only comment on agenda items. (In city or county meetings, the public addresses agenda items as they come up, and the requirement for speaking during general public comment is to discuss only items not on the agenda.) How things are done matters. I saw citizens being muzzled in a curt, contemptuous manner. That doesn’t enhance community trust. The meeting was rancorous.

After trying to ask a question (with the chair calling for security), I split for the Plaza, to eat chocolate ice cream while sitting on a bench in the sun, listening to kids laugh. Grateful to be exactly where I was.

And I’m grateful to live in a thoughtful community with diverse views expressed by people who care.

                                 – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 27 November 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on both stations’ websites.

[By the way, the U.S. Magistrate’s opinion in Cellco v Mesilla can be found here. Cellco is Verizon. The full case caption reads, CELLCO PARTNERSHIP d/b/a VERIZON WIRELESS, Plaintiff, v. TOWN OF MESILLA, NEW MEXICO and TOWN OF MESILLA BOARD OF TRUSTEES, Defendants. I’ll summarize some points below, but the folks who are really interested in this issue should read the opinion and perhaps even the relevant law, or engage a lawyer.]

[A key point for folks organizing against this also emerges from that decision, although there should also be in minutes from the relevant Mesilla Trustees Meeting: faced with a proposal to put a cell-phone tower out by Highway 28 and Boutz Rd., the trustees apparently voted 4-0 against allowing that. (I gather Mayor Nora Barraza votes only to break a tie.) That should clarify that unless until further developments, the trustees are likely to be reasonably receptive to arguments against the current proposal, should it ever come up for a vote.]

[Basically, Verizon cut a deal with Susan Krueger to build a tower on her property. The Mesilla Planning and Zoning and Board of Trustees each voted against granting permission. Verizon sued.

[A federal law precludes towns, cities, and villages from simply excluding a cell-phone tower because they feel like it. The key impact of the Magistrate’s decision is that he did overturn the Board of Trustees rejection of the cell-phone tower proposal; but he made clear that had different grounds for the local decision been present, the decision might stand. That, plus the law, should tell trustees what grounds might suffice for a decision to stand and what won’t. That’s why everyone should read the decision. (I have not researched what has occurred in the case during the intervening year. The magistrate’s order was issued 29 November 2921.) For example:

(4) denying the application based on “generalized expressions of concern about the aesthetics of property value [sic] violates federal law”; and, (5) denying the application based “on unsubstantiated health concerns articulated by several community members . . . also violates federal law.”

On the other hand, emphasis on Mesilla’s unique character, and thus the enhanced importance of aesthetics and consistency in a town of particular historical significance that has taken great pains to retain evidence of, might be more successful, as, perhaps, would be a less “generalized” evidence of impact on property value. Obviously interested residents (and the town administration) should consult legal counsel on what grounds for opposition (1) are most appropriate under federal law (and town ordinances) and (2) are factually apparent here.]

[I have not researched the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (“TCA) or read other appellate cases construing and interpreting it.]

[I will note that the TCA (47 U.S.C. section 332) includes the following:

(7) Preservation of local zoning authority

(A) General authority

Except as provided in this paragraph, nothing in this chapter shall limit or affect the authority of a State or local government or instrumentality thereof over decisions regarding the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities.

(B) Limitations

(i) The regulation of the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities by any State or local government or instrumentality thereof-(I) shall not unreasonably discriminate among providers of functionally equivalent services; and (II) shall not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services.

(ii) A State or local government or instrumentality thereof shall act on any request for authorization to place, construct, or modify personal wireless service facilities within a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed with such government or instrumentality, taking into account the nature and scope of such request.

(iii) Any decision by a State or local government or instrumentality thereof to deny a request to place, construct, or modify personal wireless service facilities shall be in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record.

(iv) No State or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission's regulations concerning such emissions.

(v) Any person adversely affected by any final action or failure to act by a State or local government or any instrumentality thereof that is inconsistent with this subparagraph may, within 30 days after such action or failure to act, commence an action in any court of competent jurisdiction. The court shall hear and decide such action on an expedited basis. Any person adversely affected by an act or failure to act by a State or local government or any instrumentality thereof that is inconsistent with clause (iv) may petition the Commission for relief.

 

 

Celebrating an Excellent and Productive Life -- Kevin McIlvoy's

Snapshots of the writer and his family flash on the screen in a theater where he sometimes read from his work.

