> ## 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. # How Webster reviews a cell tower application - URL: https://websterledger.com/webster-cell-tower-rules-explained/ - Published: 2026-09-02T21:06:30.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-02T21:06:30.000Z - Description: Webster caps communications towers at 100 feet. A guide to the three questions the Planning Board has to answer on a tower application, what the code says about camouflage and co-location, and why health effects cannot be the ground for a denial. - Author: Morgan VanDerLeest - Tags: Planning & development, Government, Cell tower Webster's code caps communications towers at 100 feet. Any tower taller than that arrives at the Planning Board carrying the same set of questions, and several of the answers are set by federal law rather than by the town. This guide draws on the town code and on what the town's own radio-frequency consultant told the Planning Board on Sept. 1, 2026, during hearings on two Verizon towers. ## The three questions the board has to answer William Johnson of RF Engineering Consultants, the firm the town hired to check Verizon's work, laid out for the board the three questions it has to answer on an application like this. The first is whether the applicant has identified a significant service gap. The second is whether the proposal will actually remedy that gap. The third is whether it is the least intrusive means that is technically feasible, which is where site selection and the applicant's control of the land come in. Answering the first question does not answer the other two. Objections about site selection, and about the choice of a full-height tower over smaller equipment, both sit under the third question. Johnson said the legal advice on all of it belongs with the board's own attorney. ## Health effects cannot be the ground for a denial Webster's code says federal law bars regulating a tower on the health effects of radio-frequency emissions where the tower meets FCC standards. The code cites Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Residents raise health at these hearings, and some say themselves that it cannot be the legal ground for a denial. Johnson told the board that municipalities are saddled with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the court decisions that followed it, and suggested residents direct their complaints to the senators and representatives who could change it. What the standard forecloses is a denial, not the analysis. The reports before the board on Sept. 1 put exposure at less than 1 percent of the FCC general-population threshold at the Wildflower Drive site, and at a maximum theoretical 3.27 percent at the Lake Road site, the town's consultant told members. ## The 100-foot cap, and where it came from The cap is 100 feet, including antennas and extensions, measured from the ground surface immediately surrounding the site. It applies townwide, not to one zoning district. Late in the Sept. 1 discussion, a board member recalled how the cap came about. The town set it years ago, when the first towers came in, expecting it would hold down the impact on neighborhoods. The member said more towers turned out to be needed instead, and the code was never changed. Johnson said the 100-foot number still serves a purpose, because an applicant who wants to build higher has to come forward and demonstrate need. That is not a bad thing, Johnson said. ## A later carrier can raise an approved tower once Johnson pointed the board to finding number 12 of the firm's July 24 review of the Wildflower Drive site. Current FCC regulations carry a provision for a second service provider coming onto an existing tower, Johnson said. The height of that tower can be raised to accommodate the new carrier without going through the kind of review the board was conducting that night. That height increase is available one time. Once it has been used, Johnson said, the next carrier has to go through the full zoning review. Johnson said that is federal law rather than Webster code, and that concerns about it belong with Congress. Johnson also said this is not a reason to deny an application, only something the board should know is possible. During the Sept. 1 hearings, Verizon's attorney, Laura Smith of Nixon Peabody, told the board separately that another carrier might well need its own tower. Smith also said Verizon itself may come back before the board to increase the height. ## Camouflage and stealth designs The code specifically provides for camouflage, landscaping and aesthetic treatment. The board's attorney raised that on Sept. 1, and noted that a site sitting on a road rather than in a tree line will be seen from the road. Johnson said stealthing a tower at 125 feet is possible but unusual, and pointed to a site Pittsford recently stealthed at about 110 feet that reads as a pine tree from some approaches and clearly does not from others. Stealth branches add wind load and torque at the base of the pole, Johnson said, which limits how many antennas the tower can carry. Johnson's summary was that it is a trade-off between how a tower looks and how it performs. ## Sharing an existing tower comes first Webster's code says shared use of an existing tower is preferred to building a new one, and requires an applicant to document good-faith efforts to co-locate on something already standing. The code also sets a district preference for tower locations. That preference runs from a property with an existing structure suitable for co-location, to commercial districts, to municipal or government-owned property, and then to residential districts, with further tiers below that. ## Get Webster news in your inbox Subscribe free Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. --- *AI tools were used in drafting and research.*