FL Comms Tower OK'd Despite Complaints
By Payne Ray
Source Daily Commercial, Leesburg, Fla.
Sept. 26 -- Lake County commissioners on Tuesday approved the construction of a new Public Safety radio tower on a small lot in the Sorrento-Mount Plymouth area, a location widely opposed by local residents.
The tower, which is to be funded by Apopka, will be 350-feet tall and is designed to patch a hole in radio communications for both Lake County and Apopka Public Safety offices, including law enforcement, firefighters and EMTs.
Around a dozen Mount Plymouth residents showed up for the hearing to tell the commission they didn't want a massive radio tower in their backyards.
Greg Holcomb, who manages communications technology for the Public Safety Department, said all 46 alternatives had been ruled out by money or engineering issues.
Resident Karen Moss said it was a selfish show of hypocrisy on the commission's part.
"They said other sites didn't meet the requirements, but this one didn't either," Moss said. "They voted against their own ordinance."
The tower will be built on a 10-acre parcel of the Lake Edwards Conservation area after the commission changed the land use from conservation to public service and infrastructure.
It also approved a variance in county ordinances, allowing for an 80 percent reduction in the distance the tower must be from residential property, bringing the tower within a few hundred feet of the nearest homes.
Lynne Thornton, whose property would be closest to the tower, presented multiple maps pointing out various other locations for the tower and offering methods of funding any extra engineering costs for each area.
Thornton said that the tower's proximity to homes was a concern on its own, but one of the guidewires for the tower is marked for less than 200 feet away from her home.
Typically, a tower must be offset at least 1,300 feet from an existing structure.
While addressing commissioners, Mount Plymouth resident Patricia Cummings said that the size of the tower made it all the more ridiculous.
"The proposed 350-foot tower is taller than the distance to private residences," Cummings said to commissioners.
Cummings also said that though the tower is self-collapsing, she's worried that the 120-foot radius where debris is designed to fall might be larger in the case of severe weather.
Fred Antonio, who said he moved for the conservation area and was disappointed to see it go, brought a diagram showing the tower in scale with Florida landmarks.
The structure would be more than twice the size of the Ponce de Leon Lighthouse and 124 feet taller than the Florida Citrus Tower in Clermont.
Commissioners approved the plan 4-1 with Leslie Campione being the only no vote, saying that she wouldn't want a tower that large to be so close to her own home.
___ (c)2018 Daily Commercial, Leesburg, Fla. Visit Daily Commercial, Leesburg, Fla. at www.dailycommercial.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.