Pole, antenna anger Gilbert homeowner

A Gilbert man is looking for answers after the town installed a 36-foot metal pole and antenna in McQueen Park - about 15 feet behind his back fence.

But John Aldridge has already come up with a response of his own: "One of the things I'm going to do is I'm not going to spend any money in the town of Gilbert. I'm not going to eat out in the town of Gilbert," he said. "My money might not make that much difference to them (now), but it will."

He is upset there was no advance notice of the structure going in, and most of the information he's gotten has been from a parks supervisor the day it was erected.

The antenna and pole allow workers for the town's public works department to remotely turn on the well it stands next to. The well was dug in 2004 primarily to feed water into the lakes for two nearby subdivisions, Playa del Rey Estates and Crystal Point Estates, as well as the McQueen Park lake.

Aldridge, who works in the security industry, said the disruption of his view of the park is bad enough, and the pole's visual impact on the neighborhood could have been reduced by putting it behind a large tree that sits behind his neighbor a few houses to the east.

But he said he's even more concerned about what he believes will be a camera mounted to the pole to monitor the well, which young bike riders have used to practice jumps, chipping away at the concrete casing.

He's taken on responsibility for chasing the kids away instead of calling the police, he said. "If they hear about the those kids riding on that well, somebody working at the town is going to figure they need to do something about it, and (the camera) is going to get put up," he said.

There is a camera elsewhere in the park that is used to monitor a maintenance yard.

The antenna and pole saves the town money in gas and overtime costs that it would take to send workers to operate the well manually, said town spokeswoman Beth Lucas. She also said the structure was a modification project for the existing well that did not require a public notification process.

She said it was placed near the property line between Aldridge's and his neighbor's backyards to reduce the impact on any one home.

"We obviously sympathize with the homeowners, and we did everything we could to minimize the impact on the homes," Lucas said.

There are no plans to install a camera, light or other equipment on the antenna, and there have been no reports of damage or vandalism at the well, Lucas said.

But Aldridge said plans have a tendency to change. "Of course there aren't at this time," he said. "I expect them to say that and I expect that to change."

Joe Bedgood, a member of the Playa del Rey homeowners association board, said there hasn't been a board meeting since the antenna went up, so it hasn't had a chance to review the situation and take any position on it.

Bedgood is active on several town committees and lives a couple of blocks away from Aldridge and has seen the antenna for himself.

"Like anybody, I wouldn't want it in my backyard, but I wouldn't know the town's reasoning because I haven't talked to anybody there," he said.