A Christian education organization, Vanguard Association of Sunbelt Colleges Corp., has won a construction permit to build a new noncom educational FM station in Dubuque, Iowa, despite a petition to deny from another applicant and a separate informal objection from its proposed tower co-tenant.
One of the objections against VASC was that its application was designed by the president of another organization as a way to get around the 10-application cap. But the commission didn’t buy that argument.
VASC had been chosen by the FCC Media Bureau as the tentative winner of a mutually exclusive group of applications in the the 2021 NCE filing window. The MX group also included Augustana College.
According to the FCC, Augustana then filed a petition to deny, questioning whether VASC had the finances to operate each of the eight stations it had applied for in the window.
Augustana alleged that VASC’s technical consultant, Luke Rogers, who also is president of the Elijah Radio noncom broadcast network, might be using the application to circumvent the filing window’s 10-application limit. The college also questioned whether VASC had “reasonable site assurance” for its selected broadcast tower.
Additionally, Iowa Public Radio filed an informal objection to VASC’s application, alleging that VASC cannot have reasonable assurance because the VASC’s tower location is already used for IPR’s Dubuque signal, 89.7 KNSY.
But VASC replied with a sworn declaration that neither Rogers nor Elijah Radio has any “attributable interests” in VASC. It also provided data to support its financial viability, and it offered email correspondence between its consulting engineer and the manager for the owner of its selected Dubuque tower, Crown Castle.
In its decision upholding the choice, the Media Bureau deemed VASC as financially qualified. The bureau also said that VASC had demonstrated reasonable assurance of tower site availability based on its correspondence with Crown Castle, including confirmation that space was available on the tower listed in the application.
The bureau also noted that it is common for multiple applications to have the same consultant; it concluded that there was insufficient evidence of the VASC application being used to circumvent the 10-application rule.
Outcome: a CP for Vanguard Association of Sunbelt Colleges in Dubuque.
