BERNE — Last Thursday’s planning board hearing looked, from the outside, like a convention of first responders.

Fire trucks, ambulances and rescue vehicles, from throughout the Hilltowns and beyond, nearly encircled the senior citizen center on Route 443.

The subject of the hearing — the Albany County Sheriff’s plan to place a new 180-foot communications tower atop Uhai mountain, the local landmark that looms over the Berne hamlet — explained their en masse presence.

Inside, first-responder after first-responder spoke in favor of the tower at the proposed location.  Many residents  — though not all — spoke against it, at least if sited at  the proposed location. Many urged the county to reconsider the location.

What both sides agreed upon, during the course of an orderly and polite airing of views, is that better emergency-services communication in the Hilltowns is needed. But how to get there is where the two sides parted company.

The tower — and another just like it  proposed near the  Rensselaerville hamlet — are part of a countywide upgrade of emergency communication capabilities envisioned by county law enforcement.

A citizens group, Scenic Rensselaerville, has taken legal  action to block the tower in that Hilltown. So far, opposition in Berne is not organized. But it is vocal. And may be growing.

Tower can be shorter county says

Inspector Ralph Mariani, county 911 communications director, said at Thursday’s hearing that emergency communications in Albany County “have been subpar for 20 years or more.” He said planning began three years ago for a new public safety communications system that “would support all law enforcement, fire, and EMS agencies, and  public works and schools” throughout the county.

The county’s project attorney, Jacqueline Phillips Murray, said the proposed Berne site is superior. No other site reviewed by the county, she said, has its “unique ability” to meet the system’s requirements for radio coverage and unobstructed microwave transmission.

But she also said that the county had taken a second look at the tower design. “By making adjustments, we can reduce the height of the tower to 160 feet ïf the board wishes.”

How the county selected the site was the subject of questions and scorn, from some town officials and residents.

Process criticized

Town board member Karen Schimmer said,  “I don’t think there is one person in this room who does not support having communication for you [first responders ]” she said.

“The question is how best to go about it. And I feel, unfortunately,  that the county has not done its due diligence. You planned a big system without consulting the community.”

Her fellow councilwoman, Dawn Jordan,  attacked the county’s permit application for misleading and inadequate analysis of the tower’s visual impact.

She said that application statements like,  “the proposed tower is not predicted to have any impact on any aesthetic resources within a five-mile radius”  are “deceiving and quite frankly insulting to those of us who live here.”

Further, she said, “I am not sure that people understand that even at this proposed site, Berne would still not have 100-percent [radio] coverage.”

Jordan also raised the possible effect the tower may have on surrounding property values. But later in the hearing local realtor Haytham Bajouwa said he had consulted with many real-estate experts. They foresee, he said. no adverse impact on surrounding property values.

Another town board member, Dawn Jordan, declared the county had not given people who live here the same understanding and respect that “the residents give their emergency response volunteers.”

She also urged the board to retain an engineering consultant, “funded by the county, to fully explore alternate and less visible locations [for the tower.]”

Making towers less visible

Mark Segenberger, a Berne resident, said that  based on his experience, making the tower less visible ought to be possible. (See related letter to the editor.)

He was in charge of regulatory programs for the Adirondack Park Agency for many years. He said the agency received over 2,000 permit applications and “they all had high quality visual assessments with them.”

Compared to those, he claimed, “the initial visual assessment done for this project was inferior, the worst I have seen frankly.”

He said 63 towers erected within the Adirondack Park boundaries, from 2005 to 2015 , many of them near the Northway are “substantially invisible. I challenge anyone going up the Northway to find these towers,” he said.

In its policy regarding towers and other tall structures within the park, the park agency requires them to be “substantially invisible….blend with the background vegetation...or other landscape features as seen from all significant potential viewing points and as documented by simulation and other visual analysis methods….”

He also described a Saratoga County scenario in 2005 comparable to the current Hilltowns tower kerfuffle. Three communication towers were proposed on widely visible mountain tops. Public opposition led to the county suspending the application.

“They then came back with a proposal for more towers but all were not readily seen from public viewpoints.”

He concluded “that the only thing missing,” in the Hilltowns process, “is leadership from the county.”

Views vs. safety

Among residents, a small minority who spoke in favor of the tower and its proposed location received warm applause from the first responders.

Among them was Thomas Spargo of East Berne,  a former Berne town judge who was later removed as a New York State Supreme Court judge. He said that when a weather tower was erected within sight of his home, “I thought it wouldn’t be an enhancement.”  But he predicts that, like it, the proposed Berne tower “will become a beacon, something you will enjoy and admire….”

He further predicted that the tower will not be as “intrusive” as feared and “will be a comfort to you.”

Almost 30 first responders registered their support for the tower as planned.

Nick Minick, the assistant chief of the Berne Fire Company said the “present system is definitely subpar….Just yesterday we were on a call and I continually had to repeat myself to dispatch.”

He said it was a minor event but he never wants to be in a more serious situation “when we can’t get the help we need” because of communication failure.

Scott Duncan, chief of the East Berne fire company, spoke of his concern for the 778 students in the two Berne-Knox-Westerlo central schools, located in the hamlet of Berne.

“It’s one of the worst radio coverage areas that we have,” he said.

“If the tower allows my friends who are here…to protect my kids better at school, with the things that are going on today, then I say put the tower in my front yard, put it on the roof of my house. I don’t care where it goes. If it helps you guys and these guys protect my kids, I am all in.”

Asked by The Enterprise if the planning board will vote on the permit application at its next meeting, Richard Rapp, the board chairman, said, “That’s up to the board.”

A resolution passed by the Albany County legislature on February to make the tower project “immune from local regulations” may make such a vote without consequence, however. Or, the suit brought by the Rensselaerville residents may succeed in nullifying the resolution.

All material submitted to the Berne Planning Board as part of the county’s application — including photos from several viewpoints of a crane the height of the tower that was erected at the proposed site to assess visual impact — are available  at Berne Town Hall.