SNOW HILL – A proposal to install a telecommunications tower near Route 90 failed to get the support of the Worcester County Commissioners.
At the close of Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Bud Church made a motion to approve a request from Verizon to install a pole on county owned property near the Ocean Pines Wastewater Treatment Plant. The motion failed to get a second.
When contacted after the meeting, Church declined to comment on the issue.
“It’s going to be brought back up,” he said. “I don’t want to jeopardize it.”
The proposal from Verizon was included in Tuesday’s meeting packet but was pulled from the agenda. The proposal, for a 115-foot tower to enhance wireless service along Route 90, was not the first to be submitted by Verizon. Plans for a 160-foot tower in Ocean Pines were rejected by the commissioners in 2018.
When he brought the issue up at the end of Tuesday’s meeting, Church said Verizon had been in touch with him.
“They’ve assured me that the pole they’d put up is necessary to keep the communications open for cell service coming in,” he said. “Cell service is growing in that area. They’re seeing signals that are getting weaker. They said in probably a year there’d be a lack of service.”
He added that he’d looked at the site of the proposed tower and found it appropriate. When he made a motion to approve the proposal, however, it failed to get a second.
According to Joe Mitrecic, president of the commissioners, the Verizon proposal was pulled from Tuesday’s agenda because Commissioners Chip Bertino and Jim Bunting had asked that it be tabled so they could have more time to review it. Mitrecic said it likely would not come back up, though, now that Church’s motion to approve it had failed.
“Unless it comes up in some other form or fashion technically it died when he made that motion,” Mitrecic said.
Bertino said he was relieved to see the lack of support behind the proposal. When the idea of a cell tower at the Ocean Pines Wastewater Treatment Plant came up in 2018, he said there were many area residents opposed to the proposal.
“When we discussed it before, we had gotten a number of folks who were very concerned and did not want to see a tower constructed in their backyard,” Bertino said. “I’m very pleased we upheld that decision.”
