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WHEREAS, NYSTA and Phoenix Tower International have weaponized state land exemptions to deliberately bypass the Town of Salina's zoning laws, evading public hearings, environmental impact transparency, and all forms of democratic community consent;

WHEREAS, if NYSTA and Phoenix Tower International assert immunity from the Town of Salina's zoning jurisdiction under the Matter of County of Monroe balancing test, we stand as follows: the private commercial interests of Phoenix Tower do not automatically inherit absolute state immunity, and the severe detrimental impacts on local land use, wildlife (BGEPA), and residential property values demonstrably outweigh the marginal public benefit of a redundant telecommunications facility — especially when less intrusive alternative sites exist. This assertion is fundamentally flawed and legally challengeable;

WHEREAS, this unlit 184-foot (56.1-meter) structure—engineered precisely 16 feet (4.8 meters) below the FAA lighting threshold—sits just 0.25 miles from the Syracuse Hancock International Airport (SYR) Runway 10 descent corridor. Despite a remote, desk-reviewed “No Hazard” determination by the FAA, erecting a massive, unlit steel pole in immediate proximity to a low-altitude flight path remains a profound safety and planning concern for the community below;

WHEREAS, this 184-foot (56.1-meter) structure acts as a “hazardous wildlife attractant” for raptors, situated 1.25 miles from New York State's largest urban bald eagle roost and in an area with a heavy, well-documented concentration of federally protected turkey vultures that actively soar, roost, and forage in the immediate vicinity of this tower site. By providing an artificial nesting and perching platform adjacent to a flight corridor, this tower actively undermines SYR's Wildlife Hazard Management protocols. Proceeding without producing explicit, localized consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the NYS DEC, or a transparent NEPA/SEQRA assessment, threatens federally and state-protected wildlife and risks violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (BGEPA), the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), and New York State endangered species regulations;

WHEREAS, this 184-foot (56.1-meter) commercial structure will irreparably degrade the visual character of our residential neighborhoods, negatively impact local property values, and force the installation of high-capacity data infrastructure that alters the nature of our community without our consent;

WHEREAS, the stated justification that this tower is intended to “improve coverage for emergency service providers” has been independently investigated and found to be without merit as a primary justification: the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office has confirmed in writing that there are no known communication dead zones in the Salina area; the equipment currently being installed consists of commercial 5G panel antennas used for consumer wireless broadband, indicating this tower is not being built exclusively — or even primarily — for emergency service use; the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has confirmed it has zero records of any environmental review for this site (FOIL #W162712-032526, April 1, 2026); and the developer waited over sixteen months after receiving FAA clearance before breaking ground — a timeline wholly inconsistent with any claim of urgency or emergency need. If emergency service equipment is later added, that does not retroactively justify bypassing zoning, environmental review, and public process for what is, at its core, a commercial telecommunications facility;

WHEREAS, while active construction proceeds rapidly, the New York State Thruway Authority is deliberately obstructing public transparency by invoking a 20-business-day extension to delay the release of basic Master Lease Agreements, fall zone engineering reports, and SEQRA documents (FOIL Reference #R000082-032026). Withholding vital public safety and environmental records regarding an active construction site while allowing the developer to mount commercial 5G antennas constitutes a bad-faith evasion of accountability and a direct violation of the public trust;

WHEREAS, on May 8, 2026, after a 49-day stall and just two business days after the constructive-denial appeal clock expired, the New York State Thruway Authority produced 93 records in response to FOIL Request R000082-032026, and in that production: (a) the Authority admitted in writing that NO RECORDS responsive to a request for “Alternative Site Analysis” were located, confirming that no engineering or planning analysis was ever conducted to demonstrate why this specific residential-adjacent site was chosen over alternatives; (b) the Authority redacted the Annual Fee paid by Phoenix Tower International, a corporate entity, under New York Public Officers Law §87(2)(b) — a personal-privacy exemption that, under settled New York case law (Matter of Federation of N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Clubs v. NYPD, 73 N.Y.2d 92), does not apply to corporations; (c) the Authority’s own Occupancy Permit T3U250002, Section II.A, states “There is no term. This Occupancy Permit is revocable, unilaterally, upon demand by the Authority,” establishing that the Authority retains the unilateral power to terminate this occupation at any time, for any reason, with no penalty; (d) the production reveals that the project includes a previously undisclosed 30 kilowatt diesel generator with a 145-gallon fuel belly tank to be installed on a steel platform at grade within the highway infield approximately 100 feet from the active I-90 off-ramp, with no Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure plan or air-quality compliance documentation produced; (e) the surrounding parcel is zoned R-O (Residence-Office) per AT&T’s own construction drawings (Rev 2, November 7, 2025), and the state-land preemption was used to bypass the residential-office zoning that would otherwise have prevented this commercial telecommunications structure under any local approval process; (f) the tower has been designed by Sabre Industries to ANSI/TIA-222-H, a structural standard not referenced in Chapter 35 of the 2020 Building Code of New York State (which references the older ANSI/TIA-222-G-2005), and this standards mismatch was flagged in writing by the New York State Thruway Authority’s own Code Compliance Specialist and never reconciled in the public record; and (g) PDF metadata of the produced records demonstrates that the New York State Thruway Authority had the redacted version of Occupancy Permit T3U250002 production-ready by April 28, 2026 — six days after the agency’s own extended response deadline of April 22, 2026 — but did not release any records to the petitioner until May 8, 2026, evidencing a deliberate ten-day withholding of records the agency had already finalized, which under POL §89(4)(c) supports a finding that the Authority had no reasonable basis for the period of denial;