Frankentower May Come to the Southern Idaho Landscape

Prepare for Objections

I bought my first cellphone in 2006.  I hadn’t needed one of my own because up until that point my employer provided one and I used a land line at home.  At the store there was a national coverage map, and it had two really big gaps.  Idaho and Nevada didn’t have much service.  Or at least compared to other states.

Times have changed.  I get good service in spots I didn’t just half a dozen years ago.  But this comes at a cost.  We have a lot more cell towers.  Those aren’t easy to place, and often people believe they’re unsightly.  We can get a not in my backyard brushback.

Some places are conducive to towers.  Jerome Butte is one spot locally, but it’s mightily crowded with towers for a variety of emergency and commercial services.

Your Thoughts on a Plan?

The next step is to find some new locations in the Magic Valley.  This is where several local county commissions are seeking public input.  In Twin Falls County it demands an answer because as the population skyrockets, so does demand for space.

I don’t have an answer, but I can tell you about an experience I had 30 years ago.

I was working in upstate NY and there were plans to expand service into the Adirondack Mountains, which were vastly underserved.  There were objections about towers being unsightly, so someone came up with the idea to disguise a tower as a tree.  It wasn’t long before the granola and hemp skirt crowd objected and called it Frankentower.  I don’t know how it was resolved.  I moved away while the debate still raged, but if you want phone service in this day and age, it takes some compromise.

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