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Cell towers at parks would be a bad call
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 18, 2001 The Pasco County Commission moved from government regulator toward free market participant Wednesday while approving new controls for telecommunication towers. Commissioners authorized a 90-day moratorium on approving applications for new communication towers under the presumption they will rewrite the current ordinance to better define where towers can be located and to require camouflage techniques to obscure the unsightly structures. But, some commissioners also indicated a preference to get into the cell tower business themselves, allowing the towers to be located on county-owned land. It reverses a stand from two years ago when a prior board declined to approve towers on public property. Allowing a cellular tower to share property with emergency dispatch transmitters or wastewater treatment facilities is not unreasonable. The locales already can be categorized as aesthetically challenged, though utility plants do not reach skyward the way telecommunications equipment can. But the commission should retreat from the suggestion to open up county parks to telecommunications equipment. Commissioner Ann Hildebrand said eye-pleasing towers could even enhance the appearance of county parks. How? By dotting pristine nature parks with fake trees or highly utilized baseball fields with giant foul poles? More likely, the county could allow some nature park observation towers to be equipped with telecommunications equipment. Appearance alone is not the point. If one tower is allowed in one park, why not many towers in many parks? Soon, plastic trees and clock towers will ruin the pastoral setting of the county's highly regarded park network. The county is contemplating the idea as a moneymaker at a time when its property tax rate is close to the state limit. Revenue generated from tower leases at parks can be pumped back into those same sites, officials said. The county should look elsewhere for its park operating dollars. Hildebrand has previously categorized the county's parks and library systems as Pasco's jewels, gems she helped carve by campaigning successfully for the tax referendums that created them. She is unwise then to allow the wireless communications industry to become the new jeweler. The commission's action after this discussion, though, is to be commended. In approving a 90-day moratorium, but exempting six pending tower applications, commissioners created some breathing room to allow for workshops with industry representatives and a chance to craft a better tower ordinance. That work, though, should be expedited. Just approving the moratorium took 70 days. Over the next three months, commissioners must decide on a more precise definition for co-location: the sharing of tower space or location by more than one company; height restrictions; beautification efforts; and appropriate locales. The commission also should consider incentives to encourage tower locations in industrial areas. It would diminish the site battles that frequent board meetings now and reduce the destruction of the county's scenic qualities that spurred the moratorium in the first place.
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