Residential Cell Tower Plan Opposed in Mount Pleasant
A proposal to construct a 110-foot-high cell tower in a residential area of Mount Pleasant is coming under fire.
Homeland Towers is working with Verizon to construct the tower on a roughly 3,780-square-foot town-owned parcel at the intersection of Bear Ridge Road and Watch Hill Road. Homeland Towers said the tower was needed because there is an interruption of service in the Route 120 section of Mount Pleasant.
Mount Pleasant Supervisor Joan Maybury said Aug. 3 that about 400 residents have signed paper and on-line petitions in opposition to the plan, while only a few citizens have expressed their support. A public hearing on the issue has been scheduled for Aug. 14. Homeland Towers briefly discussed the proposal at a July town board meeting, Maybury said.
The on-line petition states, in part, “I’m concerned about this tower because of its general location, within a quiet family neighborhood, and its specific location, next to a school bus stop at an already dangerous intersection.
“While I understand that companies want to provide good cell phone coverage, I believe it is possible to build infrastructure in a way that is sensitive to the community and to the environment. This proposal is neither.”
Critics of the cell tower plan have said they are concerned that a new tower would reduce their home’s property values; be placed at a school bus stop; would make an already dangerous intersection more troublesome; and would be inappropriate for the Usonia neighborhood, which recently received a historical designation from the federal government.
Resident Arthur Marino said his neighborhood was an inappropriate spot for a 110-foot-high cell tower. “It would tower over the highest trees is the area,” Marino said. The tower would be “less than 100 feet from my property line,” he said.
Marino said July, when many are on vacation, was not the proper time for information about the cell tower to have been presented to the town board.
Marino said he expected several residents to attend the Aug. 14 public hearing. “This is not the proper location for a cell tower,” he added.
Another resident, Keri Vaquero, who lives on Bear Ridge Road, also criticized the cell tower proposal. “It’s right smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood,” she said, noting the tower would be 50 feet from her property line. “It’s not what the neighborhood wants,” she said. Vaquero said she and her neighbors fear property values would go down in the area if the tower was constructed.
Maybury said she and her town board colleagues have not decided on the cell tower issue. Because the tower would be located on town-owned land, the board is under no obligation to approve the plan, she said.
“The town is analyzing it,” Maybury said.
Maybury said the Route 120 area does not have cellular phone service. A cell tower, wherever it would be located, would assist police, fire and other related services. “It would be helpful in terms of emergency response,” she said.
Responding to some concerns that the public hearing was being scheduled for the summer, Maybury said no decision would be made until October at the earliest.
Maybury said cell towers in the area typically have four or five carriers. The town could be eligible for half of the revenues that would go from the phone companies to Homeland Towers and could generate about $200,000 a year to the town, she said.
The cell tower proposal was defended by Manny Vicente, owner and president of Homeland Towers. He said there has long been a need for a cell tower in the area.
”It’s a project the industry has been looking at in the area for quite some time, 15 years or more,” he said. “There’s a lack of service in the area. We’ve been working on this for years.”
Though he did not agree with the critics of his cell tower plan, Vicente said he was sympathetic to their comments. “I understand there’s a lot of concern,” he said.
Despite the criticisms, Vicente defended is project. “We looked at every option in the area,” he said.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
