> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://websterledger.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Both Verizon towers tabled to Oct. 6, and the Lake Road hearing stays open - URL: https://websterledger.com/2026-09-02-planning-board-verizon-towers-tabled/ - Published: 2026-09-02T21:08:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T21:08:48.000Z - Description: The Planning Board tabled both Verizon cell tower applications to Oct. 6 on 5-1 votes, after the town's own radio-frequency consultant told members there is a real service gap at both sites. The Lake Road public hearing was left open. - Author: Morgan VanDerLeest - Tags: Planning & development, Government, Cell tower The Webster Planning Board tabled both of Verizon's cell tower applications Tuesday night and will take them up again Oct. 6\. The board has not finished taking public comment on the Lake Road tower. Every application before the board Tuesday, and what happened to it: - Verizon cell tower, 1222 Wildflower Drive. Tabled to Oct. 6\. The chair later said the invitation to come back and speak should have been given on this application as well. - Verizon cell tower, Lake Road. Tabled to Oct. 6, and the board left the public hearing open, so residents can still speak on it. - 764 Ridge Road, a 15,000-square-foot addition. Tabled to Oct. 6. - Four sign applications. All approved, and listed below. - Exterior lighting at Bloom & Blend, 790 Ridge Road. Approved. Earlier in the Lake Road item the chair said people could come back and speak, and that the invitation should have come on the Wildflower Drive application as well. After the Lake Road vote the chair said the board would not close that public hearing. The Ledger [previewed both hearings](https://websterledger.com/2026-09-01-verizon-tower-hearings-sept-1/) Tuesday morning. ## Why the board tabled The chair told the board it had received a large volume of material in the past couple of days, and that the board should slow down until everyone can respond to it. Tabling also gives people in the community a chance to review the same information, the chair said. Verizon did file the supplemental propagation data the board had asked for. It arrived Aug. 27, and some material arrived the day of the meeting. The vote to table was 5-1 on each application. Before the first vote, a board member argued against waiting. The supplemental material addressed the board's earlier comments and its questions about coverage, the member said, and demonstrated that the selected locations are appropriate. The member was satisfied the information was complete and not sure a delay was necessary. Someone else at the table asked what a further 30 days would produce. Derek Anderson cast the only vote against tabling, on both applications. Verizon's attorney, Laura Smith of Nixon Peabody, asked the board to let the Wildflower Drive application keep moving while the review finishes. The board was told Verizon is on next week's zoning board agenda for a preliminary introduction of the project, and the chair agreed. ## The heights The Wildflower Drive tower is 135 feet with a four-foot lightning rod, 139 feet overall. The Lake Road tower is 125 feet with a four-foot lightning rod. [Webster's code caps communications towers at 100 feet](https://websterledger.com/webster-cell-tower-rules-explained/), measured from the ground surface immediately surrounding the site. ## What the town's consultant told the board The consultant the town hired to check Verizon's work appeared in person Tuesday and answered questions for roughly half an hour. William Johnson of RF Engineering Consultants, a professor emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, reviewed both applications with Professor Steven Ciccarelli. Johnson said they went through Verizon's propagation plots and found a real service gap at both sites. At Wildflower Drive that gap runs to both coverage and capacity. There is no coverage gap at Lake Road, Johnson said, but there is a gap at mid-band frequencies. A call can fail at five bars, Johnson said, because the site serving the phone has no capacity left to carry it. A gap is the first of [three questions the board has to answer](https://websterledger.com/webster-cell-tower-rules-explained/) on an application like this. The board has not reached the other two: whether the proposal will actually fix the gap, and whether it is the least intrusive way to do it. Asked whether a code-compliant 100-foot tower could close the gap, Johnson said reduced heights compromise coverage. Filling in with multiple shorter towers is possible, Johnson said, but the combined impact of several is arguably greater than one taller one. Verizon's head RF engineer has offered no alternative at a lower height, Johnson said. ## What neighbors told the board Comment ran heavily against both towers. One speaker across the whole night spoke in favor. A Wildflower Drive resident told the board a petition with the signatures of 95 residents of the neighborhood