Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Hear me?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. We're just about to go live. Yeah. Okay. Oh, we are live. We're live. Okay. We'll get a better protocol for that. So welcome back to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. Today is Thursday, January 22. We're continuing our discussion of H527. We're going to go around the room and introduce ourselves and then we'll allow you to introduce yourself for the record. My name is Kathleen James. I'm from Manchester.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from St. Charlesbury. Richard Bailey from Lamoille two. Chris Morrow, Weston. Michael Southworth, Caledonia two.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: Dara Torre, Washington two.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Graham Kleppner, Chittenden 13, Burlington. Laura Sibilia, Windham Two.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. And in the room.

[Greg Bailey (Public Utility Commission staff)]: Greg Bailey with PUC.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: Allison does Kathy Bramadores for a clean environment.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. All right. Gail, if you could please introduce yourself for the record and thank you for joining us.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Thank you for having me. I'm Gail Fowler. I'm the town clerk, treasurer, select board assistant, zoning administrator, and a bunch of other hats for the town of Tinmouth. Thank you for allowing me to have some time to talk to you. The process has been difficult for us because we're a very small town. At the beginning, the select board and the planning commission appointed me to act as pro se representative because we thought that would work. And with the help of Annette Smith and Vermonters for a Clean Environment, I was able to file. It wasn't easy getting on the website and filing stuff. To file our recommendation based on the select board and the Planning Commission's decision that ITW Yes.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sorry. I'm going to stop you real quick. For those of us in the room and those who might be watching on YouTube, could you just back up for a minute and just briefly remind folks of what was proposed in your town?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Sure.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. Thanks.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: ITW proposed a radio tower, 160 foot tall with 13 feet antennas in the belly of our valley in an old gravel pit.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: And so when we got the application or the notice of of appearance or whatever it was, we weren't really sure what to do. At the beginning, we thought we were supposed to wait until they filed the real application. But once we got ahold of Annette and we got things figured out, we went forward from there. So I filed the recommendation that the project did not meet our town plan and our zoning and telecommunications bylaws. And when there was no response from ITW after a certain amount of time, the hearing officer issued a draft denial of the certificate of public good based on our citing the what is that? There's a term that I'm trying to find here and it's eluding me, but substantial deference. And then a while after that, ITW got upset that the draft denial had been issued and sent a 27 page filing saying why they didn't have to meet any of the time constraints and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which is interesting because I think in the Westmore case, they used the fact that the select board didn't get on board on time to get all of their testimony and information kicked out. So it looks like they're trying to do it both ways. Anyways, once we saw that, we knew we needed legal help because we were just in over our heads. The channel area where this project is next to. The state of Vermont owns about 1,200 acres of a wildlife management area. I think it's the largest class one wetland in the state. And I did try to get Fish and Wildlife and Agency and Natural Resources to consider jumping in on this case because of the public interest in this large property. It's an incredible place in the belly of our valley. And if you canoe in it, the water runs north. So you're canoeing south and you'd be headed right toward the tower if they put it, because it would be on the south end of it. It's a real wonderland in there. And you can only see one house, I think, in the whole couple of miles. You can go up and down canoeing in it. It's a very special place to us. And I'm hesitant to actually talk about it because then everybody will come and want to see it. But anyways and they declined to interject on protecting the public interest of that. At the beginning, there was a little flower, a thimbleweed something or other, that was there. And so ITW had to move the tower location a little bit because to protect this. And then when they did that, they ended up in our protection zone. So we said, Hey, this is the protection zone. It's only used for agriculture and forestry. So they moved it back. I guess they figured out where to move that other little plant to or something. The the channel back to the channel for just a second. It is an incredible place during her tropical storm Irene. It acted as a huge sponge, and it just sucked up all this water, and it held it there, and it released it little by little over the next couple of weeks. Whereas in nearby Shrewsbury, when the water hit up there, it washed half the town down into Clarendon. The Class I wetland has a very important Meh, I'm tongue tied today. Sorry.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: You do great.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Anyways, we think very highly of the channel and want to protect it. The radio tower, they say it's a radio tower for their private businesses. It's interesting as a little anecdote here. The town bought a new truck and our road commissioner went to get a new radio for it. And in talking to the communications company that we have, they said, hey, we have this new radio. We have a repeater that comes off of Mount Equinox in Manchester and Grand Poznob in West Rutland, and, you know, try this out. And so he went to the far ends of town and that radio reception was perfect everywhere. So for ITW to say, you know, there's no communication available there, I think that's not quite

