Cell phone towers offer new cash for schools

Here's one way for a cash-strapped district to make a little extra pocket change: Allow a cell phone company to erect cell phone towers at your schools.

The Anoka-Hennepin school board has approved three such towers, which would be operated by the T-Mobile communications company. The 100-foot-tall towers could be put up as early as a year from now if T-Mobile gets approval from the three communities in which the towers would be located.

If the plan passes muster, payoff for the district will be at least $1,500 a month per site. It could be more if T-Mobile subleases its tower space to another company, said Chuck Holden, Anoka-Hennepin director of administrative services.

The towers would be located at Champlin Park High School, in Brooklyn Park; Northdale Middle School, in Coon Rapids; and University Avenue Elementary School, in Blaine. According to Holden, the district has had two cell phone towers for nine years at two other sites: Blaine High School and Park View Early Childhood Center, in Champlin. At Blaine High School, the tower is attached to one of the football field light poles. At Park View, it's attached to a power pole.

Other school districts have been renting out cell phone tower space for up to a decade. Paul Harrington, whose St. Paul-based Carlson & Harrington consulting firm negotiated the T-Mobile agreement with Anoka-Hennepin, said he has negotiated tower agreements with such districts as Osseo, White Bear Lake, Hastings and Stillwater.

"We have a number of agreements in place with schools," he said. "They view it as a revenue opportunity." Schools, with their spacious grounds, are often good sites for such towers because there are often zoning restrictions requiring them to be specified distances from homes, Harrington said.

The new Champlin Park tower would also be attached to a football field light pole. In the case of the other two schools, the towers would be freestanding structures behind the schools.

"Those can be big, ugly towers," said Jerry Newton, the only school board member to vote against allowing the tower construction on school grounds. "I know if that was coming into my neighborhood I would really oppose it."

In fact, the tower now at Blaine High School was originally proposed for Newton's Coon Rapids neighborhood, and he and his neighbors opposed the tower on aesthetic grounds.

Newton said he was also concerned that, by going to the school board first, T-Mobile negotiators paved the way for getting a rubber-stamp approval from the City Councils that must also OK the deal. Without that prior approval, he said, there would probably be more active debates at the City Council level.

District officials say there has been no opposition to the towers from parents.

School board chairman Michael Sullivan voted in favor of the plan despite some ambivalence.

The towers at University Avenue Elementary and Northdale Middle would be covered in plastic shrouds to hide the clusters of antennae, Harrington said.

"It gives a much cleaner look to it," he said.