New Haven Independent

At the monthly meeting of the East Rock Management Team at the East Rock Magnet School, neighbors heard a presentation by consultant and project manager Bob Manfield (pictured) on proposed changes to their skyline.

Two towers currently “grace” the top of East Rock “” a 40-foot one and a 110-foot one “” competing visually with New Haven’s beloved Angel of Peace statue. The city got funding from the Department of Homeland Security to replace the shorter tower with one that’s 120-feet tall, where all public safety communications would be relocated, rendering the system more efficient and “interoperable.”

“Nobody’s against having a secure communication network if there’s some kind of calamity,” said resident Robin Schafer (pictured), “but the towers are ugly.”

People at the meeting raised many questions and made many proposals to try to reduce the visual impact of the towers. Tom Holahan (pictured) was especially vocal, having done a thorough visual inspection of the towers and all the components attached to them. Some favored making the new tower even taller and getting rid of the second tower altogether, which is likely to need replacement in the next decade anyway. Others thought that was a dreadful idea, since it would pierce the skyline even more visibly.

City officials (including Chief Administrative Officer John Buturla, pictured) said they plan to work with the city parks commission to beautify the area around the towers as much as possible. Plans are in the works to plant arbor vitae around the base of the towers, which grow to a height of about 15 feet. That was little comfort to many who pointed out what a small portion of the towers the trees would obscure.

Management Team secretary Debbie Rossi said she’d heard talk of making the whole city wireless “” going “wi-fi.” Would that make the towers obsolete?

Buturla assured her that even if that were to happen, the communication towers would still be necessary to guarantee emergency “interoperability.”

In the end it became clear that city officials had not come for input, but just to give information about the project, which has a May 2007 completion deadline. Schafer said management team members voted to send a letter to the parks commission, “to ask in the future that we be brought into the process earlier and to point out that we were presented with a single option and there was no time or expertise to consider proposals from the floor.”

Buturla insisted that it did matter what residents thought. “We wanted to engage them and for them to understand what was happening and why. We wanted their input where it would be appropriate, for example, talking about beautification, but the technical aspects we rely on people who do this for a living.”