Wedgwood gets a 59.5 foot Festivus pole.

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(Photo from Wedgwood Community Council site)

Sure, it’s just a regular ol’ cell phone pole, but Peter Steinbrueck recently suggested to the Wedgwood neighborhood that they make lemonade out of lemons and turn it into a ‘community totem’ like they did for one NYC pole (see the photo at the bottom of this page).

Personally, I have a better idea - use it as a community Festivus pole, where every year neighbors could gather to ‘Air their grievences’ and perform ‘Feats of Strength’ underneath the warm aluminum glow of this 59.5 foot pole.

Of course some of you may be wondering, why install a 59′ 6″ pole, wouldn’t you just round up to 60′? Well, if rounding up to 60′ feet meant you had to go through SEPA, and if you were T-Mobile trying to get this done sooner rather than later, than I bet you’d want to trim off a little from the top. Here’s what Seattle City Light had to say,

Both the Seattle Municipal Code and SEPA establish parameters for public process for these types of facilities.

Antenna towers under 60′ in commercial zones are exempt from SEPA requirements, including any public process required for non-exempt facilities.

However, I don’t think anyone in the neighborhood can be too upset with this pole because nobody complained about it,

The subject pole is in a Neighborhood Commercial 2-30 (NC 2-30) zone, and the proposed height (59′6″) is under 60′, so DPD review is not required by code and the facility is exempt from SEPA review. T-Mobile provided SCL a copy of the notice of a neighborhood meeting held at Eckstein Middle School on 12/11/06 and reported that the notice was sent to property owners (151) within 500′ of the pole. T-Mobile also reported that only one person attended the meeting; she did not want to sign in but was in favor of the project because her T-Mobile service is so poor. SCL did not receive any written comments.

So…the lesson here for those who aren’t fans of Festivus poles (or metal community totems), don’t miss those public comment meetings.

(Wait ’til the folks back home see what I found in New York - a community totem for our NC2-30 zoned parcel!)