Progress on SBA Towers' proposed 288-foot lattice cell phone tower for Ron Irwin's property on Tice Road in Spring Glen has met with some interference in the form of concerned town and village residents, whose appearance at the last town planning board meeting on March 25 has resulted in a balloon test to be scheduled for next Wednesday, April 16. The balloon test, which involves flying a balloon to simulate the potential visibility of the proposed tower, will start at 8 a.m., and will run for at least three hours. In the event of inclement weather or strong winds, the test will be postponed until April 17. Should the weather cause problems on that day, the test will be postponed another day, and so on.

The town planning board meeting saw a presentation about the proposed tower by representatives from SBA Towers, AT&T (the service provider commissioning the tower from SBA), and CA Smith LLC, SBA's engineering firm. The tower will allow AT&T to hang their cellular transmitters, and will hopefully fill a five or six mile coverage gap along the 209 corridor. In the March 20 edition of the Journal, it was incorrectly reported that AT&T will own the tower and will be able to lease space to other providers — in actuality, the tower will be owned and maintained by SBA, and space will be leased to AT&T and any other providers who wish to locate their own transmitters on the tower.

The second floor courtroom of town hall was packed with residents, most of them seeming to hail from Cragsmoor, who expressed their worries regarding the proposed tower's potential impact on the environment as well as its impact on the view of the mountain on which it would be built. One of their concerns was the FAA requirement that any structure above 199 feet be fitted with blinking lights, and several residents asked if the tower could be built shorter but higher up so as to avoid the necessity for lights but possibly retain its coverage capacity. In response, CA Smith engineer Peter Goutos and AT&T's Kevin Brennan said that the FAA rule does not exclude shorter structures from being fitted with lights, only that structures above 199 feet must have them.

Goutos also explained that the choice of tower site took environmental impact into consideration, and that building on the chosen spot within Irwin's property would be ideal because of its relatively level ground. Moving the tower to a higher location with more sloped ground would require more digging and more environmental disturbance, he said. They also said that their plans would keep the visual impact of the proposed tower to a minimum.

The most vocal opponents of the tower, Catherine and Michael Abate, owners of the property neighboring Irwin's, brought their own lawyer and engineer, Alex Smith and Andy Willingham of David Clouser and Associates, respectively. Planning board chairman Marty Lonstein gave each member of the public two minutes to speak during the question and answer portion of the public hearing, and within their allotted time, the Abates, Smith, and Willingham made their case against the tower, presenting materials depicting the many areas along 209 and the surrounding landscape from which the tower will be visible.

While one Spring Glen resident at the meeting expressed her support of the tower, citing lives lost in the area as a result of poor or non-existent cellular coverage, most of the twenty or so residents voiced disapproval of the tower despite its potential coverage benefits. As the meeting wound down with no resolution or decision in sight, the representatives from SBA and AT&T agreed to provide the upcoming balloon test, and the public hearing on the tower was to resume at the next planning board meeting, scheduled for April 22 at 7 p.m. on the second floor of Wawarsing's town hall on Canal Street in Ellenville.

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In a follow-up interview after the planning board meeting, Kate McKinnon, a spokesperson for AT&T, explained that her company was responding to customer requests from that area.

"We certainly would not be planning to build a site unless we felt like we really needed it for our customers," said McKinnon, citing the high-expense of tower building.

Pam Kline, Vice President of the Florida-based SBA Towers, described the technical reasons behind the need for a new tower, saying that the increased need to have more towers closer to each other has a direct relationship to an increase in cell phone use, users, and bandwidth needs, as today's phones are capable of more functions than ever before.

"It's kind of a catch-22," said Kline. "Everyone wants their cell phone to work, but no one wants to see a cell tower."

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