MANCHESTER – Resistance to the placement of a communication tower within the Roosevelt City section of Whiting was brought up by residents during a recent Township Council meeting.
Police Chief Antonio Ellis previously explained during a council meeting that the tower is for emergency responder use – especially the township police department – to address the need for more service in that area.
“We are just preparing the next steps with additional information and bringing our stakeholders in to help support this public safety communication project. Justifications for the project was approved in December 2024,” Ellis said.
Township Business Administrator Carl Block explained that the property earmarked for the tower belongs to the township and that it was the only area open to put the tower which will allow for the communications upgrade in the area.
It is being constructed to support police, fire, and EMS radio communications as part of the New Jersey State Police 700-megahertz system. It is not a private or for-profit project. The project was actually scaled back from allowing cellular service. The tower is needed to provide reliable communication is critical during emergencies.
The tower will improve radio coverage across Manchester Township and will also eliminate dead zones and dropped transmissions. The tower’s operation will help ensure first responders can communicate during emergencies according to information provided by Chief Ellis.
All required environmental and regulatory approvals have been obtained for the tower. The Pinelands Commission (which handles environmental and land use approval) and the township are in partnership with the New Jersey State Police and Motorola Solutions.
Mayor Joseph Hankins took offense to one resident’s comment concerning fire safety within the area of the tower saying that firefighters would be unable to properly respond to the site in the event of a fire.
The mayor issued a statement to The Manchester Times after the meeting noting that “the person stating lightning will strike the tower causing a forest fire that would burn the homes and there are not enough fire trucks to put it out was so far out of the realm of possibility, its stupidity was over the top.”
“This statement was not only just inflammatory for a crowd reaction. There are so many factors that this person has no clue about. He lost all credibility with me,” the mayor added.
He provided some statistics from the New Jersey Forest Fire service stating “lightning strikes as a causation are 0.4%, less than 10 fires a year state wide. With that said you would need dry lightning, or pre rain, an uncommon occurrence in New Jersey.”
As to an assertion that there would not be enough fire trucks to combat the blaze, the mayor responded to that claim saying, “thousands of acres have burned in Ocean and Burlington counties, more than once the fires have been worked by the municipal fire departments and N.J. Forest Fire service with no loss of residential structures. Most recently the Jones Road fire resulted in only one commercial structure being lost.”
Shirley Strader has lived in Whiting for 27 years. She said “somebody should have said, let’s talk to the neighbors. Maybe you should have put out more information. There is absolutely no other place? Let’s say that particular space was unavailable and there was a house there would you use imminent domain and knock the house down or say ‘sorry we have no other place for a tower.’ I find it really hard to believe.”
“I’m not going to get into what ifs,” the mayor responded.
“What would be your plan B?” Strader asked.
Block said the prior communication system utilizing 500 megahertz “was about to die and was 20 years old. We needed to replace it. All the (emergency response) is done through that radio. That is why a consultant was hired to look at all the alternatives and to come back and say what the best place was to locate it from a scientific standpoint and (radio frequency) standpoint, and from an environmental standpoint on the ground where it would be allowed.”
“It has not been done overnight,” Block said responding to residents who spoke during the public comment period stating that insufficient notice was provided to the residents within that neighborhood about the placement of the tower. He said the studies would be made available to the public.
“In the future, my suggestion would be, notify the people involved with a certified letter. I don’t think that is asking too much,” Strader said.
Mayor Hankins also noted prior articles featured in The Manchester Times covered news about the communication tower project.
County Commissioner Robert Arace, the former mayor of Manchester, was present at the meeting. He commented on the issue saying, “I understand the difficulty of the neighborhood but I also wanted to talk about the location. The intention of this was through a state mandated upgrade to 700-megahertz bandwidth.”
The commissioner explained, “when you are at a different band you cannot communicate with another agency that has a 700-megahertz band and your emergency responder or firefighter has to worry about switching megahertz channels for emergency response.” “While it doesn’t happen very often, when it does happen and a fire is tearing through a town, it is important for emergency response to be able to communicate with each other. We needed to ensure that we had mitigated that. The intent was always for emergency services and for them to be able to communicate,” he added.
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