TV tower squabble

‘Take the thing down and start all over again’

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — John Mester has a vision. He wants to provide television programming to the people in Monticello. He wants to offer news and weather programming, shows about health and some entertainment as well. He plans to do this with a low-power television station (LPTV).

About 2,000 LPTV stations exist in the country and they serve small areas, such as neighborhoods in big cities.

Mester is the administrator of the John Mester Family Income Trust, which has owned a license for a LPTV transmitter in Monticello since the ’90s but it has not been operational. Now, however, with the coming switch to digital TV signals that LPTV stations will soon be making, Mester believes his transmitter in Monticello, along with another one in Ellenville and a low-power TV station in White Lake, will become financially viable.

Mester said the programming would originate in White Lake and be broadcasted from the Monticello and Ellenville transmitters. And if the programming is sufficiently high in quality, it might be carried on digital cable stations because of so-called “must carry” rules.

Mester’s Monticello operation included a 90-foot broadcast test tower tucked into a small patch of woods off Hillcrest Road. But in order to make his digital dream come true, he needed a bigger tower. He hired an out-of-state installer to put up a 200-foot tower in April. The problem is the installer didn’t bother to get a permit for the new tower and ignored a stop-work order.

That has made some members of the Village of Monticello Planning Board a bit cranky.

At a planning board meeting on July 28, Mester appeared at a public hearing regarding a permit for the new tower. His engineer, Al Fusco, started by explaining some points of law about TV towers, for instance that they are public utilities.

But before he could continue down this path very far, he was interrupted by a clearly frustrated board. Board member Hildy Rosenberg said, “You’ve got the cart before the horse. You’re trying to justify applying for a permit after the job is already done.”

Board member Michael Levinson joined in. He said the tower was put up with no respect for village laws, and that, in his opinion, Mester should, “take the thing down and start all over again.”

This was not the response Mester’s engineer and lawyer had been seeking. Fusco agreed that this was an after-the-fact application. Furthermore, he explained that before Mester applied to the planning board for the application, he should have applied to the zoning board of appeals (ZBA) to get a variance, which was required to clear up some other matters. Therefore, Mester was not now seeking an approval from the planning board, but was instead asking that the board refer the matter to the ZBA.

Before the board decided the matter, chairman Dennis Diuguid weighed in with another concern. At nearly 200 feet, if the tower were to fall it would not land entirely on property owned by Mester. “If it falls, it falls on the other guy’s house,” he said, “I don’t think that’s fair or reasonable.”

The board decided not to refer the matter to the ZBA, but instead voted to deny the application. That won’t, however, prevent Mester from moving ahead through the ZBA process.

Mester’s lawyer, a man named Baum, who refused to give his first name and advised his client not to speak to the media, told the board that the switch to digital will soon not be open to negotiation. Baum said, “It will soon be federal regulation that low-power television stations transmit digital signals,” the implication being that federal rules may trump village zoning codes.

Levinson noted that since the tower went up, the village code enforcement officer had issued 16 tickets to Mester, for $1,000 each, for violating village code. He recommended that the officer continue to issue tickets.