No public hearing on cell tower until all information is in, says planning board

Monday, September 12, 2011
by Christine Yeres

Planning board chair Susan Carpenter reported to the Millwood Task Force on Thursday, September 8 that the cell tower company, Homeland-AT&T, “is pressing for a public hearing, but we told the applicant that they won’t get one until we have everything we’ve asked them to provide.”  The planning board is still hoping, she said, that there will be an non-residential alternative location to the seven-acre Rodrigues residential property at 50 Hoags Cross Road, on which AT&T and Homeland Towers want to place a 150-foot tower rising from a 2,500-square-foot fenced compound.

Although Con Ed power lines run nearby, surrounding residents fear the additional impact of the cell tower on their property values and on the look of the residential neighborhood.  In the application before the planning board, Homeland-AT&T is seeking a waiver in amount of setback Con Ed requires from its property line, to ensure that a cell tower will not damage Con Ed power lines if it should fall.  Homeland-AT&T lawyers say the tower is designed with a hinge that causes the tower to fold down against itself rather than have its whole length topple, but the planning board needs the applicant to provide a specific response to Homeland’s proposed tower from from Con Ed itself.

At last Tuesday’s planning board meeting, Homeland-AT&T’s lawyer, Anthony Gioffre of Cuddy & Feder LLP, told board members that he had no control over when Con Ed might answer his requests for information.  He pleaded with planning board members not to delay the public hearing in the meantime, saying that it was important for the public both to hear the plan whole rather than piecemeal, and also to be heard.  Carpenter assured Gioffre that members of the public were steadily making themselves heard through correspondence to the planning board, and that no public hearing would be set until the application was complete.  (Once a public hearing takes place, there is a strict time line thereafter that requires the planning board to make a decision within a strictly specified amount of time.)

Planning board members reminded Homeland-AT&T’s attorney that they are also still waiting for an answer to whether a lower, 110 foot tower will accomplish the purpose.  The attorney responded, “If we’re forced to go lower than our minimum height, there will be areas without coverage.”

“Then why don’t you show us that information?” suggested planning board member Sheila Crespi.  “We’ve actually been asking for that information – for the percentage difference in the coverage and what the topography is, or whether it’s an undeveloped piece of property that’s not that important to cover anyway.”

“We’ve been asking for the corridors this covers,” Crespi continued.  “Are they residential corridors or transportation corridors? How much ‘drop off’ in coverage will there be if you go down to 110 feet versus 150 feet?  We’d like to see quantification.”

Town code violations on the property

The board then asked Bob Cioli, the town’s engineer, whether the town code violations on the Rodrigues property had been resolved. Cioli responded that there were 15 “comments” on the property in mid-March, that he had met with the property owners two months ago to give them clarification, and hadn’t heard back from them since.  He added that the town’s building inspector, Rich Polcari, and found “some outstanding violations there, too.”  Gioffre interjected that the owner of the property had “appeared in court and has removed some of the offending structures at this point.”

Request for still more information

The planning board’s F.P. Clark consultants read out their information wish-list to Homeland-AT&T’s attorney as well:

• a comparison from Homeland-AT&T between the features of the Rodrigues site and a Schuman Road site on which Homeland-AT&T is also attempting to place a cell tower

• more information on the Taconic Parkway as a possible site

• quantification of the population to be served by the proposed cell tower, and

• whether the gap in service the proposed tower would fill is for residences or for a gap along a transportation corridor

In wrapping up the informal hearing, in addition to the proposed tower that has been designed to serve three or four carriers Homeland would like to host besides AT&T, Crespi said that she would like to see designs for “a lowest possible tower for the one carrier.”

Planning board counsel, Les Steinman of Wormser, Kiely, Galef & Jacobs LLP, advised Gioffre to have his client look again at the Amsterdam property as an alternate site for the cell tower.