COUNTY'S TOWER MORATORIUM LIKELY TO FALL

[Rich]

Wednesday March 20 12:00am
Press Journal (Vero Beach, FL)
Copyright 2002 Stuart News Company


Indian River County officials next month are expected to terminate a 15-month moratorium on cellular-phone towers and resume accepting applications for erecting new ones, as long as the towers meet new guidelines.
In a 5-0 vote Tuesday, the County ommission approved an interim ordinance to govern towers until a master plan is completed later this year. Tuesday was the first of two public hearings required by state law when uses in the zoning code are changed.

The next hearing is set for April 2 in time to beat the moratorium's expiration on April 7.

"This ordinance will allow people to come in and we'll review application by application," Planning Director Stan Boling said Tuesday. "The master plan will provide pre-approved sites for towers."

Consultant Anthony Lepore, vice president of CityScape Siting & Management Inc. of Coral Springs, is in charge of drafting the master plan. He said he expects to have it complete in five months.

Commissioners in January 2001 set the moratorium on new towers in response to neighbors' opposition to Nextel South's request for a 149-foot tower on the site of the Immanuel Baptist Church, 455 S.W. 58th Ave.

The commission had rejected the tower, but a Miami federal judge in October 2001 ruled in Nextel's favor, ordering the county to permit the tower.

The county has an existing ordiance for towers, Boling said, but it is not tailored to the growing number of cellular phone services.

The existing tower ordinance would remain in place for non-cellular uses such as radio and television broadcasters, ham radios and citizens' band radios, he said.

The new ordinance, based on Lepore's work, specifies a hierarchy of various kinds of cellular phone towers, in order of preference:

Those sharing a site with another user, such as a radio broadcaster.

Those attached to buildings, water towers or utility poles.

Those that would replace existing towers.

"Stealth" towers, placed inside other structures, such as clock towers, or otherwise disguised.

New towers, the least preferred. And they will be single poles, not lattice structures.

The ordinance distributes them among the county's various zoning districts, with many of them requiring special exceptions for approval.

Questioned by Lepore, commissioners said they didn't want to use libraries or schools to site cellular phone towers. Other public facilities were approved.

"Obviously, with the more sites available to you, the greater flexibility determines what the master plan will ultimately look like," Lepore said.

"But we just don't want to see them (towers) pop up on every pool deck," Commissioner Fran Adams replied.