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Request for tower extension hits snag

A company wants to add 30 feet to its cell tower in Inverness. The city says it must get approval from the county's aviation board.

By CATHERINE E. SHOICHET
Published October 21, 2005

INVERNESS - To build a taller cell tower, Charlie Dean Jr. will have to go before the county's aviation advisory board.

In a 5-2 vote Wednesday evening, the Inverness Zoning Board of Adjustment said that the city's code requires Dean's company, Charlie Dean Towers Inc. of Tampa, to seek approval from the county's aviation board.

In December, Dean's company completed construction of a $225,000, 164-foot metal tower at the southeast corner of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church's property on U.S. 41 S.

Now, the company wants to add 30 feet to the tower. Inverness attorney Clark Stillwell, who is representing Dean, told the board that the additional height will allow the tower to beam signals for three additional cell phone carriers.

He argued that the county aviation board does not have jurisdiction over the tower because it is a replacement, not a new tower. Criteria for replacement towers are in a separate section of the city code, he said, and therefore are not limited by specifications elsewhere in the code.

But City Attorney Denise Lyn said that argument was illogical.

"You have to read your code in its entirety," she said.

The board's vote came after more than an hour of questioning, argument and testimony from Lyn, Director of Development Services Ken Koch and Stillwell.

No one from the aviation board spoke at Wednesday's meeting, but the board's chairman, Richard Winkel, sat in the audience.

Aviation board members have said that the current 164-foot tower, less than a mile from the Inverness Airport, is taller than allowed under county and city codes and violates the airport's airspace. In the future, they said, it could get in the way of airplanes approaching the airport for landing.

Koch said the city's approval last year of a 20-foot extension for the tower, from 144 to 164 feet, was based on minutes from an aviation board meeting that stated an incorrect maximum height for new communications towers.

The board corrected the minutes in February 2005, twoC months after the tower had been built.

At an aviation board meeting last week, Winkel said the city should enforce its code and require Dean to decrease the tower's height.

County officials, he said, should do whatever they can to make that happen - even if that means suing the city.

County officials have said they don't have jurisdiction over the city. And Koch said the city will not retroactively enforce the code after a permit has been granted.

Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at cshoichet@sptimes.com or 860-7309.

[Last modified October 21, 2005, 02:15:38]