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Gail, you said you received or there was filed a 27 page legal document from ITW and you knew at that point or felt at that point you were in over your head. What did you guys do?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: We hired an attorney. We hired Andrew, somebody, Clyburn to help us out. He's taken over all the filings and stuff for us. He's the one that, as part of my paperwork for today, he filed a motion on Monday trying to get clarification about what the current issue is before the Public Utility Commission, because we had filed a recommendation that it be denied for a substantial deference, and that's being argued, but the PUC remanded it back to the hearing officer. And then we weren't quite sure what issues we're supposed to be dealing with. So he sent out a clarification, and then our motion on Monday was to in response to that. Because we think the issue that needs to be decided is, do we have substantial deference? Or do we have to go before the board and do the whole hearing stuff? So we're trying to get that clarified. And it's nothing that as a town, we would have any idea of how to do it.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sure. So the cost of hiring attorney is just on the town now?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Yes. And thankfully, at the moment, we have a donor that has stepped forward and is going to pay some of it, but now we have to start raising money to pay for the rest of it. If it drags out, it could be very, very expensive. It's

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. Frank Southworth?

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: How long of a process has this been? How when did this start and so on?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: We got our notice in February.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: February '25?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Of twenty twenty five. Yes. And we did have the ITW did come to the town and had a meeting with townspeople. The select board and the planning commission had a a joint meeting, and people got to ask questions. And most people were not too happy with the lack of an answer that we got from them.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: When was that meeting?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: I want to say it was in May or something.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So that's where things stand now. It's being contested or you've hired an attorney to represent

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: It's the being litigated from my understanding. The attorneys for ITW really like to litigate. So instead of being a simple process, I guess that's what's happening.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And can you talk a little bit about the municipal plan? You said that the can you remind me, I'm sorry, what you said about the the channel and the

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: We we adopted a town plan in 1974, and it was actually used as a model for a number of other town plans at the time. And we've had, in 2007, our town plan was named Town Plan of the Year by the Vermont Planners Association or something. It's interesting that we have like 12 objectives from the very beginning about protecting the landscape and the agricultural values and all this stuff. And when we did the latest update, we pulled the community and we gave them the choice of all of these objectives again, but now they're

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: called

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: goals. And they kept every one of them. So those have been in every town plan going forward. And so a town plan is the plan, and then the zoning regulations and other bylaws enforce that. It's been my understanding that sometimes the PUC has tried to look for more specific information in plans that really need to be in the zoning regulations. You know, if you say you want to protect a scenic resource, well, you have to define it. I think East Montpelier has regulations now that define every speck of there was many pages of we've looked at it many pages of defining what was a nice view and from what section and all this stuff. I mean, I think they went a little overboard. But in general, a plan is the big picture and the regulations enforce what that plan comes up with.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And the proposed tower, you said it's a radio tower. It's not for cell phones.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: That's what they're telling us. They said that maybe in the future, a cell company would want to attach to it, but they would have to go through this process as well.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Is the, just out of curiosity, how is the cell service up in Timmins?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Well, we have fiber optics, so most people have good cell service at their house because they have Wi Fi. There are places in town that don't have good cell service, like in a lot of Vermont. A number of years ago, a cell tower was put up, AT and T put up a cell tower just over the Timmith Town line into Middletown, and it was supposed to cover a five mile radius, go all the way down to Route 7 past Timoth Pond. And that has not quite worked out too well for AT and T people. They don't always get that reception.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah, Rick Southworth?

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: Earlier on, you said when you started to find that you had issues getting onto the website or using the website, the PUC's website.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: Can you explain a little bit

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: more about what you encountered there and what the hurdles were?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Well, it seems like you have to go in. I did I was able to sign in and get a with a password and all that information. But at the website itself, there's different places where you have to click a little button or do a button here to submit a comment or a recommendation. And, I was unclear where I was supposed to be. Sometimes I would push a button and it would kick me all the way back out to the front, so I'd have to go back in again. It was just confusing.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: So it wasn't user friendly, in your opinion?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: It was not user friendly, in my opinion. And maybe if I use it every day, it would be fine. But when you're using it for the first time or the third time, I try to leave myself notes as to what to look for, what section to put it in the comments and

