At 7:00 Tuesday morning, there’s going to be a public protest on Main Street in Fairfax, near Stone’s Throw Pizza, against something likely coming before the town Selectboard soon.

A woman who plans to be part of the protest says it’s taking place to oppose a proposal to lease property to Verizon to build a new cell phone tower.

That proposed new 130-foot tower would be in a wooded area, set back about half a mile from Jill Decker’s house on Thatcher Road.

“The residents, most of them, do not know about it at all,” she said.

Verizon wants a 25-year lease from the town for the land. Decker says if the tower is built, it would defeat the purpose of her move to Fairfax nearly 20 years ago.

“One engineer I spoke to, he said ‘you will not have any deer around here’,” she said. “We have deer and all kinds of turkeys, animals, foxes, rabbits, everything. He said ‘you won’t get it’ because that’s a constant wave that’s barraging the whole area.”

Two years ago, nearly 200 scientists from 36 different countries asked the European Union to ban 5G technology until potential health and environmental effects from added exposure to wireless radiation can be studied.

Brian Sullivan is a Burlington-based attorney representing Verizon. Last month, at a Fairfax Selectboard meeting, he told Decker this wouldn’t be a 5G tower, at least at first, since Verizon does not use 5G technology in Vermont at the moment. However, he did say all of the towers at other sites the company is building right now are being built to be able to handle 5G signals. (Their exchange takes place at the 13:50 mark of the video.)

(“The town) is saying they need it because of the businesses and they need to boost all the towers that are up on Georgia Mountain, but as residents, we don’t feel we need it,” Decker said. “We’re just a small community; we don’t have a lot of businesses here.”

According to Decker, town manager Brad Docheff has told her the Selectboard will take up the Verizon lease, and the tower, by the end of November.

“We just want it out there for all the little towns in Vermont, New York, all the little towns that think (5G is) not coming to their town,” Decker said. “Because we’re a little town — we don’t have much here — but it’s coming.”

We’ve reached out to Docheff and to every member of the Selectboard. No replies so far — likely because of the holiday Monday — but we still intend to speak with them…if and when we hear from them.