T-Mobile Towers Q & A: Steve Brecht

Instead of casting a vote on whether to keep a land lease in place with T-Mobile for two cell phone towers, the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District (LVMWD) board of directors pushed back the decision to its July 27 meeting.

In the interim, the board is grappling with allegations that it violated the Brown Act by inaccurately describing the proposed project to the public in previous staff reports.

Steve Brecht, a Calabasas resident and outspoken critic of the towers, said he hopes the board will err on the side of dozens of residents who don't want the towers built near their homes.

Brecht, who also owns property in Van Nuys, recently spoke with Patch about the tower proposal.

Calabasas Patch: What did you think of the outcome of the July 13 LVMWD meeting?

Steve Brecht: Well, I wish they would have just bit the bullet and rescinded the lease, but all in all I think it turned out positive.

Patch: Do you think delaying the vote is a step toward eventually rescinding the lease to T-Mobile?

Brecht: I think postponing the vote, it shows them there were citizen-raised issues, there were attorney-raised issues, and I think they came to realize that this is not as simple or cut and dry as they thought it was going to be.

Patch: Speaking as a landlord, what do you have to say to the LVMWD board of directors because they are essentially landlords in this matter?

Brecht: Being a landlord is a business decision. If I want to rent one of my properties to somebody, I'm going to try to make sure as best as I can that the potential tenant has the means and wherewithal and the ability to rent my property and to complete the contract successfully.

I'm not just going to willy-nilly rent something to somebody who comes in the door. I want to have a tenant on my property that's going to be able to pay, and that their use is going to be appropriate to my property.

For example, I had a warehouse that was sitting vacant for about six months. I had about 20 people calling me to want to know if they can use it as a marijuana-growing farm, and I said no.

They said we'll pay you all this money a month, and I said no. It's not appropriate to my property. It is not something that I would want to have as a partner, being a tenant. T-Mobile is a distant fourth [among cell phone service providers]. Why get into bed with a tenant like that if you're going to have lease issues down the line?

Patch: What do you think of the allegations that the LVMWD violated the Brown Act in this matter?

Brecht: I think it's an absolutely valid issue. I think the board didn't think any of this would happen at all, and they were just very, very sloppy. They wanted this to go through and it's not that they were hiding anything. I don't know if they were hiding stuff.

I think it was an appropriate approach to have the board follow the law and to do things in an upstanding manner.

Patch: What are your main concerns regarding the cell phone towers?

Brecht: I'm worried about two things. No. 1, I'm worried about the radio frequency impact. Now everyone says it's not proven, it's not anything, but a lot of things that are cause and effect are not known for years.

Everybody has a cell phone. Most of these higher power towers are much farther away from people's homes. They're up on the hillsides and on the water tanks, but they're not right in your backyard.

I understand there's little towers along the streets and everything, but those are very, very low power, cause they don't have to go very far.

This is a flamethrower. This thing is going to have to go miles and miles and miles. I think it's dangerous. You'll have to disclose it [as a seller], which is going to lessen your potential buyer pool market and it's going to lessen the amount you can ask for the property.

Patch: Do you think you or any of your neighbors have somewhat exaggerated your concerns?

Brecht: First of all, we have no organization, we have no leader. We are just a group of homeowners and concerned citizens that are impacted by this potential placing of the cell tower on the water property.

Are some of the things exaggerated? I don't know, we're not scientists. We try to use the Internet as best as we can and try to cobble stuff together to make a credible presentation.