RF Safe - Taking T-Mobile to task

By JOSEPH KELLARD April 05, 2007

Oceanside residents gathered last week to plot their strategy to fight T-Mobile¹s proposal to install six cell phone antennas on a 20-foot flagpole atop the 51-foot-high roof of a local bank building.

T-Mobile hopes to place the antennas on the roof of the G&M Wolkenberg Mortgage Bank, at 2838 Long Beach Road, a few yards south of the lighthouse in the triangle at Davison Avenue.

Julie Taub, an Oceanside resident and an agent at Hal Knopf Realty a few doors north of the site, organized a meeting at the Oceanside Library on March 28, during which 15 residents kicked around ideas and questioned two T-Mobile representatives. Taub and other residents are preparing for a hearing rescheduled by the Town of Hempstead¹s Zoning Board of Appeals for May 9, when T-Mobile will try to make a case that it needs the antennas to fill a service gap in that area.

³We must, must, must be at the Board of Appeals hearing on May 9,² Taub told the gathering at the hour-long March 28 meeting, encouraging them to contact other residents to get involved. ³... We really need the community to come together.²

Zoning board Chairman Gerald Wright granted Taub an adjournment at a hearing on March 14, when she explained that she had only learned of the case a few weeks earlier and requested that she be given time to conduct her own study of the area. Taub said her study would involve getting T-Mobile customers near the proposed site to make and receive calls at different times of the day, on various surrounding streets and in differing weather conditions. She planned to log and present their findings to the zoning board at the May 9 hearing.
Taub said that whenever her husband drives past the site, his T-Mobile phone always has three to five code bars, indicating that his service is sufficient. One T-Mobile user at the meeting said that he, too, has no problems with service in that area. ³The need is zero,² Taub said. ³We¹re getting service, and we have to tell the board this.²

Resident Bob Jones suggested expanding the study to include research on T-Mobile¹s subscription rates, and how the company¹s competitors, like Cingular, are faring in the area. Oceanside resident and real estate agent Vicky Kaplan said that she and other Cingular users she knows experience no problems with service.

³I get service all over Oceanside, so go where Cingular has their antennas,² Kaplan told Andrew Overton, a T-Mobile spokesman, and Robert Springer of the company¹s zoning division. ³Put up mini ones like Cingular does; don¹t put up something big that will only [be effective within] a half-mile radius and is going to be an eyesore.²

Kaplan wasn¹t alone in her concern about the appearance of six antennas attached to a 20-foot pole atop a prominent building in the middle of town. Some residents noted that for years they have been trying to beautify the north end of Long Beach Road, taking part in ongoing beautification and facade projects along that stretch, closing down the Oceanside Motel, getting the triangle lighthouse built and awaiting the development of a Wild By Nature supermarket and chain pharmacy at the former Foodtown and Oceanside Theater sites.

³We¹re trying to beautify this neighborhood, and now you want to put up a big pole with antennas all over it,² one woman said. ³It¹s bad enough that we have that bombed-out-looking area,² she added, referring to the Foodtown site.
Other residents told Overton and Springer that once T-Mobile is permitted to mount antennas on the flagpole, other companies may try to attach their antennas to the pole.

Overton said that T-Mobile ‹ which has other antennas at the Oceanside landfill and on Royal Avenue, across the railroad tracks ‹ looked at more than 20 other sites in town, including firehouses, before settling on the bank building. Last June, T-Mobile submitted an application to put antennas atop the Redco building, at 3115 Long Beach Road, at the former Roasty¹s restaurant, five blocks south of the bank building. Omnipoint Communications, the umbrella corporation for T-Mobile, will continue to pursue both applications.

³It¹s highly likely we won¹t need the Redco site once the Welkenberg site is approved, and our application will be withdrawn,² Esme Lombard, a senior manager at National External Affairs, speaking on behalf of Omnipoint, told the Herald. ³And if Welkenberg is turned down, we will continue to pursue Redco.²
One longtime Oceanside businessman, pharmacist Jorge Winter of Ocean Chemist, told residents how he, Taub and other Oceansiders stopped Nextel Communications from mounting 12 antennas and an equipment shelter on the roof of the apartment building above his pharmacy at Long Beach Road and Windsor Parkway in 2003. Nextel said it needed this site to fill ³spotty coverage,² but the zoning board conducted its own study with Nextel cell phone users in that area, and ultimately ruled that there was not enough need for the antennas. ³People told me, ŒYou¹ll never beat them,¹ and we did,² Winter said.
He added that he believes the antennas¹ electromagnetic radiation emissions are a health concern.

³Your baby monitor or microwave put out more radiation than our cell antennas,² Overton countered. ³That¹s just physics.²
Springer said that he grew up in Oceanside and has relatives who live near the bank building, and that he would never jeopardize their health. ³These people would not put up antennas that would hurt my family that lives six blocks from the site,² he said.

Kaplan claimed that people with microwaves and baby monitors are different from workers who have to spend eight hours a day in the bank. Nevertheless, he is aware that opposition to cell phone towers on health-related grounds is futile, since the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits anyone from making such a case.

While Taub welcomed Overton and Springer when they asked to attend the community meeting as well as another one she would like to hold, she accused T-Mobile of ³piggybacking² on her meetings as their way of abiding by a zoning board policy. Wright had adjourned the March 14 hearing in part because he found that T-Mobile had failed to fulfill a zoning board requirement that cell phone companies planning to mount antennas meet with residents to explain their proposals.

Lombard said that T-Mobile always makes itself available to the community when there are questions or concerns about any of its applications. In Oceanside, the company has mailed information to people and directed them to a Web site about the facility and about wireless equipment, she said.
³We had reached out to a lot of constituents, asking them if there were any concerns, and some people never got in touch with us,² Lombard said. ³We attended Mrs. Taub¹s meeting at the library with the intent of answering and addressing any questions and working with that group.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or 516-569-4000 ext. 210.

T-Mobile cell phone antennas