Duke says, “Good Morning”

Duke stands on the front step to say “Good-bye” to M and I as we head off to school/work Thursday morning.

It’s been a very busy week. I’ve thought a lot about blogging – but that’s as far as I got. Let’s see if I can piece together something out of some of my earlier thoughts. I actually draft these in Word in a daily diary I keep, and then copy/paste into Blogger. I start a lot of posts that never see the light of day. Some don’t make it “the moment” has passed and what seemed fascinating at noon has lost all its appeal by 5:00 p.m. Most are just censored because they seem too personal or potentially embarrassing – but really, what are blogs for?

Planning Commission Update: Until now, most people probably thought, “He’s never met a cell tower he didn’t like,” but Wednesday night marked my first “no” vote on the location of a tower. The proposal was brought by a wireless internet provider for a 100 foot tower and small “base unit” at the foot of the tower. The tower was to be located in a park. The city staff then upped the ante by proposing a 150 tower that would require a 20 x 20 foot enclosure at the base. The larger towers are optimal because they allow co-location – having several providers on one tower: in this case it would be the original wireless provider, and then (most likely) several cell phone companies. The city has several such towers on city property. Leasing the towers results in about $375,000 a year revenue to the city. This new tower would possibly bring in another $20,000. Nothing to sniff at in these times, but I thought the park was a bad location for the tower. My colleagues on the planning commission decided to send the proposal back to staff for more work, with the understanding that it would come again before the commission at it’s December (or January) meeting. The park still seems the likely location; they just wanted more work on the placement in the park and look at possible efforts to mitigate the tower’s impact in the park. I voted no to tabling the proposal and sending it back for more work because I oppose the park location – period. Mine was the only no vote.



Thursday ended the work day with some seeding. A colleague is heading up a employee volunteer effort to plant native grasses and flowers along a berm between one of our parking lots and Highway 149. I didn’t participate in the earlier weed pulling – that was the real hard work. Seeding was quite easy. Just use your shoe to scrape up some dirt, drop the seed mix, then step on it to make sure it stuck into the dirt. It turned out to be very nice way to end the day.