The writer’s older son,  recalls falling asleep in a motel room the evening before his paternal grandfather’s funeral, as his father, the writer, sat hunched over a little desk working on the eulogy. When the writer’s son awakened at 2 a.m., the writer was still working, to make the words just right, “to give the performance he felt his father deserved.” Adds the son, “And now, 40 years later, I’m trying to speak at his memorial.”

I’m at a celebration of the life of Kevin McIlvoy, a brilliant and dedicated writer who was friend, colleague, and mentor to people who mattered to him, some of whom matter to me. “Mac” was also a loving husband and father, and one helluva writing teacher.

Mac wrote several fine novels and many poems and short stories. He arose at 5 a.m. to write. Afternoons, he wrote in coffee shops, listening to the conversations around him. He revised constantly. As a friend and colleague said, “He tortured the text until he got it to do what he needed it to.” He worked incessantly and took risks. (Novels narrated by a sixth-grader or an octogenarian stonemason and sometime thief?)

Kevin with our friend Don Kurtz

Mac gave back, too. Despite a writer’s need to hoard his/her time, Mac cared enough to be incredibly responsive to the work of students, not merely mouthing interest but displaying genuine appreciation with numerous perceptive comments and questions. “He truly engaged with students,” one former student said. Mac also edited Puerto del Sol, responding personally to everyone who submitted work. Wednesday mornings at the Munson Center, he taught writing to seniors. Earlier, in Chicago, he convinced the warden to let him teach writing to prisoners. He was such a dedicated father that on one camping trip, after he fell and broke three ribs, he stayed two more days in the wilderness, despite the pain, because his two sons were having so much fun.

Mac was instrumental in growing the NMSU writing program, and two other institutions here flourish because of his efforts. The Wednesday group became Southwest Writers, still meeting at Munson Center fourteen years after Mac left town. (Members have written more than two dozen books!) Mac chaired the Doña Ana Arts Council when it rescued, rehabilitated, and restored the Rio Grande Theater, now a performing arts venue owned by the City of Las Cruces.

He was a teacher in every moment, but also a lifelong student – an example for all of us.

Above all, Mac was a writer who deserves to be remembered and read.

As he said in 2021, “I remind myself that I want to live inside the sentences and not immediately start asking myself, ‘Where is this going?’ but to stay on the ground of the experience that the sentence is making sonically and then to discover by accident where this is going.” He also said, “Being uncertain, being vulnerable, is the best possible thing for me as an artist. I’ve come to believe it’s the best possible thing for anyone who presumes to make art, to place yourself in uncertainties, to be in over your head, to realize that the work is asking you to rise above your limitations.”

Amen, brother. Such words magnify my regret that I never met Mac.

But we have his words, his wonderful books!

                                                               -- 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 20 November 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website (or, at least, it will be) and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on both stations’ websites. One obituary of Kevin McIlvoy can be found here.]

[McIlvoy is the author of the novels A Waltz (1981), The Fifth Station (1987), Little Peg (1991), Hyssop (1998), At the Gate of All Wonder (2018) and One Kind Favor (2021, plus a book of short stories, The Complete History of New Mexico (2005), and a collection of short-shorts and prose poems, 57 Octaves Below Middle C (2017). ]

[McIlvoy is the opposite of some writer who sells some books and gets trapped in trying to repeat the same formula, a mystery with recurring characters and scenes, a formula romance, a series of sequels. That, done well, can sell well and please readers who like it; but it’s a death-knell for the creative artist inside, who started all this for reasons deeper than money or fame. As he said, “I’ve always trusted incoherence above coherence.”

Consider the books: One is narrated by a sixth-grader (who barely made it out of 5h) and another by an 85-year-old mason and part-time thief. Little Peg’s protagonist is a woman who’s nearly to the point of being released from a psychiatric treatment center where she’s lived nearly a decade. Scattered through the book are Peg’s short stories, which explain, perhaps without justifying, her behavior.

McIlvoy combined devout Catholicism with an inquiring and creative mind. He named one novel The Fifth Station, after the station of the cross where Simon the Cyrenean briefly helps Jesus carry the cross. It concerns broken promises by three brothers who’ve grown up in an Illinois steel town one of whom lives as a hobo in New Mexico. Reviewers said his hobo friends were particularly vivid. Only when Luke decides to write the story of his youngest brother’s death does he begin regenerating his capacity to love and to trust – and to recover the grace that he (a basketball star as were his brothers) with which he had lived in youth. I’d love to ask McIlvoy over coffee about where helping others, Resurrection, and creative writing intersect in his mind. No chance now.

