As part of East Hampton Town’s planned upgrade of its emergency communications system, a new tower has been proposed for Springs, and the question of where it should be installed was the subject of a heated back-and-forth between Patrick Glennon, the commissioner of the Springs Fire District, and Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc at the town board meeting last Thursday.
Last October, the board cleared the way for a communications tower at the Camp Blue Bay Girl Scouts land on Flaggy Hole Road, resolving that no significant adverse environmental impacts would result from its installation at the site, where there is an existing cell tower.
The fire district and Elite Towers, a wireless communications company, are currently seeking permission from the town’s planning board to remove an unutilized 150-foot-tall tower behind the firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard, and to replace it with another, 180 feet tall, that would be used for fire, ambulance, and police personnel. Elite Towers would lease the space from the fire district and finance the construction of the tower, which would also be able to hold cellphone carrier equipment.
The fire department’s existing tower was built in 2015 without site plan approval from the planning board. Because of that procedural lapse, the zoning board of appeals revoked its building permit, and it has remained unused. The fire district is suing the Z.B.A. over that determination.
Mr. Glennon appeared at the town board meeting last Thursday “to set the record straight” on the history of that tower. In 2012, he said, the fire district had been told that the existing communications system needed to be replaced. “At any moment there could be a catastrophic breakdown of the system, and the town at the time was doing nothing to attempt fixing it.”
In 2014, Elite was hired to install a tower that would also hold cellular carriers. “We would get a substantial rent in return, which was going to be used to offset the cost of our paid emergency medical services system,” said Mr. Glennon.
The fire district’s application for a building permit was reviewed by town attorneys at the time, he said, “and they told the Building Department to issue a permit based on past precedents,” meaning the process by which the Amagansett Fire Department installed its ower in 2004.
When the Z.B.A. revoked the building permit, he said, “the district had no choice but to start litigation against the town.”
In May 2018, Mr. Glennon said, Mr. Van Scoyoc asked to meet with him to discuss how to push the project forward. The fire district agreed to apply to the planning board for the 180-foot-tall tower, he said, but then in August Mr. Van Scoyoc told him by letter that the town had no intention of using that tower.
Mr. Glennon said he couldn’t understand why the town would want to pay rent to use the Camp Blue Bay site, when the fire district was offering a site for free. A tower at the firehouse, he said, would provide the district with a much needed revenue stream. “We at the fire district want to save lives and property. If we can save homeowners taxes, that’s also a plus,” he said.
In response, Mr. Van Scoyoc said the existing tower at the firehouse had not been built to hold the town’s emergency communications system.
Prior to his time in office, he said, Springs had not even been included in the townwide system. “It was this board that committed to including emergency communications within Springs,” the supervisor said.
Referring to the May meeting with Mr. Glennon, he said, “I did reach out to you shortly after taking office to see if we could get past the stalemate that existed when the fire department decided to sue the town rather than pursue site plan [approval]. That could have been done from day one.”
“We are committed to ensuring that we have the very best communications for emergency, and actually for cell service, because we also understand that Springs is underserved with cell carriers and that there are dead zones,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said.
The town is not pitting the firehouse site against Camp Blue Bay, he insisted. “We’re ensuring that we get the communications tower locked up and built as soon as possible because of the urgency. We have to have parallel tracks in Springs because of the history — the litigation and the potential for further litigation.”
He applauded Mr. Glennon’s effort to get the site plan for the Fort Pond Boulevard tower approved by the planning board, but, he said, “the outcome of that is uncertain.”
With Reporting by Christopher Walsh