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State emergency agency presents 175‑foot first‑responder radio tower plan; residents press council for alternatives
Summary
At a Jan. 12 Westerly Town Council meeting, Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency officials outlined a proposed RISCON 800 MHz tower to fix local radio 'dead spots' for police, fire and EMS; residents and several councilors urged alternative locations and the council asked staff to compile options before any approval.
Mark Papus, director of the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, told the Westerly Town Council on Jan. 12 that REMA is proposing a 175‑ to 187‑foot lattice tower site to fill long‑standing radio “dead spots” for police, fire and emergency medical services.
"This is purely a first‑responder communications tower aimed only at communication radio communication for first responders," Papus said during a fact‑finding presentation in which REMA staff emphasized the tower would carry the RISCON statewide 800 MHz network and would not host commercial cellphone carriers. He and Communications Branch Chief Gil Woodside said the statewide system relies on roughly 29 tower sites with microwave and fiber backhaul for redundancy and that the proposed site would improve coverage near the south coast and beaches.
Why it matters: Councilors and residents framed the proposal as a trade‑off between public‑safety communications and neighborhood impacts. REMA said the project would be funded and operated by the state at no cost to the town; residents and local councilors pushed back on the initially suggested Tower Street site, citing town zoning (cited in the meeting as chapter 260‑85), historic character, blinking obstruction lights, property‑value concerns and health questions.
Residents who signed up to speak described the Tower Street location as "the gateway" to a historic granite district and urged the council to consider landfill, town forest, high‑school, transfer‑station and border sites instead. "15 Tower Street is not the location for it," said David Patton, a neighborhood resident who told the council he supported improved communications but not that site.
Council response and next steps: Councilors repeatedly characterized the REMA presentation as informational, not an approval. The council asked the town manager to compile a list of possible alternative sites and instructed REMA to evaluate those locations for radio coverage, fiber access and serviceability. Multiple councilors also requested documentation of specific emergency incidents tied to the town’s radio gaps so the council can weigh the urgency of construction against community concerns.
What REMA said: Papus and Woodside said the site recommendations come from field surveys, mapping and coverage modeling (they cited multi‑month drive tests) and stressed planning constraints: sufficient height, line‑of‑sight to neighboring RISCON nodes, and proximity to fiber to reduce microwave dependency and construction costs. REMA apologized for a vendor’s premature newspaper posting and photo‑simulation that alarmed neighbors and said the posting was an error by the vendor and would not recur.
What’s next: The council did not vote on a site or approve construction. Instead it authorized a staff‑driven process: the town manager will accept candidate sites from council members and residents, forward them to REMA for technical assessment, and return findings to the council. The council also invited public input and signaled it will not advance any site without additional studies and public hearings.