Hyssop is filled with moments of New Mexico Catholicism, with miracles and saints unquestioned.

In a complex love quadrangle Red loved both his wife Cecilia, 20-years dead now, and her best friend while Cecilia cared deeply for both Red and Red’s best friend, a Catholic priest Red considers a saint. Publisher’s Weekly raved that McIlvoy “has beautifully rendered the soft, Spanish-inflected rhythms of English as it is spoken on the border” in “a farming community where families are rooted for generations” in each other's histories. At the Celebration of Life, Mac’s other son, Colin Allen(?), read the dream sequence that ends Hyssop; it is both strong and sufficiently imaginative that other writers might envy it. (Confession: I wandered down to Coas a few days later and bought that and The Complete History of New Mexico (which Publishers Weekly called a “bizare, engaging collection” of stories that resembles “a series of jazz riffs”).]

[Anyway, this was a guy who enriched not only readers’ lives but the lives of his students, friends, and acquaintances; and who (believing, as he told his wife before they married, that he would not live a long life) lived fully, with creative work, family love, other projects, and plenty of fishing, hiking, tennis, and other recreation. I’m looking forward to the books.]

Taking a Deep Breath

If some typographical symbol meant, “taking a deep breath,” I’d start this column with it.

We just had a major election. Before jumping into state/local issues, let’s contemplate that.

We’re still deeply and acrimoniously divided. Gridlock and Disinformation will still characterize Congress and the Internet, respectively. (And Fox Gnus.) Mr. Trump still proposes to stay out of jail by running again for President. Mr. Putin still proposes to nuke someone if we don’t let him have his way.

But this was an amazing week: for the first time since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a sitting president’s party in his first mid-term lost few House seats and perhaps no Senators. (Truman and Clinton each lost 54 House and 10 Senate seats, Obama 63/6.)

What overcame history, Biden’s poor polling, and high inflation? Decent folks’ revulsion at Trump’s lawlessness and disregard for democracy? Seeing how pathetic his chosen senatorial candidates were? This election may prevent a second Trump presidency; but “Ron DeSanctimonious” isn’t Lincoln.

We may not know who controls the U.S. Senate until Georgia’s candidates meet in a runoff December 6. (Neither Raphael Warnock (49.6%) nor Herschel Walker (48.3%) exceeded 50% of the vote.)

I’d bet on Warnock. He led this time. Anti-Trump revulsion could hurt Trump’s hand-picked running back, who won’t have Brian Kemp blocking for him. Governor Kemp led the Republican ticket, beating Stacey Abrams, but some Kemp voters didn’t vote for Walker. Decent Republicans who came out to vote for Kemp and other Republicans might stay home December 6. Fundamentalist “pro-life” folks might reflect on the fact that Warnock is a respected pastor, while Walker has funded abortions. Even if Walker gets ¾ of the voters who preferred Libertarian Chase Oliver (hardly a given, since Oliver’s a gay ex-Dem!), the excitement for Warnock and the mixed feelings about Walker should give Warnock the prize, despite the runoff’s significance. (Georgia Dems won both 2020 runoffs.)

Meanwhile, congratulations to Gabe Vasquez! But Wednesday morning, eyeballing that 50%-50% Vasquez-Herrell split, I contemplated our system. However I feel about the candidates (I’ve liked and respected Gabe for many years; Yvette, whom I interviewed in 2018, seemed a pleasant person, but was too convinced that Donald Trump was good for the country), it seems sad that after all the work and passion (and dollars) result in a close call, one candidate is totally out in the cold.

A shout out to Gabe. DON’T let the national party lead you by the nose. Its support helped; but your sweat and eloquence won this. Take their advice as well-intended, but it ain’t written on no tablet from the mountain.

