PB asks for expert consultant to learn whether cell tower can be less than 150 feet
Saturday, June 7, 2014
by Christine Yeres
In a special meeting scheduled for 7:00 p.m. on Monday, June 9, Planning Board members hope to clear up issues of tower height and the coverage gap Homeland Towers has said it must cover by placing a 150-foot cell tower on Armonk Road.
[See also Letter to ZBA: Deny the cell tower application for Alfredo property, NCNOW.org, 6/7/14 by Roger and June Blanc.]
The PB has seen two drawings from Homeland showing cell phone coverage at two heights—150 feet and 130 feet. “Are they so close,” asked Brownell, that one height is as good as another?” Additional information on Monday should help the Board to know what readings constitute good reception or signal strength in the area and answer the question, “Is there adequate signal being received with the 130 or 150 foot tower, and could it be 110 feet to do the job?”
PB Chair Bob Kirkwood asked also for more information on the “flagpole” or “monopole” cell tower design—a pole without the brush-bristle of antennae at its top—which the PB would consider less intrusive. Homeland has said that the technology is compromised with a monopole, “and yet you see these poles around,” noted Kirkwood, and directed Town Planner Sabrina Charney to find a “radio frequency” consultant to review the materials the PB will provide and explain the differences between the pole types.
PB discussion of Homeland cell tower on Armonk Road
Start: 50-minute mark
Ends: 1-hour, 5-minute mark
Town of New Castle Planning Board Meeting 6/3/14 from New Castle Media Center on Vimeo.
Will it work at 120 feet?
Has anyone seen or heard of the new technology that was invented at Bell Labs (now belonging to Alcatel-Lucent. They came up with a design that does not have all of the negatives that the current cell tower technology processes. Their design of smaller boxes that can fit unobtrusively anywhere see this link http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/solutions/small-cells
Check it out, this is what the providers should be doing
In the past few days Sprint and T-Mobile have announced a merger. If approved by the Federal government, there would only be 3 major carriers. No longer any need for a tower to support 6 which don’t exist. I always thought cell towers were for the phone-has the Fed changed the rules? If not,then why is date being mentioned as a need in poor reception areas?
There are many other less intrusive options. Homeland and Alfredo do not make money on them, so they will tell you they do not exist. But they do. Additionally, i would suspect that anyone living in that area probably already has a booster provided to them by their carrier. This resolves any coverage issues for those properties entirely, and are typically provided by carriers at no cost for that purpose. There is definitely a small coverage gap in that area, but it is very small. It is hard to believe a cell tower is needed for such a minor gap that can be remedied using less intrusive methods and that is already likely to be remedied by carrier-provided boosters in the homes of those who live in that area. This is 2014… boosters and other technology have now been around for many, many years. When you get a small cut in your finger, do you get a full body cast? Of course not. Same thing here. A cell tower is overkill along Armonk Road. Explore other options, if any.
Thank you to the Planning Board for realizing that they need someone other than Homeland Towers to tell them how high a tower needs to be to fill any significant gap on Rt 128, AND for doing something about it!!!
So thankful the Planning Board is doing their homework and not buying into the fallacies of Homeland Towers. Other technologies do exist and are more appropriate in residential areas. 150 foot towers are located on highways. Homeland Towers wants to put up the cheapest tower possible that can bring in the greatest income; this has nothing to do with serving New Castle. This is wrong for New Castle for so many reasons; please do the right thing and say no.
Pity that the planning board’s Kirkwood lost the supervisor’s race to Carpenter by such a tiny margin. Things would have been different.
