NAHANT — The Nahant Planning Board met Tuesday night to continue the discussion of the wireless special permit by Crown Castle on 189 Nahant Road.
Domenica Tatasciore, the permitting specialist at Crown Castle, joined the Zoom meeting to share details on the special permit application, which was submitted on behalf of Sprint Spectrum, specifically in swapping the old antennas with new ones.
“It’s been about seven years or so since equipment has been upgraded on the tower for this carrier, so you’re very long overdue,” she said.
“Other ancillary equipment swaps include tower-mounted amplifiers, radios, enclosures, battery cabinets, triplexes, and cabling. There’s no proposed change to either tower height, shroud, or canister diameter, or even compound size,” she added.
Tatasciore then shared her screen and guided the Committee through structural documents and field analysis, which included the view of the tower from Nahant Road. The Planning Board Committee, which did a site visit to the tower, had numerous questions on the specifics of the tower, as well as clarifying questions on the logistics of the setup.
“Can you explain the different types of why Verizon cannot be on top, and AT&T can’t be on the bottom?” asked Planning Board Chair Sheila Hambleton, to which Tatasciore explained that licensing agreements are dependent on “who gets their first on the tower, that’s who Crown [Castle] licenses with.” She also asked if this would improve coverage and prevent dropped calls.
“You should get a lot better service,” Tatasciore reassured. “The antennas are obviously newer models and up to date. And also, as part of this application, we’re adding tower-mounted amplifiers, just like little pieces of equipment that go on and you get better reception, so it amplifies the reception more.”
The entire process, Tatasciore says, should take only a few days. The Planning Committee, which must make a decision to vote on the matter by the special permit hearing date on Feb. 24, meets next Tuesday to continue the conversation.
In the meantime, they want to think about it further and gather additional insight before coming to any sort of conclusion on the matter.
“We’ll have an opportunity to think this over…Try to find, I think this is a repeat of the Verizon case that we had back in, I think, 2017, and I’d like the board to be able to read and see the decision on that,” Hambleton said.
