The Cape Elizabeth Planning Board is seeking legal clarification on an application for a third, 180-foot tower on Justin Strout’s property, reported The Forecaster. The tower is proposed to stand with two others on Strout Trust in Cape Elizabeth, ME, but residents and board members want to know if this tower is necessary.
According to Justin Strout, owner of the proposed site, there’s a “sweet spot” near the top of a 180-foot tower where carriers want to be. “(A third tower) gives optimal cell coverage and gives me a financial advantage,” he said.
With that, Vice Chairman Joseph Chalat said the board will seek an interpretation of the town’s “co-location” requirement. The co-location ordinance says tower owners and users should allow “other commercial wireless telecommunication service providers using functionally compatible technology to co-locate antennas, equipment, and facilities on a tower and site.” To ensure co-location, the town may “require co-location on a tower in order to prevent the need for … providers to build new towers (and) may deny an application for a tower because of inadequate provisions and/or arrangements for co-location.”
This could be unwelcome news for Strout, who wants to see a third tower constructed for financial gain. “We have multiple customers that would love to be at 180 feet … we’d like to do this, so we can put everybody that wants to be at the top,” Strout noted.
According to Board member Jonathan Schreck, he just wants to ensure that the law is being followed. “The whole idea of co-location is so we don’t have towers all over the place,” he noted.
Town Planner Maureen O’Meara also weighed in by saying that she doesn’t know how the Strouts will be able to meet standards of the ordinance without demonstrating a need for the tower, especially when it comes to co-location capacity. “You already got approval for a 180-foot tower and now, you kind of need to show why you need another one and you need to show that you don’t have enough capacity on the first one,” said O’Meara.
As for next steps, the discussion has been tabled until members of the Planning Board hear from a lawyer later this month.
December 11, 2017
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