Friends and Neighbours:

Another step was taken this week toward the resolution of the
issues around the proposed Telus tower at 4537 Rocky Point
Road.  Mayor Ranns invited Telus (Darren Hird and Annette
Richards) and Industry Canada (Jim Laursen) to meet with the
Council in private session to resolve some of the differences
expressed in their recent exchange of letters. All of the Council
members except one were at the meeting.  Joe Martignago,
the Metchosin CAO, and Sherry Hurst, the Metchosin Planner,
were also there.

At the meeting Mayor Ranns emphasized the brevity of
Metchosin's contact with Telus on tower siting issues and the
lack of any real consultation. Several of the subsequent
exchanges touched on these historical topics. Some mis-
understandings surfaced and were resolved (Telus, for example,
had misinterpreted Metchosin's refusal this spring to allow
a tower on the municipal grounds as a refusal to have
a tower on any municipally-owned properties.). The Mayor
and other Council members pointed out, however, that nothing
would be gained by focusing on historical issues.  They requested
that Telus and the District--specifically the Planner--sit down together
and talk about some alternate sites for the tower.

Ranns asked the Planner for comments. She outlined the
guidelines for tower siting that had motivated parts of
the new Metchosin by-law: the avoidance of sites that were near
schools and residences, the placement of towers so that
were visually unobtrusive. She asked if Telus could outline its
essential requirements for a Metchosin tower. Mr. Hird said
that Telus engineers would have to be brought into the
discussion to provide specific parameters. He emphasized
that the overall goal was to provide cell service to Metchosin
residents. He did seem to agree, however, that there might be
several spots in Metchosin capable of meeting their tower siting
needs.  The Planner had prepared a map of Metchosin with
the district-owned properties marked on it; she invited the
Telus representatives to look at some of them. The Telus
people, however, felt that nothing would be gained by
having the three of them look at sites, that other Telus personnel,
especially the engineers, had to be brought into the discussion.
Telus also disclosed, interestingly, that it had other private sites
in Metchosin that it wanted to bring into the mix. The Planner and
Telus agreed to exchange contact information and talk
further.

The question about the status of the current proposal came up at
the meeting. On this topic positions seemed more polarized.  Mayor
Ranns and the Council pointed out how much anger the proposal
had stimulated and how negative feelings were escalating.
They were hoping that Telus could stop the pain by bringing the
current process, the one initiated by the September 1 proposal, to
an end. Mr. Hird agreed that the local response to the proposal,
in comparison to other siting projects he had worked on, was turning
out to be a negative one. But he felt that Telus needed to continue
with its current process and make its responses. In the end, no
agreement was reached about the status of the current proposal
and its process.

The Council, Telus, and Industry Canada agreed to release
minutes of the current meeting (I'll send them to all of you as
soon as they are prepared) and to allow attendees to freely discuss
the exchanges at the meeting.

I came away from the meeting with a feeling that the gap between
the two sides, the chasm that was so apparent in last week's
exchange of letters between the Council and Telus, had been
reduced a bit. The real results of this meeting will be seen in
the next week, after Mr. Hird has a chance to pull together
an official Telus response to the District's offer of a co-operative
process to find a more acceptable site. If Telus shows the same
flexibility that the Council has shown, we may find a way
out of the current impasse.

                         Kem Luther