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Flag pole cell tower better than tree disguise

Flag Day came early to two Pasco County locations.

A county fleet maintenance yard off Fox Hollow Boulevard east of U.S. 19 near Port Richey and land earmarked for an expanded recreation center in Land O'Lakes are now home to 190-foot-tall poles holding American flags measuring 600 square feet.

But commerce and communication, not patriotic pride, are the reasons for the oversized flags. They are disguising privately owned cellular telecommunication towers leased on public land.

The attempts to mitigate aesthetic concerns deserve kudos. The flag poles are preferable to the awkward-looking pine tree disguises that some phone companies have used elsewhere.

"They don't look like pine trees. They look like cell towers trying to look like pine trees," Assistant County Administrator Dan Johnson observed correctly.

The flag pole design is pleasing to the eye, and the towers provide unobjectionable landmarks in a flat-landscaped county that limits the height of commercial buildings to 35 feet. A giant flag pole certainly is preferably to much of the rest of the visual clutter so prominent on and near U.S. 19.

The flag pole in Land O'Lakes, incidentally, is a coincidental precursor to development of the 40-acre park expansion. The county expects to award a bid of slightly less than $6.1-million May 23, with construction scheduled to begin June 6 and finish 10 months later. The new cell tower flag pole is almost dead center in the 40 acres.

We have never been big fans of putting cell towers in parks, but federal law requires local governments to accommodate cellular towers to cure so-called dead zones that don't receive reliable cellular service.

Parks, however, should be a last resort, and only when a gap in coverage exists. That has been the case in some central Pasco locations between State Roads 54 and 52. A similar cellular telephone tower, also disguised as a flag pole, was erected several months ago at the Lake Padgett Estates East privately controlled park in Land O'Lakes.

Some locales around the country have seized upon the idea of leasing property for cell towers to fatten up government bank accounts, and even some Pasco commissioners indicated several years ago a willingness to lease county land for the towers. But economic times have changed. The county no longer finds itself near the state property tax rate limit, and a sustained construction boom has helped the revenue side of local governments' budgets. Seeking a few bucks from the wireless telephone industry - the leases are for $1,200 monthly - no longer is a priority.

The recreation center in Land O'Lakes isn't the first county park to get a cell tower. Pasco previously authorized one in Oak Ridge Park in Seven Springs to stave off pending litigation. The lawsuit came after commissioners, hearing objections from area homeowners, turned down a proposed cellular tower behind a strip shopping center, just north of the park. Now the tower adjoins the light poles on the two softball diamonds there.

Though the cell tower dwarfs the the light poles by more than 100 feet, a thick grove of oaks, pines and other trees abuts the outfield fences and helps to buffer the adjoining neighborhood.

Cellular towers are necessary to serve people determined to talk on wireless phones no matter where they are. Homeland Security concerns, meanwhile, emphasized the need to eliminate dead zones.

Considering the ugly alternatives, give Pasco County credit for mandating a cellular tower design that will have some people ready to stand up and salute.

[Last modified May 7, 2006, 01:10:18]