Otisfield tower proposal timeline

Jan. 17 — Planning Board approved an application for construction of a 180-foot tower on Ivory Hill Road on Scribner Hill. KJK Wireless filed the application on behalf of U.S. Cellular.

February — John Poto filed an appeal, saying the board failed to adhere to the town’s wireless telecommunications facility siting ordinance, and some of the goals of the town Comprehensive Plan.

March 6 — Board of Appeals took more than three hours of testimony on the appeal.

March 20 — Board of Appeals unanimously voted to deny the appeal after 90 minutes of fact-finding and discussion.

May 9 — Friends of Scribner Hill filed suit in Oxford County Superior Court, South Paris, asking that the Board of Appeals’ decision be overturned. The plaintiffs, who also include Poto, Kristen Roy and James Gregory, asked Justice Robert Clifford to remand the decision granting the permit back to the Planning Board for a full hearing. The defendants, including the town, KJK Wireless and U.S. Cellular, asked that the suit be dismissed.

July 9 — Justice Clifford held a hearing and ruled that the Planning Board must set down the facts it used to make its decision and the conclusions of law reached regarding those facts. The board did not have to hear further evidence, he said, but could open the record to gather more evidence, if it chose to.

Aug. 7 — The Planning Board met for 2½ hours to set down facts and conclusions. It did not reopen the record to gather more evidence.

Aug. 21 – The Planning Board unanimously adopted its facts and conclusions after more than 90 minutes of review. The document will be sent to Justice Clifford.

OTISFIELD — The Planning Board unanimously voted Tuesday night to adopt the court-ordered findings of facts and conclusions of law for its permit approval for the U.S. Cellular communications tower on Scribner Hill.

The vote was made to meet requirements set by Oxford Superior Court Justice Robert Clifford to set in writing why the board approved the application to construct a 180-foot tower.

The decision was appealed by Friends of Scribner Hill and several individual plaintiffs in Oxford County Superior Court earlier this summer.

The board’s findings and conclusions will be forwarded to the town’s attorney, Phil Saucier of Bernstein Shur in Portland, for final review before it is delivered to the South Paris court, which has jurisdiction over the case.

About a half-dozen opponents to the project attended the the meeting Tuesday in Otisfield Town Hall to listen while Planning Board members reviewed their 20-page document for more than 90 minutes before taking a vote.

During that time a few facts — such as one regarding the inaccurate mention of a one-inch barbed wire security fence — were changed. Others revolved around grammatical errors, misspelled words and whether a word should be in bold type or not.

Following the vote, Planning Board Chairman Dan Peaco opened up the meeting to the public for comment.

“I’m happy to hear anyone,” Peaco said.

Plaintiff John Poto, who was cut off from speaking at the recent Board of Selectmen’s meeting, was in the audience but chose not speak.

Town Clerk Sharon Matthews, who did not attend the selectmen’s meeting last week where several town department heads spoke in favor of the communications tower, said she has heard from an engineer for the tower that fiber optics will be available to Otisfield if the tower is constructed.

“I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been asked about high-speed Internet,” she said.

Friends of Scribner Hill, who do not oppose the construction of a cell tower, have said they want to include facts about communications towers they have discovered that may or may not alter the permit application approval. Members, who say they have been repeatedly closed out of discussions, had little to say Tuesday night to the Planning Board.

Joe Brown, whose home is in back of the tower site on Scribner Hill, left a picture of his home in which he had superimposed the tower as he says it will appear from his driveway.

Linda Poto asked that the Planing Board look at the picture and justify how they can allow the construction to happen at that site.

“Good luck with that,” she said.

John Poto said Wednesday that the group’s next action depends on the court.

“We will wait to see the verdict,” he said.

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