The next meeting is February 19th at 7 PM.
The next step is for Borough Council to decide about how to direct CityScape: the choices CityScape gave are one giant, ugly, dangerous tower, giant ugly dangerous tower + small cells, or doing the job the RIGHT way (small cells only). CityScape has already acknowledged the job can be done without any giant, ugly, dangerous towers at all! The only question is whether Borough Council will take the obvious, no-brainer step of telling CityScape to build their plan on insisting that Verizon does the job the right way instead of the cheap way.
That step is almost here -- at the February 5th work session, Borough Council decided that they'd try to make up their minds about this question at the February 19th "pre-meeting" in the back room.
Borough Council appears to be up to its typical "transparency" -- in other words, trying to prevent Franklin Park residents from knowing anything it's doing, while sorta-kinda-technically following the letter, but not the spirit, of the rules. (In the February 19th agenda, we learn only that there will be a "CityScape Wireless Infrastructure Project update" -- as though it were only an update, and not a major decision.)
Everything to do with CityScape had long been hidden in executive session, away from the public, and for a long time was also marked in agendas as being protected by attorney-client privilege.
That's an awful lot of secrecy for hiring a company to comment on where a municipality should consider putting cell towers.
Franklin Park residents continue to deserve better. We deserve to know what's going on. We deserve to know Borough Council's plans, and their reasons for their plans, with respect to a contentious issue where they have a sad track record of trying to keep their plans away from public scrutiny. We deserve better than their tired old excuses about why they technically, you see don't have to share this or that. The default should be automatic, complete, and prompt transparency!
Check the agenda HERE within 24 hours before the meeting - you'll often find last-minute changes involving controversial topics. On some computers you may need to create a username and password to read agendas and minutes -- but at least they are free to create and use. (Contact us if you need help.)
Borough Council has been known in the past to push discussion of the cell tower to the very beginning or the very end (the current record is 9:44 PM) of the meeting. They have also listed late times for cell-tower discussions, then moved quickly and addressed the cell-tower business well ahead of schedule.. So: Try to get there on time, and stick around until they're done!
The "pre-meeting" is open to the public (see below) and borough council has often used such meetings to do their actual discussion about the cell tower plans.
Committee meetings, "pre-meetings," "post-meetings," and work sessions happen in the back room behind the main meeting room at the borough building. They are open to the public (except during executive sessions, most often at the very end), even though this is not obvious. There was a brief discussion about a year ago of putting up a sign stating "Open to the Public," but this has not happened as of January 2025: apparently writing those four words on a sheet of paper and taping it to the back room's door is not something Borough Council wants to do.
That says a lot about Borough Council and its theoretical "transparency," doesn't it?
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The public often doesn't get to comment at the back-room meetings, but simply knowing what the old boys' club is discussing can be very helpful.
The door in the back right of the main meeting room is the easiest way to reach the area where the public can sit for committee meetings, work sessions, "pre-meetings," and "post-meetings."
The address is:
2344 W Ingomar Road
Pittsburgh, PA 15237
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Stay tuned for June meeting details!
Borough council normally meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.
The first meeting is a "work session" where the public doesn't usually get to talk, but where they often discuss the cell tower. The second meeting usually glosses over the cell tower, but lets us talk.
So: listen at the first meeting, and tell the public what you heard at the second.
We defeated it in 2017. We defeated it in 2020. And together, we can do it again this year!
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In theory, they're committed to transparency.
Here's what their "transparency" looks like in practice.
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