Citing a concern for public safety communications, the Borough Council in Bernardsville, NJ voiced its support for Somerset County’s plan to build a taller and more robust cell tower. The existing tower is 75-feet tall. According to the Bernardsville News, the proposal currently under consideration would replace that tower with one that is 150-feet to 175-feet tall, along with a new equipment shed. There are also larger plans afoot to set up a “three-site solution” by constructing an additional two towers.
Although inviting commercial carriers to participate is something the Borough said it would consider in the future, Bernardsville Fire Chief Glenn Miller stressed that the need for better emergency communications for fire and rescue personnel is at the heart of the cell tower plans.
“We literally have no radio communications in about 40 to 50 percent of this town within the residences,” he said. “We’re talking public safety. You have volunteers that are risking their lives going into a burning building that had zero radio communications with the county or the police department on the systems we’re on. This is something that’s critical to the infrastructure for emergency services in Bernardsville,” he added, “and it’s been something that I’ve been a champion of for the previous 10 years I’ve been chief.”
Mayor Mary Jane Canose noted that because the cell tower project is aimed at public safety, the Council will be able to bypass the need for an additional hearing with the land use board. The suggested location for the new site would place it in a mountainous, non-residential part of town.
“I know this radio communications project has been around almost as long as I’ve been working for the county,” longtime employee David Frauenheim, who serves as Director of 911 Communications, told the News. “Pill Hill, at the entrance to the municipal dump as we call it, has always been a bright spot for us, a perfect location to cover a lot of peaks and valleys in Bernardsville.”
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