MACC seeks tower spot again

MOSES LAKE — The Multi Agency Communications Center (MACC) may be looking for another location for a Moses Lake radio tower.

Plans to build the tower on land owned by Grant County Fire District 5 at the corner of Baseline Road and Potato Hill Road are in question after a decision by county planners to designate the land rural residential.

The tower is part of a project to increase the reliability of radio service in Grant County. The project is in its fourth year after a 0.1 percent sales tax increase was approved in 2005. For about two years, MACC hunted for a piece of property it could set both the new tower and a new dispatch center on, dismissing property next to their present location in the Moses Lake National Guard Armory because Radio Communications Manager Dean Hane said it isn’t the best location for a tower. 

In May, Hane announced he couldn’t find land for an acceptable price. Three acre plots were ranging from $465,780 to $798,480 in the area they wanted to build in.

“The issue for us is finding a site that meets the coverage needs. That’s the driving factor,” Hane said. “Secondly affordable land, we’ve got to deal with power, utilities, access, all kind of things like that … The advantage is to keep our timeline moving. That’s my trigger point. “

The board decided to pursue a piece of land owned by fire district 5 for the tower at a cost of $1,000 a year. When MACC started inquiring about the property, it was discovered it didn’t have a zoning designation.

“Shortly thereafter, the county made an administrative decision to designate that parcel as a rural residential one zone,” Hane said. “At that point, we had a set of rules to build a site by.”

The county limits towers to 100 feet in the zone. Hane said this is too short for the signal to get past the water tank on Airway Drive. The other issue is a required set back of 115 percent of the tower height.

“It’s going to be difficult for us to meet that,” Hane said. “A 100-foot tower is not going to work in that spot for several reasons. The first reason is coverage. The second reason is we use these towers for microwave connection to other sites. We have to have an exact line of sight from point A to point B.”

If the tower was taller, the signal would go above the water tank, but this would put it above the 100-foot limitation, Hane said. 

When Moses Lake Fire Chief Tom Taylor asked why the administrative change was done, Hane said it was likely when MACC made the inquiry about the land, county planning officials discovered there wasn’t a zoning designation.

“So they did what they had to do in assigning a zoning designation,” Hane said. “I don’t know what the criteria is (or) why it got zoned rural residential versus governmental services.”

Taylor questioned the zoning decision, saying with the fire station there, it seemed like it should be zoned as a public zone.

“I had some questions, a little discussion with the planners, I don’t think we’re going to be able to undo anything,” Hane said. “There’s a period once a year we can ask for a zoning change. The period comes around, I think, in June or July, and it takes almost another full year to go through that process … So I’m with you here Tom, you know, there’s a giant circle 100 feet away in an agricultural zone, we could put up a tower that is as tall as 300 feet.”

Damien Hooper, Grant County’s planning manager, explained in an interview after the meeting, the most of the space around the area is used for residential purposes.

“The zoning would have to be compatible,” he said. “The properties around there are residential in nature, except for the southwest corner, which is ag … Everything else around that is not zoned agriculture.”

Hooper added there isn’t a public designation for zoning in the rural areas.

“The fire station use is allowed out right in a rural residential zone,” he said.

Taylor asked if the county planners made an administrative decision to zone it, couldn’t they make another administrative decision to change it.

Grant County Commissioner Richard Stevens said it was the first time he heard about the issue, adding he would talk to the planning department to see if there is a way to solve the issue.

“They did that. It didn’t come to us,” he said. “The planning department looked at it and said, ‘Hey, you know, we got to do something, because we’ve got a residence or we’ve got a building on this, so it can’t be (agricultural), so they changed it then.”

If MACC places the tower in the north end of town, Hane said another tower near Warden will be necessary to complete the project. This will add nearly $500,000 to the project.

“Moses Lake is kind of the cog holding up construction,” he said. “We did a lot of coverage maps and those drove site location and tower height, and we got to look at terrain, location, a lot of things drive that, and that’s why we wanted to keep (the Moses Lake site) in the southeast area of town.”