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Our View
Change
In all life’s successful endeavors, no matter what
anybody says, creative compromise works,
whether in marriages, partnerships, on teams, or in the unique relationship between governments and the publics they serve.
With the ground breaking this last week in Rappahannock for the first of an Eventual seven Sprint cellular communications towers, the county has done itself proud, giving grudgingly and taking as much as it could reasonably expect, thus leaving everybody in the negotiation more or less content.
Sprint got its foot in the door and those residents of the county who wanted cellular coverage will soon be able to talk on portable phones; for those who railed against towers in any way shape or form, the impact of the installations was diminished through negotiations in height (170 feet against the original proposal for towers of as much as 250 feet), only seven towers, considering that there could have been so many of them that the wind would sough through them like tall grass, and in one instance in Little Washington, to have a tower look like what it isn’t — a grain silo.
As County Administrator John McCarthy put it this week, “Sprint’s plan was the best compromise available to provide some level of service without unduly compromising our landscape.”
The towers of course were going to happen no matter what, given the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the “love your neighbor” concept of “regional general welfare” by which jurisdictions like Rappahannock County are forced to make certain sacrifices (cell towers) for the benefit of their neighbors, like Fauquier and Culpeper.
In the end, Rappahannock succeeded in a compromise, and in that, there appeared an even greater good.
Given a “go wherever you want to” attitude in neighboring jurisdictions, Rappahannock feels somewhat balkanized and threatened by development. Any change is viewed with suspicion as possibly a thin end of the wedge, like cell towers leading to God knows what. Despite those reasonable fears, the county should not become the knit cap of jurisdictions, either, known for its eccentricities as Luddites and hippies, like Mendocino in northern California, opposing most types of technological change.
The pitch to us at the moment seems perfect. The county’s capacity for compromise should leave citizens feeling relatively satisfied, relatively proud and relatively safe.
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