Plandome Manor sets cell antenna rules; culvert repair inches forward

Amelia Camurati
Plandome Manor Mayor Barbara Donno (Photo by Samuel Glasser)

By Samuel Glasser

The Village of Plandome Manor Board of Trustees approved a local law Tuesday that establishes a regulatory framework for the siting of pole-mounted wireless telecommunications equipment.

The issue has been under discussion for about a year since ExteNet Systems Inc., an Illinois-based company that builds infrastructure for cellular telephone companies, proposed installing 22 nodes in the village. The nodes essentially are antennas designed to boost cellular signals.

ExteNet’s Plandome Manor proposal is part of a plan to install 66 nodes in the Town of North Hempstead.

No formal application has been submitted to the village, although the company deposited funds and submitted a list of proposed sites at two pre-application hearings, village attorney Rachel Scelfo said.

The village’s one-year moratorium on these installations expires in July, but it gave the village time to get the code in place.

Scelfo noted that the law spells out what is required for an application to install the equipment, sets up a process to review the application and establishes a schedule of fines for violations.

Application fees would be determined later.

Prior to the board’s vote, the village held a public hearing on the proposed law.

The only witness was Richard Comi of The Center for Municipal Solutions, the village’s consultant, and no residents attended. It was noted that ExteNet proposes that 16 nodes would be installed on poles along public roads and six would be placed on private roads.

Comi noted that the technology is rapidly changing and in the future could change the type of pole-mounted equipment, but any discussion of what that might look like is not likely to come soon.

“We are a long way from public hearings involving ExteNet,” he said.

When Mayor Barbara Donno asked if the village could request a study to see if 22 nodes are actually needed in the proposed locations Comi replied, “We are not even near there.”

Donno later said that “a lot of things have to happen before hearings are held on the proposals to install the nodes.”

Scelfo said that after the application is submitted, it is reviewed to make sure that the information included is sufficient. “Only when the application is perfected do you get to a public hearing,” she said.

In another development, Donno said she was told by North Hempstead Supervisor Judi Bosworth’s staff that the request for bids to repair the deteriorating culvert under North Plandome Road was sent out on June 19.

The bids are to be opened on July 19, which just misses by two days the July town board meeting.

Donno said that council member Dina De Giorgio suggested that perhaps the town board could be polled by telephone to approve the bids because the culvert repair is an urgent issue.

Donno said that village officials met with Bosworth while Rep. Tom Suozzi and State Sen. Elaine Phillips both phoned Bosworth prior to the bid documents being sent out.

“We stressed that this should not wait until the council’s August meeting” since the job will be dependent on the tides and the weather, Donno said. “There is a lack of urgency on the part of the town. Port Washington Boulevard is to be repaved in October which will divert traffic to Plandome Road,” the other major route off the peninsula.

The culvert is a piece of critical infrastructure dating from the 1950s that allows Leeds Pond to drain into Manhasset Bay and its deteriorating condition was recognized nearly 10 years ago. The road dips where it crosses the culvert and part of the adjacent sidewalk has collapsed.

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