Neighborhood washes its hands of TV dishes

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2003 | 8:44 a.m.

After years as the bane of nearby homeowners, three 13-foot tall, archaic satellite dishes no longer adorn a Boulder City front yard.

Pete Collins, an Arizona businessman who paid thousands of dollars to remove them last week, said he made the change to improve TV service for his customers.

Linda Schrick says she doesn't care about the reasons. She had been demanding the removal of the "monstrosities" for four years.

"They're gone," Schrick said. "It's a neighborhood again."

All along Schrick contended that the dishes violated city code. They were commercial uses in a residential neighborhood, she said.

Collins' Eagle West Holdings was using the dishes as part of its television programming distribution system.

Eagle West recently decided to upgrade its equipment and replaced the three old dishes with two that are half their size. The company installed the new, smaller dishes in the rear of its office property.

"We didn't do it necessarily to satisfy the homeowner or the mayor, but we're trying to get along with everyone," Collins said.

He said that once the upgrades are complete his 500 subscribers should have digital capacity and 72 channels, up from 50.

Still, Collins said he wonders why Schrick and the city went after him when one of the city's million-gallon water tanks looms over Schrick's back yard, bristling with antenna towers.

Eagle West Cable is the fourth cable business to occupy the site at 1400 Colorado St., and the dishes had been installed in 1987. Until the replacement, Eagle West had operated with the original satellite dishes, even though city contracts going back to the first buyout required that the dishes be removed if the business was sold.

When asked what she had learned from the dish dispute, Schrick laughed.

"Well, the lesson is that it's much harder to correct something after it's finished," said Schrick, who moved into her house five years after the old satellite dishes were installed.

Then she added, "But if a person fights hard and long enough, they have a good chance of winning. That's what it really is."

Her victory appears to have been won in part through pressure by City Attorney Dave Olsen and Mayor Bob Ferraro.

"At one point, we threatened them, saying if you don't remove the dishes, we won't renew the franchise agreement," Olsen said.

Instead the city allowed Eagle West to back out of a $750-a-month lease agreement with the city a few miles away on Red Mountain, providing it put the new, smaller dishes toward the back of the property.

"We felt like we owed it to the neighbors," said Olsen, who had support from Ferraro. "Everyone came away with something positive."