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: I have a question for you, Gail. Did the Department of Public Service come to the public meeting that you have and share the guidance document that they have prepared for the public on what the process looks like? I'm just curious if maybe a step got missed in your case.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Nope. He was there. I forget what his name was, David something, I think. He was pretty quiet, but he took notes and I, you know, he did explain the process at the end of the meeting for us to try to figure out.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: But didn't share any resources?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: No, we got most of our resource information from a net. And I talked to people at Department of Public Service. I talked to people at Fish and Wildlife and Agency of Natural Resources and trying to figure out who to get to talk to or who was supposed to get involved.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Thank you. When the town I'm always curious about how exactly communities or people receive notice. So can you talk a little bit more about how you were informed about this application? Did you get an email? Did you get a letter?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Well, first I got a call from one of the attorneys at MSK who represents it's not the attorney that's acting for them now. It was Cooper Howland. So he inquired about it. They did end up sending information to a packet of information to the select board chair and to the planning commission chair.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. And MSK, that's the attorney for?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: ITW. Okay.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So call call call the head maybe to figure out who to send it to or something. And then

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Right. And and to figure out the neighbor adjoining property owners to get their addresses, things like that.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. And send stuff by by mail. Okay. Do we have does the committee have more questions? Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: Just to confirm. So where it stands now is in front of the PUC, it's back to the PUC. The ICW has appealed the denial of the CPG?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Well, they have appealed the draft denial, so now it's going through some other steps. I'm not sure those steps are clearly lined out, but we're relying on the hearing officer to help us all through this. At one point, he asked for deadlines for a schedule for taking depositions and providing evidence and doing all kinds of things. And I think the town's position is we want to clarify that the substantial deference should be taken into consideration and just said if the town decides it doesn't meet the requirements of the town plan and the zoning and telecommunications bylaws, then it shouldn't go forward.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: And it's clearly described in town plan that this location is not appropriate for communications equipment?

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: No. No. The the town plan does not specifically say that about that specific location. And that's why my comment before was a town plan is a big general plan, what you wanna do. The the specifics are in the bylaws that are adopted to enforce it.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: Okay. And then is the bylaws specific about that? About locations for Yeah.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Has locations. Towers are considered a conditional use, so there's conditions they have to meet. They're not supposed to be more than 130 feet tall, and this is 160 feet tall. They are supposed to not be more than 20 feet above the average height of the trees around it, and they far exceed that. There's a number of issues where they do not comply with our zoning. That's all spelled out in the initial recommendation that we made, spelled all that stuff out.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: I see. Okay. Thank you.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: But my concern too is towns that don't have zoning, how do they manage a 248A process? Or, you know, how are they entitled to have some comment about it? So it's, you know, I think it was a good idea when it started, but I'm pretty not sure now that it's working so well for both sides. I think it's tilted more towards trying to get cell towers everywhere. Another thing, comment I just want to make is I was in Florida in last April, and where we were staying was not far from Cape Canaveral, and we happened to see all these satellites being launched into the sky. Starlink is up there with 3,500, and they want to have 10,000. And Jeff Bezos just sent up a whole bunch, he wants to have 3,500. So I think these satellites are going to take over what the towers need to do. So do we really need all these towers? My concern is there's nothing in there that says once the tower is no longer being used, anybody has to take it down. It's just there forever. Timmuth is a little mountain town. It's the only Timmuth in the country, by the way. And we're very proud of how we have protected the town. The town is at least a third conserved through the land trust and other conservation projects. So we take our community very seriously. And we don't think at that this would at the meeting that we had with ITW, the fire department was not going to be able to use this tower. So I don't not quite sure what the public benefit is to have a radio tower there.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Well, I've not paddled at the area that shall not be named, but, Tinweth is beautiful. So

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, I live not too far away. It's gorgeous up there. Do we have any other questions for Gail? Or Gail, any final thoughts? We appreciate you joining us.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Well, I appreciate you finding time for me.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: You bet.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: I've been up there, but I was on the other side. I was sitting asking questions, not being interviewed. I do appreciate what you're doing. I know it's tough to be away from family and stuff, so I appreciate your efforts and hope that you can find a resolution either to let 248A just sunset and go back to the old way or find a better way for towns and interested people to participate. So it's fair for both sides.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Thanks. I miss the fact that you were a former rep. Thanks for your service.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Six years was long enough for me.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: That's a lifetime.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Yeah. Well, I got elected in 2002. So was 03/04, 05/06, and '7, and '8. But it was pretty interesting. I was on house institutions.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I was going to ask, my gosh. Well, you know Chair Rimons is still running the show right next door.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Yep.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So alright. Thanks so much for joining us, and

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Have a good one.

[Rep. Dara Torre (Clerk, Washington-2)]: Thank you.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Thanks. You too.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Gail Fowler (Town of Tinmouth Clerk/Treasurer and Selectboard Assistant)]: Bye bye.

[Unidentified Committee Member (ambiguous diarization)]: Bye.