Since the meetings began in February 2007, Cingular has presented a stream of engineers who, naturally, contend that placing a 162' cell tower just 29 feet off the road at the entrance to a recreation area, in an otherwise beautiful and historic area of Barnegat is a great thing for our citizens. Well we disagree, and finally, at this meeting, we hope to be able to present our side!

We understand that the federal government has made it illegal for municipalities to refuse cell towers altogether, but we do know that municipalities are allowed to dictate where those cell towers should go. What we ask is that our town representatives exercise that right and direct Cingular to put their tower in an area that has as little negative impact on our citizens as possible.

Perhaps it seemed like a good idea to put a cell tower on the corner of Old Lower Shore and Lower Shore Roads when the old soccer fields were abandoned, filled with garbage cans and recognized as a haven for loitering and drug dealing.

Things have changed however, in the last four or five years. The area has become more residential. Three more families have moved in within a few hundred feet of the proposed cell tower site and a developer has expressed an interest in building a neighborhood of 14 luxury homes called "Lower Shore Estates" on the lot adjacent to the proposed site.

Barnegat Township and the Barnegat Jr. Bengals have worked together to rehabilitate the old soccer fields and the area is now host to hundreds of families who participate in the league. Local residents cheered this development because the advent of the Jr. Bengals was accompanied by a clean-up of the garbage cans and the drug dealers as well as a miraculous liberation from mosquitoes! Those who like to walk, jog and bike along Lower Shore have also noticed a marked improvement since the Jr. Bengals came to stay.

During this time things have changed elsewhere in town as well. All of the rural areas adjoining the town proper have been altered and developed to allow for housing and new businesses. While our citizens welcome the enrichment of experience and ideas that new people bring, it makes sense to retain some of the charm and history that attracted all of us to Barnegat in the first place. Lower Shore Road is one of the last untouched areas left in Barnegat; once it is gone, it is gone forever.

It's clear that this undersized lot is an inappropriate site for a cell tower. The only thing to recommend it is that Cingular/AT&T would be able to improve their transmissions while making an additional $75,000 a year from renting tower space to other cell companies and they wouldn't even have to spring for a driveway, the tower would be right on the road!

In an effort to offer an alternative, a number of private landowners who own large, unused tracts of land along Lower Shore Rd. have offered their own property to house the proposed cell tower. Each tract has enough dry, upland acreage to house the tower with no need for variances. In addition, they are all close enough to the proposed site to be likely to meet the necessary criteria and warrant serious consideration by Cingular. In fact, in every case, the tower could be placed well off the road and out of sight!

We feel that a better use of the proposed site would be first, to realign the roads at what is now a notoriously dangerous intersection in an increasingly busy area and second, to create a welcoming entrance to the Jr. Bengal fields that offers additional parking for participants. Currently families must park along both sides of Old Lower Shore past the proposed site and beyond the intersection during the Jr. Bengal's games. We feel that the lot in question could not only offer additional parking, but also a walking path to take families from their cars to the ball fields.

All we ask is that our zoning board recognize the loss that the proposed cell tower placement would represent to our residents, our recreation program, and our history and refuse to grant the outrageous variances sought by Cingular Wireless/AT&T, the magnitude of which are unprecedented in Barnegat. We're hoping that perhaps, in the new spirit of cooperation, our Township Committee will lead the way in facilitating a solution to this situation that will meet the needs of Cingular Wireless/AT&T, and no less important, will protect the health, safety and welfare of our citizens.

If you would like to express your support of our opposition to this cell tower site, please come to the Zoning Board Meeting at the Municipal Building on Tuesday, January 29th at 7:30PM.

Thank you!