Dave Woods, left, is interviewed by Los Angeles ABC 7 news reporter
Rob McMillan on Wednesday morning, March 27, 2013.
The 2 1/4-minute news story centered on local Newberry Springs residents
being upset over the surprise height of the new solar facility being built on Mountain View Road.
The story also included a short county response where First District
Supervisor Robert Lovingood's local representative, Ron Frame, provided a compassionate and
an understanding reply for what has happened to Newberry Springs residents .
The news report was exceptionally well done for the brief amount of
time that Rob McMillan and his cameraman had to research and prepare the story.
Unfortunately, one error was stated in the report. McMillan displayed the modification
notice that was sent to the neighboring (mostly absentee) landowners showing no modification
in the plans to violate the earlier permitted maximum structure height of 7 feet.
McMillan then referenced another document of nine pages showing
that several pages into it one reference was made to a height of 27 feet. McMillan stated
that the receivers of the modification notice didn't read deep enough into the notice to read
the fine print.
The fact is, the second document that McMillan was referencing was not
a part of the county's notification notice. That was a separate document that was later
acquired by the Community Alliance in researching the county's planning records.
There was no notice ever given to the adjacent property owners notifying them of any change in
structure height.
For the public to acquire the nine-page document that McMillan referenced,
the public would have had to search through county records to acquire it. And they would have
had to have done it within a 10-day time frame to respond in writing.
