By Katie Wagner, Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY — The Planning Board has recommended the Township Committee approve an ordinance that would establish specific existing structures as first priority locations for new wireless communication antennae in the township.
The ordinance, which is scheduled to have its second reading at Thursday’s Township Committee meeting, includes language that would replace and amend parts of the township’s code for land development. The current code places existing towers, or an existing or proposed water or standpipe within or near the township as first priority locations for wireless communication antennae, without providing the specific locations of these sites.
First priority locations for the antennae in the new ordinance include on existing towers, water tanks and silos and within existing church steeples.
The specific towers, water tanks and church steeples include the Elizabethtown Water Tank on Concord Lane; the 3M Co. water tank north of Dutchtown-Zion Road; the Blawenburg Reformed Church’s steeple on Route 518; the Montgomery United Methodist Church’s steeple on Sunset Road; the Harlingen Church’s steeple at the corner of Route 206 and Dutchtown-Harlingen Road; the Montgomery Evangelical Free Church’s steeple on Belle Mead-Griggstown Road and Willow Road, and the tower on the township ball field at the end of Reading Boulevard.
The silos are located on Hollow Road; on Route 518 between Hollow and The Great roads; west of Mountain View Road; on Mountain View Road; off Pine Brae Drive; on Drake Farm on Route 518 near Vreeland Drive; on Skillman Dairy Farm off Burnt Hill Road and south of Orchard Road; and on Matthews Farm on Route 206 and Rutland Road.
Thomas Lee, chairman of the Planning Board, described the ordinance as setting specific standards, conditions and locational limitations for cell phone servers in the area using existing structures and designing accessory buildings.
”I think it tries to set up a dialogue, set up sites that we think will work, and tries to keep these towers away from residential areas,” Mr. Lee said.
”It gives a real variety of areas they can look at,” he added. “It’s setting up a dialogue that can happen between the township and providers and hopefully we can really get together with them to isolate areas where service is needed in town and work together so we don’t have monopoles all over town.”
The second priority locations for wireless communication antennae under the ordinance are on new wireless communication towers within Montgomery’s PPE, REO, MR/SI and LM zoning districts, versus the existing code that places township-owned lands in the PPE zoning district as the second priority locations and Montgomery land in the REO-1, REO-2, REO-3, LM and MR/SI districts as the third priority locations for wireless communication antennae.
Another change the ordinance would make to the existing code is that it would establish wireless communication antenna design requirements specifically for ones to be added in the first priority locations, such as a height limitation on any proposed antenna of 10 feet above the existing structure.
The combined height of a new wireless communication tower with its attached antennae would also be limited by the ordinance, with the cut-off set at 125 feet from ground level, unless a higher height is approved by the Planning Board, provided the height not be increased by more than an additional 10 feet.
The ordinance also requires submission of graphic representations of the proposed tower.
