Letters

In good faith, and as an officer of the court, I need to address the issue of a cellphone tower proposed off Stock Farm Lane in North Haven.

After my office’s Freedom of Information Law requests, we discovered voluminous meeting minutes and proposals detailing plans to hire a cell tower installation company, and the location where the installation/clearing would occur. Both aforementioned plans were decided months ago, and had the public not been apprised, a test crane would have been installed.

Did they think the well-informed citizens of North Haven would not have taken notice? To call us “uninformed” [“A New Focus,” Letters, March 4] clearly denotes a lack of understanding as to who resides in and pays taxes to the Village of North Haven. It is the elected officials who are misinformed as to the acumen of the citizens who elected them.

We also uncovered evidence that implied that the location was not to be disclosed — transparency be damned. Our investigation yielded village plans that were well beyond the research/exploratory stages in the installation of a cellphone tower.

Going forward, we will take more notice of any committees being formed “in the name of the greater good.”

As always recommended to my clients, appearances of impropriety never bode well. We hope that the committee being formed to pursue non-tower options is fully informed as to the multiple non-tower cellphone coverage options.

We also hope that there is full transparency, not just at the end of the research stages but every step of the way.

Surprisingly to some, we didn’t move here for the excellent cellphone coverage. We have land lines. We also can communicate on our cellphones perfectly with international clients and family, because we have explored easy and affordable options to communicate that don’t need a cellphone tower, a soon to be obsolete and dangerous albatross.

While it’s generous for people to lend their knowledge about cell towers, who stands to make an exorbitant amount of money off 50-year leases? Surely, the feigned altruism in that promise loses its value with its very well-informed citizens.

Monica S. Caan

Attorney at law

Sag Harbor