County advised to allow Madrid cell-phone tower

Legal pressure from a nationwide cell-phone company might force the Santa Fe County Commission to rethink its rejection of plans to build a cell tower in Madrid.

Following a District Court challenge from New Cingular Wireless, the county is taking steps to overturn a decision it made last month.

County Commissioner Michael Anaya said Monday that the county attorney had advised the commission to change its position. "Pretty much it was said, ?We couldn't win. They are going to sue us, and they are going to win,' " Anaya said.

Anaya said he's been told federal rules don't allow the county to prohibit the construction of the tower on private land. He said he planned to visit the proposed site and encourage the company to work with the community on compromise.

The commission is not likely to make another ruling on the case for several months, however.

Citing the pending court case, commission Chairman Harry Montoya said last week that the governing body needed reconsider its decision.

Montoya said Friday that he expected the commission to vote today on whether to set another public hearing for the cell tower.

But on Monday, he said the question would likely be before the governing board at its next meeting Dec. 12, with a hearing scheduled no sooner than January.

Madrid residents who fought against the tower's location say they were surprised last week by the news that it might be permitted after all. The 26-foot tower, as proposed by the company, would be built inside the boundaries of the historic mining community on private land near the town's main residential area. The company has said it will build a "stealth monopine," a tower that resembles an artificial pine tree.

"We thought we had won," said Heather French, who is building a house with her husband on property adjacent to the land Cingular is proposing for the tower and attended several public hearings to protest. "This is very surprising. This is veryshocking." French said Cingular has not made good faith efforts to put the tower in a location that would be more suitable.

Resident Cindy Shiff, who co-founded a community promotion group called Madrid Cultural Projects, said residents were stunned and needed to rethink their strategy regarding the cell tower.

Shiff said the town of Madrid needs its own legal interpretation of how federal rules come into play, but the community might still be powerless to do anything about it.

"If the county is not going to stand up to Cingu-lar, I don't think we have the resources to do so ? no matter what the correct interpretation would be. We really can't muster that kind of battle," she said.

Shiff said if the county's lawyers were correctly interpreting the law, it seemed the county would need to rewrite its ordinance governing cell-tower locations.

"I think what we are being told is that apparently we can't fight Cingular -- that they have a right to put up a tower in our area," she said.

After the commission voted Oct. 10 to deny the tower application, the company told county officials it would file the court appeal. At the commission's Oct. 31 meeting, Montoya asked to have the tower case reconsidered. In a later interview, he said he didn't think the commission made the right decision. Under the commission's rules, any member who voted in favor of a motion can ask at the next meeting to have that motion reconsidered. County Attorney Stephen Ross said commissioners will vote Dec. 12 on whether to reconsider. If a majority wants to deliberate the cell tower again, the commission will put the application on a future agenda for the actual discussion, Ross said.

While some people who live in Madrid, including the family that owns the land it is proposed for, have supported the idea of the cell tower, many in the rural community are opposed to the plan.

Madrid resident Mark Bremer said he didn't like the idea because the tower's proposed ridge-top location went against the Madrid Community Plan that was approved by the County Commission in 2001. Bremer, like many of his neighbors, did not realize the commission could still reverse its denial of the tower. "I am a little confused about really what is happening," he said.

Rio Arriba County also is struggling with community response to cell-phone towers. That County Commission has said it is rewriting rules about cell-tower applications in the wake of a cell tower recently constructed in Chimayo.