County officials push tower in Carlton despite safety violations, taxpayer liability

Editor:

The truth is out, and every resident in Orleans County needs to look closely at what our local government is Illegally forcing onto our shoreline. Right now, contractors are rushing to build a 150-foot heavy industrial cell tower at 961 Wilson Road (the Albion Water Treatment Plant property).

They are doing this with full knowledge of severe safety, financial, and procedural defects that place our entire community in immediate harm’s way.

Here is what the Orleans County Legislature and the Town of Carlton are desperately trying to hide from you:

1. Legislature apprised and refused to act

I personally stood before the Orleans County Legislature at their monthly board meeting and explicitly informed them of these major unlawful actions and oversights. I formally asked the county to hire one of their own independent engineering firms to oversee this project and audit these exact structural deficiencies. They flatly refused. Why? Because they know these fatal flaws are completely uncorrectable and uncertifiable at the current location. Instead of pausing the project to protect the public, they chose to plow ahead blindly, banking on the hope that nobody would call them out.

2. Steve Nesbitt confronts the board on zero notice

Steve Nesbitt from Nesbitt Farms also stood up at that same legislature meeting and called out the board directly. He stated on the record that he owns the property wrapping around all three adjacent sides of this tower site and was completely left in the dark—never receiving a single legal notification from anyone that this was being installed there.

Steve explicitly offered the County an alternative location on his nearby property that would remove every single safety risk and meet their exact broadband coverage goals without ruining our historic lakefront terrain with a massive tower just 250 feet from Lake Ontario.

3. Legislator Ed Morgan breaks the silence

During this confrontation, Orleans County Legislator-at-Large Ed Morgan spoke up on the floor and agreed with Mr. Nesbitt. Legislator Morgan turned to us and asked if our neighborhood coalition had obtained legal counsel yet, and our answer at that moment was no.

Morgan then turned directly to the rest of the legislative board and demanded to know why they wouldn’t talk with the community and review this legitimate alternative farm site. The rest of the Board sat in absolute, stone-faced silence. They had no answers. You don’t have to take our word for it—this entire meeting is recorded and fully available online for public review.

4. Carlton’s permit issuance charade and total deafness to code violations

The Town of Carlton has recklessly issued multiple, conflicting building permits for this exact site without a certified New York State Code Enforcement Officer on duty to legally sign them. First, uncertified official Kevin Sheehan signed off on Permit No. 2026/033. Then, they quietly rushed to issue Amended Permit No. 2026/051 under an outside inspector, John Higgins, who admitted on the record he was left completely in the dark.

The Town never received proper engineering certifications from the County that would protect them from the liability of approving this project. Worse, the Town of Carlton has been formally served with detailed notices of these flagrant New York State building code violations, and they are actively ignoring and refusing to respond to our demands.

5. Total failure to notify local residents

The Town of Carlton completely failed to properly notify any local residents of this massive tower installation. Their own official FOIL records prove they did not send a single certified mail notice to adjacent neighbors. They skipped Steve Nesbitt, Richard Stacey, Dave Coleman, Gary and Ruthie Smith,  and the Brownings. For my property, they mailed the notice to a lakeside lot with no mailbox, even though the town successfully sends our tax and water bills to our home addresses in Albion every single year. They purposefully hid this build from the people who live here until heavy equipment showed up.

6. The contractor is a startup with zero subscribers

How did we get here? North Shore Networks was handed a massive $11.2 million initial contract—ballooning under this infrastructure umbrella—without a single competitive bid. They were the only bidder because the previously awarded contractor is in litigation with Orleans County over a failed first attempt.

Public records from the New York State Public Service Commission reveal a shocking truth: North Shore Networks had ZERO corporate contracts, ZERO subscribers, and had never offered consumer or commercial service before being handed this massive project. Founded in Medina in February 2022 specifically for this network, this company operates out of a PO Box and formerly a residential home address. They have absolutely no technical backing, no field experience, and no logistical infrastructure to manage a project of this magnitude.

7. North Shore willfully ignores engineer’s directives to anchor tower

To try to manufacture legitimacy, North Shore Networks hired a local firm, Albul Engineering, to review the metal bracketry that holds the broadband hardware to the structure. Albul stamped a document certifying that the brackets themselves meet NYS Building Code requirements—but the tower itself is completely unrated for these coastal configurations.

Worse, the county and North Shore Networks are willfully ignoring the rest of Albul’s explicit directives. Albul’s paperwork mandates strict subbase improvements and structural anchoring to achieve a verified load-bearing capacity of 4,500 psf. This was completely skipped. Instead, they are dropping this multi-ton steel structure into a flooded hole that actively breaches the dynamic beach water table, sitting on a cheap 12-inch shallow gravel pad. Both the County and the contractor are fully aware of these uncertifiable defects.

8. No P.E. stamp and exposed coastal hazards

We have directly verified with the engineering firms that this tower does not possess a valid site-specific Professional Engineer (P.E.) structural stamp for this location. They are putting up cheap, generic equipment manufactured in Vietnam that is only rated for an inland wind threshold of only 40 mph. This completely violates ANSI/TIA-222-H/G coastal safety codes, which strictly mandate that structures within 600 feet of the Lake Ontario shoreline must withstand 109 mph ultimate wind velocities with solid radial icing. In shoreline gale forces, this flat-sided pole faces catastrophic failure.

9. Project uninsurable putting taxpayers at 100 percent liability

Because these footprints fail to meet state life-safety building codes, this project is completely uninsurable. The county has been formally put on notice that municipal insurance carriers will exclude coverage for this site. By plowing ahead anyway, our elected officials are operating under reckless negligence—which completely strips them of standard governmental immunity and leaves Orleans County taxpayers 100% on the hook for multi-million-dollar structural collapse and utility damage claims.

10. Critical infrastructure & water disruption threat

To force this lot to fit, they shifted the tower for a fourth time, crowding it within a point-blank 28-foot window of active National Grid power lines. These lines are tied directly to the main transmission corridor 200 feet away that powers the Village of Albion Water Treatment Plant. If this tower collapses or drops massive, horizontally projected sheets of lake ice, it will snap the grid, shut down the water plant, wipe out municipal water pressure, and completely cripple emergency fire protection water supply across the entire county district.

11. Illegal FOIL lockouts & extensive secrecy

What are they hiding? Orleans County has refused to respond to our Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests filed over 8 weeks ago. Stalling these records is flatly illegal under New York State Public Officers Law. They are actively trying to run out the clock, build the tower, and hide the paper trail from the taxpayers.

What Happens next:

Our neighborhood coalition is not backing down. Because local boards chose backroom deals over public safety and constitutional due process, we are moving forward with immediate, aggressive litigation in the New York State Supreme Court. We have also escalated this entire timeline directly to the New York State Comptroller and Empire State Development to freeze their state grant capital under the New York False Claims Act.

We deserve broadband internet, but we do not deserve an un-stamped structural hazard that threatens our drinking water, our fire protection, and our financial stability.

Rick Stacey

Carlton