Shout outs to Shannon Reynolds and Suzie Kimble. Reynolds will continue on our county commission. Kimble will not join it. If our candidate forum had been a job interview, I’d have hired Mr. Reynolds; but I’d have kept Ms. Kimble’s resume for the next opening. They campaigned cordially, collegially, cooperatively, and reasonably, more interested in the business of governing than in taking ideological potshots at each other. Good riddance to Mr. Ronchetti, Dr. Oz, and a host of ambitious phonies. And congrats to Michele Lujan-Grisham and Raul Torrez; but please don’t trip over the constitution in your haste to jail people before trying them.

I hope now we relax for awhile, laugh more, enjoy our wonderful lives, and take time for facts regarding political matters.  I won't hold my breath, though.

                                                 – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 13 November 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website (or, at least, it will be) and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on both stations’ websites.]

[By the way, I’ll be doing a book-signing at Coas Books Saturday, 19 November, of my novel, The Moonlit Path. That’s 10 a.m. to noon, at 317 North Main Street. That’ll be a great chance to say hello, take a quick look at the book, and buy a copy if the spirit moves you.]

[I guess some of what I’ve been writing accords with what’s going on. More Republicans are particularly articulating their disenchantment with Mr. Trump. Bernie Sanders expressed a dichotomy pretty well in pointing out that while a second Trump Presidency (or even presidential campaign) would be disastrous for the nation, it would likely undermine national Republicans’ efforts to get elected. Trump should be toast; but, remember, folks thought that as the Republican primaries started in 2016, What got Trump through was that although most Republicans thought him a clown, and some saw him as a dangerous clown, the seven dwarfs (Cruz, Rubio, et al. – how many of their names can you recall now?) each let personal ambition blind him (or her) to the importance of unifying to prevent Mr. Trump from marching toward the nomination by “winning” primaries with 38% of the vote. This time, seems like others might shut up and let DeSantis run; but I’m not sure. DeSantis is no bargain. Some, like Pence have reasons to run against Trump or DeSantis. Others, like Hawley and perhaps even Cruz, may nourish illusions that they could win the 2024 nomination and 2024 election.]

[To speak plainly: I think Trump will announce a run; but he will stop short of mounting a serious campaign, but not because of Republican opposition. An extraneous force, possibly a criminal trial or conviction, possibly mental illness so glaring it can’t be annoyed, perhaps even one of the other debilitating things that often happen to fa, out-of-shape septuagenarians who don’t take care of themselves. Not saying I wish anything on him; but it’ll be an interesting couple of years.]

[Now, with Arizona and Nevada called for Democrats, the Georgia runoff will merely decide whether the Democrats control the Senate 51-49 or continue at 50-50, controlling the Senate because Vice-President Kamala Harris’s vote breaks ties. That should decrease total turnout. I’d guess it feels more important to Democrats than to Republicans, partly because of the mixed feelings Republicans have about Walker. There are large donors who are pretty embarrassed by his inexperience and the scandals he’s brought them, and if they’re not buying control of the Senate, why bother? Too, the belated rush to see and state that Donald Trump is bringing the party down by inserting losers into the Republican lineup won’t help people motivate themselves to traipse back to the polls for Herschel. Too, an astute African-American journalist points out that Blacks in Georgia don’t much care for Herschel – not because he’s allied with folks whose policies favor the rich, or with known racists, but because Walker (self-proclaimed “not that smart”) so clearly fits white folks’ old stereotype of people of color: plenty of brawn, no real intelligence, and an inexhaustible supply of prevarications.) Meanwhile, Defendants, inspired by gaining a seat Tuesday instead of losing two or three, won’t feel quite as significant a dwindling of energy. If I were betting on Warnock as on the San Francisco 49ers, I’ll bet we’d find Las Vegas had shifted the odds by now. [or moved the point-spread from Warnock -1 to giving Walked 3 or 4 points, as if the Chargers’ quarterback had tested positive Friday for COVID] Unless Dem overconfidence or deep love for Walker’s football accomplishments hurts the Dems; but likely we’ll see Barack Obama revisiting the state right after Thanksgiving.)

Eclipse of Democracy? Or Worse?

Tuesday feels critical for our nation.

In my childhood, elections were civilized affairs in which we decided whether Eisenhower or Stevenson, Kennedy or Nixon, or Truman or Dewey should lead us. There were some shared basic principles: democracy, respect, freedom, determination that our country survive and prosper, and confront external threats, yet try to extend a decent quality of life to everyone.

