Little Silver Seeks To Replace Cellphone Tower

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By John Burton |
The Borough Council will be asking wireless providers, “Can you hear me now?” as it looks to partner for a new communications tower that would also provide additional cell service.
The council will be seeking requests for proposals from communications companies in an effort to partner with one of the companies to erect a new 90foot structure in the area of the existing outdated communications tower, located behind borough hall, 480 Prospect Ave., according to borough officials.
“At the end of the day, this is something we’ve needed for some time,” Mayor Robert Neff Jr. said about replacing the existing tower to ensure public safety and provide needed additional cellphone coverage for the community.
Borough Councilman Donald Galante said the existing 50-foot aging tower, which dates back to circa-1966, provides inadequate coverage for local police, fire, emergency management services, State Police and county hotline services, which rely on it for communications.
There are cellphone coverage dead spots in some areas of the borough, creating a possible public safety concern and could “prevent as rapid a response as possible,” in the case of an emergency, Neff noted.
The thought, officials said, would be to have a private carrier construct the tower on borough-owned property, for which it would receive a rent abatement for a yet to be determined period of time for the use of the property and save taxpayer money. The cost to construct a new 90-foot tower could be anywhere from $150,000-$200,000, according to officials.
In addition, the site could be used by other wireless providers, increasing those companies’ coverage for area users and earning the municipality some revenue, they said.
“Doing this makes financial sense and it certainly makes good safety response sense,” Neff said.
“This is the perfect opportunity to bring everything together,” Galante said.
State Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-13), is a borough resident (and former borough councilman) who has headed up FSD Enterprises for about 20 years. The Red Bank-based firm works with municipalities to negotiate with wireless communications providers for the placement of towers and other equipment. O’Scanlon is volunteering his services, working with local officials as they explore their options.
These installations are a fact of life today and “We all have a voracious appetite for bandwidth,” O’Scanlon noted. “And if that is going to function the way we all want it to we’re going to need the infrastructure.”
This discussion came about when the telecommunication company Verizon appeared before the borough planning board about three months ago seeking a variance to place a number of antennas on top of downtown commercial buildings to improve service. The borough has an ordinance that makes this equipment a permitted use only on municipal property, thus requiring a use variance to place it outside of the permitted zones.
“I wasn’t really excited, aesthetically, about buildings down-town having these antennas,” Galante acknowledged. But that opened the door for discussions for a new tower, he said.
The council voted on June 8 to authorize borough administrator Kimberly Jungfer to work with O’Scanlon to address specifications and advertise to begin the bidding process. No time frame has been established for a decision.
– By John Burton