LAVALLETTE — After nearly five hours of public hearings, Lavallette’s council voted Monday night to deny telecom company Verizon’s application for six wireless small cells to be deployed in the borough.
The small cells augment telecommunications networks through low-power substations, located atop poles.
The cells would have been located at six locations around the borough and would have either updated or replaced existing poles or erected new poles to support the equipment. During the Monday, Nov. 13 council meeting, the governing body held a public hearing in which the details of Verizon’s plans in Lavallette were discussed at length, with professional witnesses speaking on behalf of Verizon.
On Nov. 1, Planning Board Chairman Anthony Cataline sent a memorandum to Mayor Walter LaCicero and the borough council explaining that the board was advising the council to deny the applications to install six small cell nodes that had been proposed for deployment by Verizon.
“We have reviewed the above applications…We also listened to five-plus hours of testimony…during the Planning Board meetings of Sept. 27 and Oct. 25,” said Mr. Cataline in the memo. “Public comments were also heard during each of the meetings. At no time during these hearings did the Board find justification for the additional installations.”
The “above applications” refer to the six applications for each separate small cell. These are, along with their approximate would-be locations; replacement pole at 102 President Ave., replacement pole at 100 Oceanfront, existing pole in the right-of-way of the N.J. Department of Transportation at 110 White Ave., existing pole at 506 Oceanfront, new pole at 72 Oceanfront and new pole at 2201 Baltimore Ave.
During Monday’s council meeting, a new location had been approved for the Baltimore Ave. pole, which would have gone into effect if the nodes were approved. The revised location was 122 Newark Ave. This arose after Verizon agreed to slightly modify the application location based on a concern that the pole was located adjacent to a playground.
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