Revere officials commission study to try to shrink proposed 145-foot McKinley School radio tower

Revere city officials said they will commission a technical study to determine whether the proposed 145-foot radio tower at the McKinley School site can be reduced while keeping the planned regional 911 call center’s communications reliable.

The mayor and Tom Skorofsky, the city’s chief of planning and community development, told the City Council on Sept. 15 that Entroba will perform a microwave-path analysis paid for by the regional 911 program and that the city’s owner’s project manager (OPM) will run a peer review. Skorofsky said any reasonable reduction ‘‘might be by, at most, 40 feet, at significant cost, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in a way that would reduce some redundancy in the system.’’

The study follows weeks of public concern from neighbors about the tower’s height, safety and effect on property values and several council members’ requests for more detail. The council did not vote to approve or reject the tower; councilors and city staff emphasized they are pursuing the McKinley site for the combined benefits of restoring a vacant school, creating early-childhood space and relocating an undersized 911 dispatch center.

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