Meeting will end fight over cell tower

After years of battling cellular phone companies over where they can locate their antennas, Wayland selectmen will ask residents Tuesday to rezone town-owned land in the Reeves Hill area as a wireless district, which would pave the way for the first town-approved cell tower.

Officials are asking voters to approve a location specified in a legal settlement the town reached this summer with Cingular Wireless, a cellphone company, and Horizon Towers, a tower-building company.

The companies had taken the town to court to push their proposal to build a tower on Boston Post Road (Route 20) near Pine Brook Road.

The zoning change requires two-thirds approval at Tuesday's Special Town Meeting. Voters will also be asked to allow the town to lease the property to Horizon Towers, which would construct a 180-foot cellphone tower, replacing an existing 120-foot tower on Reeves Hill the town uses for police and fire communications.

If voters reject the articles, the town will be required under its settlement agreement to issue a building permit at the Route 20 site, said Michael L. Tichnor, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, a siting the town has fought.

''We think the Reeves Hill location is a much preferable location," he said.

The new tower would allow cellphone companies to provide coverage over a wider area of town and would accommodate up to four cellphone carriers, which officials hope will eliminate the need for another tower in town, Tichnor said.

On Reeves Hill, the tower would be located in a wooded area that is not visible in most areas of town. It will also improve service for more than 800 residents of Mainstone Farm condominiums in the area of Rice and Mainstone roads who have complained to selectmen for years about their poor cellphone reception, Tichnor said.

The town would also be able to improve its emergency communications inexpensively and will bring in at least $27,000 a year in rent.

The Route 20 site eyed by Cingular would hold only three antennas, is more visible, and would not improve service for the Mainstone Farm residents, he said.

Opponents of the project say the tower should be built in a separate wireless district that the town established in 1998 near its landfill, on Route 20 near the Sudbury line.

Edward J. Collins, an attorney representing opponents, criticized the selectmen's decision to back the Reeves Hill site, saying the board ignored opposition and undermined the authority of the Zoning Board of Appeals.

''Essentially, it's a disaster," he said.

Neighbors of the property do not want to have to deal with a cellphone tower, which, he said, they consider unsightly.

''It might as well be a pig farm," he said.

But former selectman Brian O'Herlihy, who has been involved in negotiations between the town and cellphone companies, said no companies have wanted to locate towers in the other wireless district because it would not help fill their service coverage gaps in the area. Instead, they have sought variances from local zoning ordinances to build them elsewhere.

The companies also cited problems with constructing a tower in the environmentally sensitive area, which includes wetlands.

After the Zoning Board of Appeals denied requests for zoning variances from Cingular and Nextel, both companies sued.

Nextel is still pursuing a separate site on Route 20 on top of a utility tower and recently received a favorable ruling from a federal judge.

The town's attorneys advised officials to settle the Cingular case. Under the deal approved by the Board of Selectman and the Zoning Board of Appeals, Cingular and Horizon Towers have agreed to a host of conditions if they locate at Reeves Hill.