OH NO, a Cell phone tower.

beetle · July 30, 2005, 07:47:51 AM

I received a call the other evening that I beleive most homeowners would dread, my neigbor seems to be highly considering a offer by a cell phone company to put up a tower on his property, now keep in mind he does not own multiple acres, he has five ! and the only place it could go on his property is 250' from my side door. They (cell company) contacted me also, however, we said no way even though the $ would be a help, $1250.00 per month.

This is a scenic rural residential area, most of the people around me have 2-3 acre lots where he has five and I have ten.

Now here I am.. I bought this land when I was 19 years old and worked my butt off as a kid to pay it off, I have then spent the last 15 years, again working my tail off to have a nice comfortable mini farm, I have just spent the last 2 years building a Timber Frame Barn to add to my place and he is thinking about putting up a tower 250' away. Every day when I walk out my door or the Barn door I will be staring at a frigg.. tower.

Dont get me wrong, they are ineviatable, we are going to have them around if we like it or not, but there is a place for them and it aint in a residential spot.

How is a little guy like me going to fight a large corporation with very deep pockets?

bull · July 30, 2005, 08:09:17 AM

Don't kick a gift horse in the mouth $1250 a month is good money = lots of new toys maybe the guy upstairs is giving you a reward for all your past hardwork. Speak w/ the cell company if you have the acreage you may have a better location out of site.. They also have new towers (monopoles) that can look like a great big flag pole or a pine tree and some will even put up the flag if you request it... they also need an area for a building and usually will landscape and plant to block line of site views..... people complained years ago when they put thru the ugly powerlines. now we can hardly see them.... Good luck !!!

sawguy21 · July 30, 2005, 08:13:06 AM

A friend bought his acreage because it has a tower. The rent made it affordable. You won't notice it after a while.

DanG · July 30, 2005, 08:26:57 AM

Horsefeathers! You will notice it, and they won't landscape around it. Not only that, but it will have a strobe light on top, flashing incessantly, all night, every night. >:( >:(

Check with your county's Planning and Zoning department, and follow whatever procedure they have to object to it. The company probably has alternative sites in mind, so they might locate it elsewhere if they get too much static about this one. Fight it every way you can. Good luck.

woodmills1 · July 30, 2005, 08:37:56 AM

I have seen both the pine tree type and the flagpole ones. The flag pole isn't bad but on close look it is like Wow thats a big flag. The pine tree ones are just stupid, 50 feet higher than any nearby trees with two or three scraggly looking fake branches.

redpowerd · July 30, 2005, 09:38:10 AM

a metal pine tree would be goddy'er than a normal tower.

i thought it took more than five acres to guy them off. but then again ive never seen a metal pine tree.

good luck

beenthere · July 30, 2005, 09:46:47 AM

Two things about a tower (and I am on a hill which makes this close to 'home' like Beetle).

One. Will looking out from a tower overhead (on my place) be less offensive than looking across at a tower on my neighbors place 400 or more feet away? I think (my wife doesn't agree) that if it was on my land, it wouldn't be as offensive in my 'viewshed'. ???

Second: I have heard that the land the tower is on (small postage stamp parcel leased to the tower company) is assessed at a very high amount, but the tower company refuses to pay the taxes. The landowner, to avoid losing the land to a delinquent tax sale, then has to pay the high taxes to get his land back. This may not make sense, and is only what I have heard.

Frustrating dilema to have to consider. I am hoping that towers will be obsolete in the near future, maybe using satelite's to more and smaller ground receivers, or better transmission at ground level. More towers come from demand. An older gent who is a neighbor is a complainer that his cell-phone won't operate from his back 40, such that if he needs to make a distress call to his wife or she needs to reach him, he can't without more towers to reach into every depression. :

I think more sharing of towers is needed, not every different company putting their own up. But this may be done more than I realize too.

I dislike the addition of the night lights. Drove across Iowa after dark recently, and the night view looked like a big City, what with the towers and the all-night yard lights on. I like 'night' ;D

Corley5 · July 30, 2005, 10:00:02 AM

I want one and have even contacted the cell phone companies about installing one here. We do live in area with poor reception and a tower is needed. I haven't had any contact in a couple years with them and last time I did they were still concentrating on the Interstate corridors. Probably time to make a few calls again.

Fraxinus · July 30, 2005, 10:04:34 AM

Quote from: woodmills1 on July 30, 2005, 08:37:56 AM
The pine tree ones are just stupid, 50 feet higher than any nearby trees with two or three scraggly looking fake branches.

I agree, woodmills 1. Have you seen that one in Canterbury, just north of Exit 18 on I-93? Sticks out like a sore thumb and you can see it for about a mile as you approach the exit.
And, DanG, they don't all have to have a light on them. It's my understanding that they only have to have one if they stick up 200' or more. Most of them around here are 170' to 190' tall, just so that they don't have to have a light on them. My neighbor and my brother complain about having to look at them. Both of them have cell phones.
Another brother and I don't much care that they're there. Neither one of us has a cell phone.
Sort of like the people who complain about the noise and smell of a farm with their mouth full of food. And the people who squawk about the paper mill stench while drawing a nice paycheck from it.
Our town has banned them. But I can see about 4 or 5 of them FROM this town in other towns. Now isn't that just precious? Those other towns are getting the revenue; we're not getting any and we still have to look at them. How smart is that???

