After the Wayne Planning Board rejected my application for a 43 foot monopole with a 6 foot, 1.8 kw wind turbine on top, an application for a 100 foot tall cell tower on my property was filed.

In both cases the Planning Board demanded compliance with more than 30 irrelevant engineering requirements. Those include modifications to our sanitary sewer connection, parking studies, and replacement of our storm sewer grates & basins. Since neither project has any impact on any of these issues, they are inappropriate as conditions to both applications.

In a clear demonstration of the personal nature of the Town’s opposition to my wind turbine, the Planning Board refused to waive these conditions to the wind turbine application yet granted relief to the twice-as-tall cell tower in a meeting held on April 26, 2010.

Even Michael Rubin, the attorney for the 6 opponents of both projects, agreed these requirements were properly waived for the cell tower application.

These irreconcilable positions of the Planning Board are laughable. They are also very expensive for taxpayers.

At a time when school budgets are under intense pressure and many teachers remain at risk, and the rest of us do our best to get through the Great Recession, Wayne’s Governing Body has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting a lawsuit they are destined to lose.

If our children and their education are a top priority, perhaps the Town Council should consider reallocating budget dollars away from litigation driven by personal contempt that they have no chance of winning, and spend it to preserve teachers and programs that are being taken away from our children.

It should be a no-brainer.

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