Boro and church in talks on cell tower site
Pastor: Church members agree to tower site to end controversy
BY LIZ SHEEHAN
Correspondent

FAIR HAVEN - The borough is working on the details of an offer that would be made to the Christ Church United Methodist Church, Ridge Road, to allow the town to locate a cell tower on the church property, Borough Council President Thomas Gilmour said Monday.

Gilmour and Mayor Michael Halfacre were designated by the council at its last meeting to represent the borough in conferring with the church about the tower site.

Gilmour said the two met with representatives of the church last week and are now in the process of determining what the offer to the church should entail.

Last month, the Rev. Eusen Kim, pastor of the church, said the majority of the church members favored having the cell tower on its property because it would be a "community service" to end the controversy that had been caused in the town by the search for a site for the cell tower and would provide income to the church.

He said that the 5 acres that are church property are probably the best site for the tower because they are removed from residential areas.

The search for a location for the cell tower has been going on since 2004 when the council passed an ordinance that restricted placing cell towers on borough-owned property, both to control the location of a tower and to obtain revenue for the town.

But attempts to pick a site have met with strong opposition from residents who did not want the tower in their neighborhoods.

Because of the objections from residents to having the tower in residential areas, the council attempted to obtain permission from the state Department of Environmental Protection for an exchange of borough property adjacent to Fair Haven Fields for a site to place the tower in Fair Haven Fields.

This request was denied because Green Acres funding, which is dedicated to buying land for recreation and conservation, was used to acquire Fair Haven Fields.

In February, several officials of the town and state Assembly members who represent the town conferred with the DEP and asked that the decision be reconsidered.

After the presentation, DEP officials again denied the borough's request.

Gilmour said that the borough is considering appealing the DEP decision, but no letter had yet been received from the DEP that detailed the reasons for the denial

"We can't appeal until we know what we are appealing," Gilmour said.

After the DEP turned down the borough's offer, Residents for the Future of Fair Haven called on Gov. Jon Corzine "to investigate the actions of the DEP and the DEP officials who met with officials from the borough of Fair Haven," the group said in a press release.

According to the release, the group sent a letter to Corzine that said "DEP officials acted in a hostile, disrespectful manner and in doing so held little regard for the concerns of the residents of the Borough of Fair Haven."

While the borough has been attempting to find a site acceptable to residents for the tower, Verizon Wireless has been moving ahead with its application to obtain the variances necessary to put a 133-foot tower on the grounds of the Church of the Nativity, Ridge Road, in a series of meetings before the town's Zoning Board.

There are two special meetings of the board on the Verizon application scheduled, one which was to be held April 17 and the other at 7:15 p.m. May 10, both at Borough Hall.

The notification of the meetings posted on the borough's Web site said that formal action may be taken at the meetings.

The proposal to use the Church of the Nativity site has been protested by some neighbors and some parishioners of the church, who said that they were never consulted before the church entered into negotiations with Verizon to allow the company to use the site.

At a previous zoning board meeting, on the issue of the town's ordinance that only borough property be used for a tower, Warren Stillwell, Verizon's attorney, said a similar ordinance in another town in New Jersey had been overturned in state court.