Selectmen Kathleen Corbet and Nick Williams last week scuttled a plan from New Canaan’s highest elected official to appoint a new committee that would study cell service in town.
As he’d signaled the prior week, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan during an April 4 Board of Selectmen meeting said he wanted to appoint a new committee to work on improving service on the west side of town.
Corbet and Williams responded that there’s no need to form a brand-new committee for such work, since it rightly should be handled by a soon-to-be-reconstituted Utilities Commission.
Referring to Moynihan’s suggestion, Corbet said, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
A reactivated Utilities Commission would include residents “with expertise and knowledgeable backgrounds and information about all aspects of public utilities, including cell service, including issues such as electricity and water,” Corbet said at the selectmen meeting, held in Town Hall and via videoconference.
“So there is a broad remit, if you will, in terms of the responsibilities of the Utilities Commission,” she said. “The first of which is to address cellular service in town. And not unlike other boards and commissions that we have here, there are subcommittees—the Town Council has a subcommittee, for instance, on [infrastructure] and utilities. The Utilities Commission, maybe one of the first things they establish is a subcommittee specifically on this particular project or more broadly the need for cell service throughout town. Need is important. We have to know that the consumer need is as strong as what the carriers believe it to be.”
Corbet added that she and Williams have already heard from many residents interested in joining the Utilities Commission.
Her comments came after an effort that Moynihan launched last summer, to erect a cell tower behind West School, drew wide criticism from neighbors and parents—as well as concerns from Corbet and Williams—and eventually was dismissed by the Town Council. Though the town’s chosen cell tower developer, Homeland Towers, recently presented alternative sites on the West School property, the status of any such project has been left largely up in the air.
During last week’s meeting, Corbet spoke in response to Moynihan, who made his case for appointing a committee that would work on cell coverage specifically.
Reading from a prepared statement, Moynihan said, “In view of the opposition to the two Homeland Towers-proposed locations on the town-owned 47.4 acres between Ponus Ridge and Llewellyn Drive, I propose we create an ad hoc selectmen’s committee to review and study possible solutions to improving cellular service on the west side of town. Both Verizon and AT&T have indicated to Homeland Towers their desire to improve their service in the western part of town. The March 24 outage of Optimum Internet service reminded many residents in various areas all over town that they don’t have reliable cell service at their homes and yards unless they install cell boosters in their houses and that these devices don’t work in the event of ISP [Internet Service Provider] outages in storms, power outages and rare events such as vandalism as occurred. Our police, fire, EMS and DPW, first responders depend on reliable cell service in addition to their public safety radios, in emergencies to protect our residents, especially children in our schools. I propose we create a committee consisting of seven members to function for six months to study issues of cell tower health/safety, possible new antenna tower locations, potential new technologies such as satellite and aesthetics if possible at those tower locations.”
Moynihan reiterated that he doesn’t see the need for a Utilities Commission because people like him who work at Town Hall deal directly with water, gas and electricity providers.
Cell service is “the one area that needs attention and attention soon, because we cannot afford to have Verizon go away again,” Moynihan said.
He continued, “Verizon has come forward, wants to improve their service on the west side town, as does AT&T. I think people need to understand what reliable cell service means. I drive over parts of the western side of town, I get no signal in some locations and I get a bare signal from Stamford in other locations. And for the safety of our residents, we really need to tackle this issue and come up with a solution… People have to understand, though, that satellite will probably never be the answer for capacity because you can’t have Internet service and voice communication with the density that would be required for highly populated areas.”
Williams said that a reconstituted Utilities Commission would make cell service and coverage as its first priority.
“I think we all agree and I appreciate your thoughts, Kevin, that there is new technology coming online and such and we need to focus on that but I don’t see why a Utilities Commission, which the Town Council has now spent a lot of time discussing and focusing on—why that wouldn’t be the body that would move this ball forward,” Williams said.
Citing the strong response from residents interested in joining, he added that the Utilities Commission could be populated within 10 days or so.
When Moynihan said, “I don’t know who those folks are,” Williams said, “That’s because they are not your folks.”
“Kathleen and I have actually been reaching out to other folks that we would bring forward for your and our approval,” he said. (Corbet clarified that prospective Commission members have approached her unsolicited.)
New Canaan’s legislative body, the Town Council, in December called for an “active” Utilities Commission. The appointed body had been forced to go dormant five years prior when, weeks into his first term, Moynihan said that he wished to dissolve the Utilities Commission while tackling cell coverage in New Canaan himself. Specifically, Moynihan said that he wanted to assign responsibility over solar energy in New Canaan to the Conservation Commission while he himself took on the task of improving cellular coverage in town. The town website still lists the Utilities Commission as having three members, though that’s not a quorum for the six-person body. Though only the Town Council can effect a change to New Canaan’s local ordinances, Moynihan as first selectman sets the agenda for the Board of Selectmen, which appoints members to town boards and commissions. No prospective members of the Utilities Commission have appeared on the selectmen’s agenda since Moynihan took office. (In fact, the day after Moynihan won that municipal election in 2017, Tom Tesluk, then-chair of the Utilities Commission, resigned from the appointed body.)
During last week’s selectmen meeting, town resident Chris Williams addressed the Board, saying he and others “just want to make sure that this topic is dealt with effectively by people who are not biased, a third party who can give us factual statement about what is going on, what our options are.”
“And as relates to the carriers, we put you all in office to operate this town,” he said. “The carriers don’t operate this town. If they say that a big cellphone tower is what they’d like to do, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there couldn’t be other options that they could do to achieve the same result. Maybe it’s at more cost to them, but that’s a problem for them.”
Following on those comments, Corbet said she’d heard from many residents concerned about the idea of a selectmen-appointed committee when they saw the item on the Board of Selectmen meeting agenda.
“I think we ought to think about credibility, and if people are concerned that putting together a subcommittee under the auspices of the selectmen is not going to serve us well, in terms of making sure that our credibility is well regarded,” she said. “And so I think the committee is an interesting idea if it wants to be part of the Utilities Commission, but under the auspices of the selectmen, I’m not in favor of it.”
When Moynihan said, “I don’t know who those folks are,” Williams said, “That’s because they are not your folks.”
Nick Williams for First Selectman please.