Council approves cell tower requests

With little fanfare, Maricopa City Council at its meeting Tuesday approved two requests for conditional use permits from Shaw and Associates on behalf of Verizon Wireless to build cell towers in the city.

Neither site is zoned for cell towers, which means the city must grant Verizon special permits to build towers on the land.

Action on a tower proposed near Cobblestone Farms had been tabled for three meetings as a group of residents in the subdivision opposed its construction. However, no one spoke against the towers at Tuesday’s regular meeting.

The 54-foot tower will be disguised as a palm tree and located on land owned by farmer Troy Skousen. It will be built about 200 feet from the nearest house and buffered by three 40-foot live palms. Also, a 12-foot wall will be built around the tower’s base, said Rick Shaw of Shaw and Associates.

Shaw presented an alternate proposal with the tower located nearly 300 feet from the nearest home. That proposal required a longer access road that would have cost more to build and would have used about a third of an acre of farm land owned by Skousen.

Despite Shaw’s offer to move the tower an extra 100 feet from the nearest house, council approved the first proposal. Councilmember Julia Gusse did not vote and Mayor Anthony Smith voted no. Gusse said at previous meetings and in a recent column published by InMaricopa that her husband worked for Verizon Wireless and she did not want a perceived conflict of interest. Smith did not immediately return a phone call asking why he voted no.

The second tower will be located about 300 feet south of Bowlin Road on property owned by the city called the Vekol site. There has been no citizen opposition to that tower.