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Skyline dotted by cell towers concerns officials
By ALISA ULFERTS and MATTHEW WAITE © St. Petersburg Times, published January 17, 2001 Two out of three Pasco County residents can see a cellular telephone or paging tower somewhere along the skyline from their home. And apparently a majority of county commissioners think that's too many. Three of the five county commissioners have said they support the proposed 90-day cell tower moratorium that they are scheduled to vote on this morning. "For some people that's a non-issue. But for a lot of others, it's an issue," Commission Chairman Steve Simon said of the number of Pasco residents whose horizon includes a cellular tower. Commissioners want the 90-day moratorium on new permits to give their consulting engineer, Arthur Peters, time to conduct a technical review of the tower applications. The county also wants its expert to verify whether there is a need for any particular proposed tower. Already, there are 64 cellular telephone and paging antennas welded to more than 30 towers rising above the Pasco skyline. More towers have been approved, but not yet built. Two more applications are pending. According to a Pasco Times analysis of current towers, two out of three people across the county can see at least one, if not more, from their yard, excluding those across the county line. Some people might have to look around a tree, or a building, but the tower's there. Additionally, the Times found that there is a cellular or paging transmitter for every 12 square miles, making Pasco the 15th most densely serviced of Florida's 67 counties. Pinellas County to the south ranks first, with one transmitter for every three square miles and Hillsborough comes in third with a transmitter every eight miles. The Times obtained maps of towers from the Federal Communications Commission and, using an elevation map and zip code maps with estimated 1999 population counts, calculated the area where the tower would be visible. The estimate of the number of people who can see a tower is, by design, conservative. Zip code areas can be large, and people don't live evenly within them. Although she doesn't think the county is suffering from visual blight just yet, Commissioner Pat Mulieri said the County Commission needs to take steps to ward it off. "I think we're trying to head it off. I think it's teetering on the edge there," Mulieri said. County commissioners were scheduled to vote on the moratorium two weeks ago, but the massive snowstorm that gripped the northeastern states trapped Mulieri there. She requested that commissioners hold off on a vote until she got back. That move might have saved the moratorium. Two commissioners, Peter Altman and Ann Hildebrand, say they have serious reservations and might vote against it. Without Mulieri's vote for it last month, the moratorium could have failed on a 2-2 vote. "The visual blight to me is the telephone poles," Altman said. "We've got some pitiful utility lines in the county." Rather than pursue an unnecessary moratorium, Altman said he'd rather see the county focus on making some money off the towers by allowing their construction on county property. That's a vision he shares with Commissioner Ted Schrader, even though Schrader said he'll likely vote for the moratorium. "I hope this leads to putting them at substations or other facilities that already are unsightly, for lack of a better term," Schrader said. As of Tuesday, Commissioner Ann Hildebrand declared herself "on the fence." "I don't know if 90 days is really going to do anything," Hildebrand said. What 90 days will do, according to Dunedin attorney John Hubbard, is hurt his clients, Crown Castle International. That company put in its application for a cellular tower this fall, and has spent $40,000 so far. "We think it will be really unfair" if Crown Castle's permit is held up, Hubbard said. His clients were never notified that they had to submit information to the county's consulting engineer, Hubbard said. Eventually, commissioners want to amend their tower ordinance to erase some of the ambiguities that mar it. For example, commissioners spent an hour during a November hearing parsing a sentence in their 1997 ordinance, trying to determine whether "collocate" means sticking two antennae on the same tower or sticking two towers on the same plot of land. Contrary to what commissioners were expecting, the county has not been flooded with tower applications since they started discussing the proposed moratorium. Still, "I think that it's an important issue," said Mulieri. "Pasco needs breathing space."
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