Board of Adjustment Regular Meeting

Meeting recap

What happened, drawn from the records published after the meeting. Minutes

The board approved a 199-foot cell tower behind a church off Hilltop Needmore Road, voting 6-0 on each of the four required findings and 6-0 again on the permit itself. Alpha Towers PropCo III brought five expert witnesses; the case had been tabled from the previous meeting.

Two neighbors testified against it, both from Johnson Pond Road. Gregory Murray argued a commercial district less than half a mile away would suit the tower better, asked whether deed restrictions tied to the church and cemetery had been checked, and questioned why a self-insuring transferable LLC faces no bonding requirement for cleanup when landfills and sewer facilities do. Paula Stoltz, whose back yard adjoins the site, asked whether a wildlife impact study had been done, describing turtles, possums, rabbits, deer, owls and hawks in the woods behind her house. Both said their own cell service had never failed. The applicant's attorney answered that the site is federally licensed and so goes through a National Environmental Policy Act review covering wildlife and historic properties, with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approval letter, and that state law bars the town from questioning a carrier's business decisions about where it needs coverage.

In discussion, one member said she lives in Crooked Creek near the site and would see the tower from her front porch, and that the eight-foot fence with barbed wire addressed her worry about children being drawn to it. Another said no evidence had been put in the record on whether 199 feet is an average height, so the board could not weigh it. On property values, the board accepted the petitioner's impact study as expert evidence, unrebutted. The findings note the parcel is 17.48 acres against a 10-acre minimum, that no other tower stands within the 3,000-foot search ring, that no lighting will be installed, and that the tower is engineered with a 185-foot fall zone designed to buckle. The meeting ended at 7:11 p.m.

How the votes went

Six votes, all 6-0 with two of the eight members absent. The July 13 minutes passed on a motion by Douglas Congdon seconded by Michelle Currin. Each of the four findings of fact carried separately: the first moved by Morgan McDougall and seconded by McDougall's colleagues in turn, the second seconded by Thomas Gallo, the third moved by Congdon and seconded by Currin, the fourth moved by Currin and seconded by David Olaleye. The permit itself, BOA-SUP-2026-05, passed on a motion by Currin seconded by Congdon.

From the published minutes.

Who spoke

2 members of the public spoke.

1. Gregory Murray of Johnson Pond Road said a commercial district less than half a mile away would suit the tower better, asked whether deed restrictions tied to the church and cemetery on the site had been checked, and questioned why a self-insuring transferable LLC faces no bonding requirement for cleanup when landfills and sewer facilities do.
2. Paula Stoltz of Johnson Pond Road, whose back yard adjoins the site, objected on wildlife grounds, asked whether a wildlife impact study had been done, and said her own cell service has never failed.

Read from the records the government published after the meeting. Members of the public are private residents and are not named or indexed.