Cell Tower Ordinance

The County’s long awaited Cell Tower Ordinance has a second hearing before the Planning Commission onApril 6th at 5:30 pm (See staff report). A Citizens’ Advisory Committee organized by HRVRC worked with the County for 18 months to come up with the draft proposal which seeks to strike a balance between providing a necessary service and minimizing visual impacts on residential areas and our county’s scenic views. In January, ATT sent a team of lawyers to review the draft ordinance and propose a “redline draft” of industry-written changes, often at the expense of the scenic and quality of life values the original draft was designed to protect. The Planning Commission will now need to decide standards for where cell towers can go, how high they can be and what they can look like. Meanwhile, a proposed cell tower at Windmaster Corner has been appealed by neighbors to the project (hearing April 13th). Our hope is that a good ordinance will direct wireless communication facilties to go in the least controversial places and in the least controversial manner. In other words a win-win for the community: adequate coverage but with minimal negative impacts to residential areas.

Cell Tower Update ~ January 2016

Next week will hopefully mark the end of a 18 month process to adopt rules to regulate where cellular phone towers can go and what they can look like in Hood River County as the Board of Commissioners holds a public hearing on January 19 at  6 pm in the Board of Commissioners Meeting Room, 601 State Street to consider the proposed code.

Until now, the county has not had specific code for towers, which has meant that towers have been proposed for inappropriate residential areas forcing neighbors to mobilize in expensive and emotional opposition efforts.The code puts the onus on the cell tower company to prove that new facilities are needed and makes it easy to locate facilities in locations with minimal impact (like co-locating additional arrays on an existing tower) but much, much harder to locate incompatible towers near residential areas.

The proposed code is the end result of a citizen driven effort organized by HRVRC. Last year, HRVRC, together with a number of interested citizens, approached the Board of Commissioners about forming a Citizen Advisory Committee to help craft rules governing cell towers. We proposed that a citizen-initiated group could ease the burden on staff by doing much of the foundation work of crafting a cell tower ordinance for our county.

Many thanks to the Advisory Committee members for their hard work and thoughtful contributions: Steffen Lunding, Cecelia Goodnight, Melanie Finstad, Melanie Thompson, Jeff Hunter, Polly Wood and Heather Staten as well as Commissioners Frothingham and Brennan.  We are especially grateful for the professional guidance of County Planning Director John Roberts and Senior Planner Eric Walker who shaped our committee’s research into cogent, concise code.