Buzz-sawyer · July 30, 2005, 12:16:42 PM

Well I lived through the EXACT situation as a younger guy.
I lived in ALton a town of 40000 people.......in a not fancy part of town.
One of the first cell towers in this entire area was to go up not 20 feet from the road we drove and not 100 yards from our house.
I went to the zoning and plannig and they agreed ..it was absurd to put it thier (Falling ice was CRAZY!...100# chuncks falling 100 feet).
They denied the permit..well that was not to stop them!
Turns out though we did the petition thing.....talked to our 2 local alderman.....the payola won out and the attorney for the city ..who had the same last name as the cell tower.....well you get the idea.........there went my nuieve outlook about politics at age 19!!!!

Furby · July 30, 2005, 08:41:11 PM

Yup, they don't all need lights, and a lot of the mono pole ones don't use guy wires.
If it is indeed true that the tower company don't pay the taxes and the assesment is real high, it could be that the tower company is gambling on getting some cheap land down the road. ;)

I'd have to think real hard on it and read all the fine print many, many times, but the money does sound good. You could always use it to invest in more land.

DanG · July 30, 2005, 11:04:10 PM

Oh yeah, did I mention the big, ugly chain link fence they'll put around it, and the security lights, and the trucks coming in and out at all hours? Down here, all of'em have lights. Most of'em are 250' to 300' tall, even the mono-poles, unless they are right in the city. Ours are probably taller due to the flat land around these parts.

Fraxinus · July 31, 2005, 07:34:58 AM

I have never seen one like that around here, Dan.

Rod · July 31, 2005, 07:42:01 AM

I think in 5 to 10 years there wont be any Cell phone towers bcause they will use satellite phones

bull · July 31, 2005, 12:45:13 PM

theres a pine tree pole just off rte 2 in the town of Harvard real ugly 50 above the tree line... ended up in an article about old growth forest back when the city slickers and do gooders were trying to stop the local ski area from expanding... One of them city slickers thought that the cell tower was an old growth left over from the kings grant.... would make a hell of a mast for a ship.
just down the road from me there as a mono pole off the highway you cant even tell theres a chainlink fence or even a 12x12 utility building they put in a beautiful dirt road planted shrubs,trees and flower etc.. nice job and a real good fit.... The planning board *( real group of NIMBY/ YUPPIES)* actually came up w/ some good regs. and a bylaw regarding cell towers. I think our town may benefit.

ksu_chainsaw · July 31, 2005, 01:39:11 PM

A friend of mine ended up with a cell tower on his land. He gets around $900 a month plus 6 free phones with unlimited service on their network. They put up chain link fence around the guy wires so that you could drive a truck under the wires without hitting them, and they also put fence around the base of the tower. There is also a small shed inside that fence with a driveway up to it. They put the tower up out in his pasture, so he can still run cattle all around the tower and can use almost all of the land. They also put up his 2-way radio antenna on the cell tower, so he now gets a lot better reception on his base station, and doesnt have to pay the local radio dealer for a repeater anymore.

This is what Ive learned about cell towers.

Charles

caryr · July 31, 2005, 03:22:58 PM

Quote from: Rod on July 31, 2005, 07:42:01 AM
I think in 5 to 10 years there wont be any Cell phone towers bcause they will use satellite phones

The latency in a satellite based system will likely prevent this from happening. If anything, towers will become more pervasive as wireless broadband becomes available.

Cary

Fraxinus · July 31, 2005, 03:33:59 PM

Quote from: bull on July 31, 2005, 12:45:13 PM
One of them city slickers thought that the cell tower was an old growth left over from the kings grant.... would make a hell of a mast for a ship.

ROFL! I betcha them are same people that see the one in Canterbury and think it's a Giant Sequioa or a Redwood.
Probably call their congressman to complain...on their cell phone.

Rod · July 31, 2005, 03:45:44 PM

Cary,I could be wrong.I guess we will have to wait and see if someone can figure out that small minor detail.

Ernie · July 31, 2005, 04:41:54 PM

At least you guys get rental. We get zip >:( >:(

Tom · July 31, 2005, 04:49:22 PM

You mean that they stick one of those things on your property and don't pay you for the use of the property? I'd be out there with my shotgun.

Ernie · July 31, 2005, 05:20:03 PM

I have known people who have seriously considered Cordex wrapped a few times around the base. ;D

They don't even have the decency to try to disguise the blasted things. >:( >:(

rebocardo · July 31, 2005, 06:16:41 PM

> if you have the acreage you may have a better location out of site

This sounds like great advice! Plus, you get more money and can sort of hide it so you don't see it.

beetle · July 31, 2005, 09:05:07 PM

No....If he or I had 50 acres or so and can tuke it back out of the way, then yes, let's talk. There is a place for them and right dab in the middle of a residential area aint it. I see em around my line and they are going to get lead in their rear.....period!

My new Pup sure like it when she hears that crack, and she fetches real good. ???

DanG · August 01, 2005, 02:07:27 AM

As I said, there may be regional differences because of terrain. All I can speak about is the way it is here. Ya see, I was one of the guys that had to drive around in people's yards in the middle of the night to get those things working after a storm. ALL the towers around here are big ol' ugly things with lots of flashing lights. Each one they build is bigger and uglier than the rest. They are ALL surrounded by chain link, except for the guy anchors, which are unprotected most of the time. I have visited almost all the towers in the area, and I ain't seen a pretty one yet, including the "pine tree" at I-10 & US319.

I wouldn't want to speculate on what the industry might be like 10 years from now. Everything could change in a year or two, or a new technology may not come along for 20 years. ??? I do know that they have recently started installing GPS recievers in all the new phones, so they can transmit your location to 911. That came up on a recent thread and I wasn't so sure it was true, but I've since verified it.