Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Antenna rules up for hearing City hopes new plan will spur compromise

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 20:49:19 -0500

Antenna rules up for hearing  City hopes new plan will spur compromise

Monday, November 10, 2003

By Ronald Leir
Journal staff writer

Bayonne is striving for compromise in a proposed amended city law that
would regulate the design, location and placement of wireless
telecommunications towers and antennas.

A newly drafted ordinance, scheduled for a public hearing before the
City
Council at 7 p.m. Dec. 17, would continue to designate essentially
non-residential areas as "preferred locations" for situating
telecommunications towers. But the ordinance would do away with fees
charged applicants for registrations and permits.

Councilman-at-large Anthony
Chiappone and
Planning/Zoning Board
counsel Richard Campisano
came up with revised
language after meeting with
Paterson attorney Steve
Glatt, who has represented
an out-of-county suburban
community which has dealt
with many
telecommunication
applicants, and with Charles
Hecht, a broadcast engineer
consultant.

The research was prompted
by litigation brought by Nextel earlier this year, after the company
failed to
get a required permit from the Planning Board to place a wireless unit
on
the roof of an apartment building at 34th Street and Kennedy Boulevard.

Although a majority of the board voted 4-2 to grant the use-variance,
Nextel needed at least five votes for passage. Nextel sued, challenging
the constitutionality of the city's original ordinance, and the state
Superior
Court agreed.

"The bottom line is, we tried to balance the industry's need for these
wireless devices with the citizens' desire not to live under them,"
Campisano said.

If the City Council ends up adopting the new language, officials say the

way would be clear for the city to act on several pending industry
applications for communications projects around the city.

"The city should still be able to regulate where these things should go
and
what types of devices they are," Chiappone said. "For me, the financial
portion of the ordinance wasn't central to my concerns. For me, the core

of it was always the location and that these devices don't spread like a

blight around town."

"Yes, I agree the industry does need more towers, because they need to
increase their capacity, but I also feel we need to have safeguards
about
where these things are placed," Chiappone added. "I have a concern
about fire safety.[en].[en].because if these devices are placed on top
of a
residential building, for example, usually the roof is a means of egress

during a fire or some type of emergency and people can be blocked by
these things."

Chiappone said that given the complex issue of placing communications
towers, "we feel this revised ordinance is a fair way to go."

Under the ordinance, the city designates "heavy industrial" properties
as
the "first preferential location" for wireless towers and/or antennas,
followed by light industrial, highway commercial, municipal buildings,
public utility poles, buildings leased by the city and mixed-used
properties, generally speaking. The type of wireless facility is another

factor that must be considered in the equation.

But, again, if an applicant wants to put a device on top of a
residential
property, the applicant would likely have to come before the city
Planning
Board for an exemption from zoning restrictions, Campisano said.

"The problem is," Campisano said, "that the industry wants to locate
where the people are, and that's where the rub comes in."

Ronald Leir can be reached at [email-masked]

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