Plans for Cameras, Cell Tower Tumble
Separate plans for surveillance cameras and a cell phone tower drew differing critics to Tuesday’s meeting of the City Council, which ultimately decided to drop both proposals due to opposition over the equipment’s invasiveness.
In a three-to-two vote, with Mayor Elizabeth Pearson and Mayor Pro Tem Toni Iseman dissenting, the council nixed the idea of installing security cameras, costing at least $10,000 each, at key entry and activity points for any reason, security or otherwise. The proposal originated with Police Chief Paul Workman.
Workman, who conceded that surveillance cameras are more helpful with investigations rather than as a crime deterrent, asked the council to consider placing cameras “initially” at four key locations, Main Beach as well as 200 Ocean and 200 Forest Avenues, and on Coast Highway pointing south toward the White House Restaurant, all areas with nightclubs and high pedestrian traffic.
Despite appeals by Iseman and Pearson, the other three members of the council weren’t budging on the issue.
“You start in Heisler Park, then you move to Ocean Avenue, then you move to Forest Avenue, then to the city limits and, before you know it, you better have one on Top of the World because people are speeding up there and we need to get them,” delineated councilman Kelly Boyd, who owns the Marine Room Tavern at 214 Ocean Ave.
“I think it’s our responsibility as business people to have these cameras in our businesses. You can even put them outside. It’s time to have the private sector get involved instead of us being Big Brother and spending money we don’t have to spend,” Boyd said.
Councilwomen Jane Egly and Verna Rollinger agreed on the potential pervasiveness of the surveillance cameras. “I’d much rather see an officer downtown than cameras all over the place,” said Rollinger.
Mayor Pearson emphasized the investigative benefits of public monitoring. “If someone can describe that they saw a certain kind of vehicle hitting a kid or starting a fire,” she said, “and we can go in later and look at the video tape and find that person, how invaluable is that? If we had these video cameras, that would be a big help. That’s not Big Brother.
“We’re just catching cars with license plate numbers.”
But Egly took the crime-prevention slant. “All you’re concerned with is catching them,” she said. “I’m concerned about better behavior. I think a policeman walking downtown is much more effective than surveillance cameras.”
Public comment was just as divided. “I find that these cameras are of great value safety-wise,” said resident Stan Leemon. “Cell phone camera projections and some of the digital cameras are far more invasive and show up where they shouldn’t show up. I’d be far more concerned about that.”
Bruce Hopping, a City Council regular and town elder, brought personal experience into the mix. “This is the first step. Russia. North Korea,” said Hopping, who served in the military during WWII and the Korean War. “This will be very intrusive. The city of London has the most intensive saturation of these cameras. It’s a shame a democratic city such as that is so invested with its usurpations of human liberties.”
David Mitchell, whose company helped install 39 video cameras in Dana Point, offered to volunteer his services to help the city’s Techcom committee study the benefits of public monitoring systems. The council decided to take no action on the proposal.
In other council matters:
Without one word of dissent from a crowd, the Council also Tuesday nixed a proposal by TMobile to install a 30-foot faux eucalyptus cellular phone reception tower at the fire station in Top of the World.
“For some reason,” said City Manager Ken Frank, “maybe it’s the fake tree or the fact that there would be a separate pole or the fact that it would be relatively close to an individual residence, we have not received the same outcry of support that we have previously received” about other cell tower locations.
Frank suggested the council drop the item from the agenda. “TMobile will have to look at other possibilities for a site but we will not provide the host site at the fire station for the communications equipment,” Frank said to an outburst of applause from 30 residents in opposition to the proposal.
Previously, opposition to the radio-frequency tower centered around potential health hazards and lowered property values. A neighborhood petition drive commenced and 260 signatures were gathered.
“We’re relieved,” said Kristy Wemyss, petition author, “but there’s still work to be done.”
T-Mobile now has the option of setting up a cell tower on public right-of-way, said Frank, which is out of the city’s jurisdiction. Any proposed site, he added, would be announced, residents within 300 feet notified and a public hearing held.
Wemyss said her group is prepared to protect their ground and plans to propose a moratorium on any new cell towers until local codes can be rewritten to catch up with the technology explosion. “Because of the fire hazard, Laguna can’t afford for these towers to be near open space and Laguna is surrounded on three sides by open space,” she said.
“Technology has accelerated at a faster rate than our laws have been updated. If people are unhappy with their cell-phone coverage, there is technology today where they can get excellent cell phone reception by having a mini-antenna, a cell phone booster, in their own home.”
A city survey shows that T-Mobile has a coverage gap in Laguna, Frank said.
The next council meeting, scheduled for Feb. 16, has been cancelled due to a lack of agenda items.