Despite mutterings about dead people voting in Chicago, Nixon did not conspire to overturn Kennedy’s victory, or pretend that, as vice-president, he could decline to certify the count. Jimmy Carter didn’t encourage mobs to break into the Capitol threatening to hang the vice-president and the Speaker. Had partisans done so, no politician would have had difficulty pronouncing such violence (or Carter’s encouragement) absolutely unacceptable.

This year we vote in a climate of violence: Arizona has armed patrols “observing” ballot depositories; a crazy guy threatening the Speaker of the House breaks into her home, cracks her 82-year-old husband’s skull with a hammer, and Donald Trump suggests “there’s something suspicious” about the victim(!) Here, Conservation Voters of New Mexico recently received a package with threats against a Democratic legislator, anti-Semitic symbols, and some chemical substance; and Trumpists are training “more active” poll-watchers. It’s not Belfast or Israel, but it’s not real healthy, either.

The partisan violence recalls that of the 1850s. We know where that led.

Meanwhile, after much angst and some primary battles, the Trump-influenced Republicans have nominated an exceptional collection of scurrilous halfwits. (I think so; and that’s a fair extrapolation of what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must think, to complain publicly about his party’s substandard candidates.) They all spout the “stolen election” nonsense. All genuflect to Trump. One even smiles while Trump says the candidate is kissing Trump’s ass. Herschel Walker, nominated solely for his long-ago football skills, is running on a “No abortions!” platform while women show receipts for abortions he urged and paid for. Mehmet Oz is a TV celebrity, like Kim Kardashian (or that guy in The Apprentice), with no more political experience or wisdom than she.

This bizarre collection is so unappealing that, even though the President’s party usually loses the mid-terms, and Biden has not been popular in the polls, it seemed likely voters might reject most of them. Inflation intervened.

Presidents have little control over inflation, and rarely deserve as much blame or credit as they get. Our inflation was recently at 8.2%, while inflation was higher in most European countries, from Italy’s 8.9% o 14.5% in the Netherlands. Moreover, despite common belief, inflation has historically been worse during Republican presidencies than Democratic ones.

The main factor in current high inflation is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the decision to oppose him. (Ironically, the fellow propping up the halfwits also has expressed great admiration for Putin.)

Seen clearly, the electoral battle is not merely between parties, but pits those who deeply want our country to maintain its democracy, and win elections through persuasion rather than violence or chicanery, against those for whom it’s more important to elect Donald Trump. (It’s more important that Michigan State upset Michigan than it is to keep the stadium from falling on us!) Will Republicans and other conservatives step up?

Friends say it’s just a cycle. But, after failing to overturn the 2020 election, Trumpists set in motion procedures in swing states to stack the deck in favor of such an effort in the future.

                                          – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 6 November 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website (sub nom, “Bizarre National Slate of Electors,” and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and on KTAL (101.5 FM / http://www.lccommunityradio.org/) and be available on both stations’ websites.]

[By the way, I’ll be doing a book-signing at Coas Books Saturday, 19 November, of my novel, The Moonlit Path. That’s 10 a.m. to noon, at 317 North Main Street. That’ll be a great chance to say hello, take a quick look at the book, and buy a copy if the spirit moves you.]

[We voted, Saturday. I felt glad to live in New Mexico. I do suspect that Republicans will emerge with a majority in the House and a much smaller majority in the U.S. Senate. I think John Fetterman’s stroke could end up deciding the course of the next few years’ history. Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Fetterman seems a genuinely beloved political leader where he’s from, and also more genuine than most experienced politicians are. He had a healthy lead over Mehmet Oz that likely would have survived the late rightward swing because of inflation. However, his stroke changed him and the race. While he may continue to recover, and may be capable of being a fine senator even now, a debate played to all his weaknesses. He couldn’t respond quickly and wittily to Oz’s attacks. Even if many of those were bullshit, the independent viewer didn’t know that, and didn’t learn it from Fetterman in the debate. It likely cost him the race.

I don’t think the next couple of years will be pretty. I hope my friends are right that U.S. national politics may still be cyclical in the foreseeable future. Certainly the harsh, sometimes hate-filled actions of Republican national leaders have generated and will generate much opposition; but the rigged [by the imbalance between voters’ power in electing our senate and by the similar imbalance caused by the electoral college] system is being further rigged by Republican state leaders in swing states, and perhaps ultimately by the far right “U.S. Supreme Court,” such that popular sentiment may not matter nearly as much as it should.]