The only additional step under the new district is for a company to justify the location of the device, according to Trustee Tom Farrell.
“Otherwise, based upon the current law, they could literally put a tower on every piece of land and have six towers along your property line, and you wouldn’t be happy with that when they could in fact have one tower with six antennas on top of it,” Farrell said. “That’s all we’re trying to do, is to add a little due diligence to it within the law’s capabilities to make sure they’re at least justifying that that’s the only place that antennae can be put in order to cover. That’s the only change.”
Under Ohio law, township trustees, cannot prohibit a telecommunications company from building a cell tower, according to Trustee Vice President David Kern.
“But we can make it in a sense more difficult or make them go through more and more hurdles or steps, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Kern said.
The purpose of the new district is to provide for special areas in the township that would allow for certain agricultural uses, very low-density residential development and other activities that are rural in character, but primarily residential in nature, according to the township’s zoning resolution
Such areas should be reserved for locations that provide a transition between large agricultural tracts and land used exclusively for single-family homes, according to the resolution.
Kathy Dirr of Liberty Twp. said she is concerned the new restrictions would push the companies to locate the cell towers along Ohio 747, lining them one on top of the other and creating a “cell tower alley” and posing a risk to the safety and well-being of those living near the structures.
That’s unlikely to happen because Jonathan West, director of Planning and Zoning, said the Ohio 747 corridor is an area designated for stricter zoning for residential, business and commercial projects. That means that as that area develops, township officials can restrict or prohibit cell towers, West said.
The township is in the process of rezoning select properties from agricultural to various residential uses to match the zoning designation to be consistent with how the land has developed and how the land is being used, as well as stave off the cell tower projects.
The effort was partially set in motion by attempts to construct a cell phone tower near the Hawthorne Hills subdivision, located at the corner of Millikin and Maud Hughes roads.
Tuesday’s meeting saw trustees enact such rezoning for several properties in the township’s northeast quadrant.
About the Author
