On “Real News with Rick Outzen” this morning, North Hill Preservation president Melanie Nichols shares how she was harassed when she tried to get information about Divine Communications’s proposed 350+ ft. radio tower in a flood-prone Long Hollow conservation district.
CITY HARASSMENT
City Administrator Eric Olson, who replaced Reynolds after he was removed for a scandal involving our unfulfilled public record requests, tried to get Nichols’s bosses to reprimand her for using her official federal email account to communicate with city staff. Olson tried to exaggerate the number of emails involving the North Hill Preservation president.
Nichols: “All of the emails that I sent regarding the tower were from my Gmail account, but there were a lot of emails because I’ve been on the zoning board, the Architectural Review board, the housing commission. And so every time you send an email, even a brief email about a meeting or a quorum or anything, whenever it went into the city’s database, whoever got the email and opened it every time it was opened, it created another email. And so it would exaggerate the numbers.
“And I didn’t break any laws with the government, but because Eric Olson went to the Naval Academy, he called my boss. He went to the Naval Academy and from one good old boy to the other, oh, let’s cause some problems for Ms. Nichols.”
FIGHTING CITY HALL FOR PUBLIC RECORDS:
Olson did not want to release records regarding the radio tower.
Nichols: “The ACLU, they stepped up and they were defending us. The League of Women voters stepped up. They were shocked that asking for public records would cause this kind of coverup at City Hall. Everyone was just blown away by the deceit.”
CITY HALL DUG IN:
She gave the mayor and Olsen every everything they needed to cancel the lease.
Nichols: “At the time I started doing my research, Divine Communications hadn’t made lease payments in two years. They were in default on their lease payments. And like you said, they had no insurance that they had provided the city. (Mayor Hayward) could have canceled their lease and been done with it. But they dug in. They dug in to protect him and to protect the illegal tower with no insurance, with no engineering that could have fallen … and caused harm and destruction. And the city would’ve been liable because it’s city-owned property. It boggles the mind the way they dug in when they could have gotten out of all of that mess.”
DEATH THREATS:
Nichols: “This was before ring cameras were invented. I spent thousands of dollars for additional home security because my phone lines got tapped –not once, but twice. I got death threats in the mail. It was awful.”
She alleged that Gene Church (Divine Communications” used “his platform as a religious radio station to spread all sorts of horrible things about me that were not true. That was just inflaming the public.”
Nichols added: “It was never about stopping the church or religious radio broadcasting. It was always about stormwater and building and using that vital stormwater pond. That’s the only one we have that protects downtown and about how can we maximize it and make it more efficient and stop the flooding of businesses and homes. It was an eyeopener into what can happen when you get on the dark side of an evil administration.”
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