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Updated 16 minutes ago
A few dozen Hempfield residents got stood up on Valentine's Day.
About 50 people turned out for a zoning hearing over a controversial cell tower in the Fort Allen section of Hempfield, proposed to be built on a township supervisor's property.
But the attorney for Verizon and its contractor, Tower North Development, said the applicants need another month for the results of an independent review they hope will confirm that Verizon needs the tower to fill a gap in its cell coverage.
“In all my years here, this board has never denied a reasonable applicant's request to table an item,” said Hempfield Zoning Hearing Board chairman Ward Goughenour, before they approved waiting until March 14 to reconsider the issue.
Verizon is asking the board for an exception to township rules prohibiting new cell towers within less than two miles of an existing tower. The proposed 199-foot-tall tower, on 44 acres owned by township Supervisor John Silvis off Baltzer Meyer Road, would be about 1.5 miles from a tower near Youngwood and 1.6 miles from a tower to the north, near Turnpike Route 66.
As they left the meeting, many residents expressed disappointment that the board approved the delay, but attorney Joseph Cortese said Washington, D.C.-based Teleworld needs more time to complete its independent review of Verizon's projected coverage with and without the tower. Teleworld's engineers would then be available to testify before the board, which asked for the review when the application was originally made in January.
The zoning board rejected a similar request for an exception in 2014 for a tower proposed nearby, saying Verizon needed to prove it couldn't cover the gap by renting space for antenna on the two existing towers. Silvis joined neighbors in opposition to the 2014 proposal.
Zoning board solicitor Brenda Sebring emphasized as the meeting opened that the zoning hearing board is separate from the board of supervisors where Silvis sits, and she compared it to a court capable of independently reviewing the supervisors' decisions.
“It's the judiciary branch, if you want to think of it that way,” she said.
Matthew Santoni is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836- 6660 or msantoni@tribweb.com.
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