UPDATE  A lot has changed since 2018, when Dan Stec was a North County Assemblyman. Stec is now a New York State Senator representing the 45th district. One thing that has remained the same – Stec’s campaign to rethink cell tower restrictions to allow for taller towers. The Adirondack Almanack posted an appeal written by Stec outlining his thoughts on why building taller cell towers is a necessity.

Stec makes the case that the Adirondack Park Agency, which oversees an area approximately the size of the entire state of Vermont, is hogtied by rules that were put in place in 2002. The governing principle at that time was to erect towers with “substantial invisibility.” The mandated shorter tower height actually raises costs, argued Stec, and creates dead zones that make it difficult for people to reliably summon 911 services. He also points out that when the cell tower rules were adopted, many people still relied on landlines for their primary communications. According to the Pew Research Center, he noted, 97 percent of the population now owns a cell phone.