had been delivered on Friday to Josh Artuso, the town's Director of Community Development. Speakers argued the record should show technical justification for the amount of height requested. They raised property values, and said prospective buyers had walked away from homes near the Wildflower Drive site. They asked whether the board can require a camouflaged or stealth design. The board's attorney noted the code provides for camouflage, landscaping and aesthetic treatment, and Johnson said stealthing a tower at 125 feet is possible but unusual, with trade-offs in how many antennas the tower can carry. Speakers also raised tree removal. A resident whose property backs onto the Wildflower Drive site said trees will come down and the tower will be visible from the backyard, close enough to both see and hear. A Lake Road neighbor who lives across from that site said the objection is to that corner rather than to the tower, and that a purchase offer on one of the building sites there was canceled the day before the meeting. Several speakers raised health effects from radio-frequency emissions. Some of those speakers said themselves that health cannot be the legal ground for a denial. Webster's code says federal law bars regulating a tower on health effects where it meets FCC standards, citing Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996\. The town's consultant gave the board exposure figures from the reports before it: less than 1 percent of the FCC general-population threshold at Wildflower Drive, and a maximum theoretical 3.27 percent at Lake Road. The one speaker in favor lives in the neighborhood. Coverage there has been bad enough for three years to interfere with work, the speaker said, and calls from home do not go through. A tower is unsightly but it is needed infrastructure. ## How the sites were chosen Verizon's siting analysis says it evaluated eleven parcels for the Wildflower Drive site. One of them, according to that analysis, was town-owned property the Town Board declined to lease. Smith told the board that decision was within the Town Board's legislative purview and a separate question from the zoning approvals now pending. Webster's code sets a district preference for tower locations that ranks co-location and commercial districts above residential, and both towers are proposed in residential districts. ## The town already tried to move the Lake Road tower The chair disclosed after the Lake Road comment period that the board had already tried to get that tower located back in the woods. Town staff and the board met with Verizon, and the supervisor took part in one of those meetings. The town got nowhere with it, the chair said. ## 764 Ridge Road also tabled The third public hearing item on the agenda was tabled to Oct. 6 as well, on a voice vote. Thomas Fitzgerald of MRB Group presented a 15,000-square-foot one-story addition to the existing 11,000-square-foot building at 764 Ridge Road. Fitzgerald appeared for a development company and Vital Signs, the sign company that presented two of the sign applications the board approved earlier in the evening. Comments from the town engineer are still outstanding. They cover ADA compliance, sidewalks, site access and a required fire sprinkler system. The applicant said those were addressed in an Aug. 28 submission. The chair proposed taking preliminary and final approval together on Oct. 6 so no time is lost. ## What did get approved Every application the board approved Tuesday was a sign or a light, and all were approved on voice votes with no dissent. - Penfield-Webster EMS, 607 Phillips Road. One 14.89-square-foot non-illuminated sign. - Supercuts, 900 Holt Road. One 28-square-foot internally illuminated sign at the Holt Road plaza. - Monroe County Water Authority, 593 Basket Road. One 18-square-foot non-illuminated double-sided roadside sign. - McAlpin Industries, 865 Hard Road. Three internally illuminated wall signs, two wayfinding signs and one monument sign, totaling 366.13 square feet. - Bloom & Blend, 790 Ridge Road. Final approval for 36 feet of decorative exterior lighting, the second lighting application the board has handled after 7 Brew. The board also approved its Aug. 4 minutes. ## Where this stands **What the record shows.** Both applications were tabled to Oct. 6 on 5-1 votes to table, with Derek Anderson voting against tabling each time. **What is still open.** Verizon has not documented its outreach to landowners of record, the one finding the town's consultant left open on both sites. The board was told Verizon is on next week's zoning board agenda for a preliminary introduction of the Wildflower Drive project. **What we could not verify.** Tuesday's recording was transcribed by machine, and no second transcription engine was available before publication. This account therefore carries no direct quotations, and everything attributed here is a paraphrase. ## Get Webster news in your inbox Subscribe free Email sent! 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