City official peeved by tower's presence

The City Council member will lobby legislators to change a law that let the tower be built.

By MATTIAS KAREN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

OLDSMAR -- Brian Michaels doesn't like what he sees in the morning.

Driving out of the Forest Lakes subdivision, where he lives, the Oldsmar City Council member is greeted by what he calls a "monstrous, ugly" 120-foot cellular phone tower.

The steel tower, put up by Florida Power two weeks ago where a regular transmission pole used to be, is about 25 feet from the fence around his neighborhood and 25 feet from city limits.

"We're not happy, to say the least," Michaels said. "It changed the skyline of the city, and that's not a skyline we wanted to change."

Michaels said the tower upsets him for two reasons. First, the Oldsmar City Council passed an ordinance two months ago making it tougher to put up cell phone towers in residential areas within city limits -- to protect citizens from situations like this one. And when Pinellas County approved Florida Power's application for the tower, no one informed the city, he said.

"I'm upset that the county can permit something like that, and not even tell the city," he said. "We didn't even know it was coming. . . . You shouldn't be able to put something that big by a residential neighborhood without telling somebody."

So Michaels is complaining to the county and said he's trying to figure out how this happened. County officials, however, said there was not much they could do to prevent the tower from going up.

County code says the distance between a cell phone tower and a residential neighborhood has to be at least equal to the height of the tower. But state law preempts a county government from regulating any kind of transmission line Florida Power wants to put up, said Paul Cassel, county director of development review services. Since the tower also functions as a transmission pole, the county can't regulate it, he said.

Michaels said if that's the case, he will lobby state legislators to change that law. "If it's a loophole, we intend to close it," he said. "It's not fair that they can put up a 120-foot pole 25 feet away from a (neighborhood) without going through any hoops."

But Florida Power officials said they did not decide where the tower should be located. That was decided by Nextel Communications, which contracted with Florida Power for the tower to be built, said Tony Woods, senior manager of marketing for Progress Telecom, Florida Power's sister company.

Woods said Nextel studied its carrier traffic patterns to see where in Oldsmar it had weak coverage.

"This was an area where they needed additional coverage," Woods said. "They wouldn't be able to provide the coverage for their customers if they put (the tower) way out in the boonies."

But Michaels said he will keep fighting for a change in policy, to protect other areas from similar situations, he said.

"I don't necessarily think we'll be able to take (the tower) down," he said. "But I don't want this to happen to anybody else."

So far he appears to be fighting alone. Cassel said the county doesn't have a problem with the tower being there -- to the contrary, it encourages companies to turn existing poles into cell phone towers instead of building completely new ones.

"As far as I'm concerned, I don't think we have an issue with it," Cassel said.

Oldsmar Community Development Director Nick Staszko said his office hasn't received any complaints about the tower. Nor has Florida Power, Cassel said. Even Don Bourdon, president of the homeowners association for the Garden of Forest Lakes, said, "it really doesn't bother me. It doesn't hurt anybody."

- Staff writer Mattias Karen can be reached at (727) 445-4243 or at northpin@sptimes.com.

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