The Cottonwood City Council has approved a measure that would allow companies to ask for permission to build cell phone towers up to 90 feet high.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires municipalities to zone at least one area where cell towers can be built while allowing the town in question to determine where it wants them built.
In Cottonwood, the rules allow for towers up to 60 feet.
A New Jersey company, Capital Telecom, develops wireless communications facilities around the country and is looking for approval to install a 90-foot tower on the local slag pile for the benefit of AT&T.
“It has presented the city with … data in support of its assertions that a single tower of this height is the least intrusive means of filling a gap in its wireless coverage of the city and particularly its coverage for the transmission of data, and that it would have to install multiple 60-foot towers at various locations within and/or around the city in order to provide an equivalent level of coverage,” according to a report from City Attorney Steve Horton.
For the full story, see the Wednesday, Oct. 9, edition of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
