BY LIZ SHEEHAN
Correspondent

FAIR HAVEN -- After years of discussion and little action on the question of whether to place a cell tower in the borough, the last several weeks have brought the controversial issue sharply into focus.

And on Saturday, from 9 a.m to 4 p.m., residents should be able to view the way a cell tower would look jutting into the skies over the town when a crane will hover 133 feet over the parking lot of the Church of the Nativity at the same height as the tower proposed by Verizon Wireless and Omnipoint Wireless for that site.

In 2004, the Borough Council passed an ordinance that cell towers could only be located on borough property. After the ordinance was passed, attempts were made by the council to swap land with the state's Green Acres program so the tower could be put in Fair Haven Fields, but the state ruled that no cell towers could be put on Green Acres-funded property.

At a special meeting on Tuesday, July 12, the Borough Council approved the placement of the tower at the town's police station, one of three sites that were being considered. The council hired attorney Stuart Lieberman, Princeton, to represent it at the Zoning Board hearing two days after the meeting.

The selection of the police station as the site came after a heated town meeting at which some residents protested both the three sites being proposed by the town; the police station, the public works garage and the former chipping station or any other site in the town, saying the tower would be unsightly, affect property values and could possibly be a health hazard.

On Thursday, there were only four members at the Zoning Board hearing on the application by Verizon and Omnipoint to enter into an agreement with Church of the Nativity, including one member who was brought in from the Planning Board.

Board President Peter Maher said that the applicant had agreed to go ahead with the hearing with less than the required five members on the condition the absent member would listen to the tape of the meeting.

Several board members had recused themselves from the meeting because they were members of Church of the Nativity, and another member had a different conflict of interest.

At the Zoning Board meeting, after Lieberman cited the borough's ordinance that forbids cell towers on any property not owned by the town, Verizon attorney Warren Stillwell said that a similar ordinance in the borough of Ringwood had been overturned by a state court and a cell tower was permitted on other than town owned property.

The case referred to was brought by Sprint Nextel against Ringwood.

At the Fair Haven town meeting on the cell tower location, Borough Council President Thomas Gilmour told residents that the courts might not let stand the requirement that the tower be located on property owned by the town so it was important to pick a site the borough owned quickly so the Nativity site would not be used. A borough-owned site for the tower would give the town more control over the tower and the revenues from it, Gilmour said.

At the zoners' meeting, when the board was considering when the crane showing the height of the tower would be placed on the church property, one person in the audience suggested it should be on a Sunday so more people could see it, but that idea was turned down because it would be there during church services.

"It's going to be up there every Sunday for church forever," an audience member said, objecting to not making Sunday the day for the demonstration.

Stillwell said he would not be ale to get a crane operator to work on a Sunday.

A special Zoning Board meeting has been tentatively scheduled for further hearing on the Verizon application for 7:15 p.m., Thursday, July 27.