Harbor Landing residents are going door to door gathering names on a petition opposed to a planned cell phone tower behind their joint use schools.
Shalom Hoffman, who lives in Harbor Landing, is one of 30 people who have signed so far.
“As you can see, there’s a school, a park, thousands of kids play here. They want to do it right near where over a thousand kids a week play there and like I was telling them, like this isn’t like Manhattan,” said Hoffman.
“It’s not a heavily densified, urbanized place where it makes it absolutely necessary you’ve got to build it among so many children.”
SaskTel is proposing to build a 45 meter tall tower on city owned park land that borders the school playground.
The nearest property owner says it would be about 10 meters from their condo. Residents suggest the tower be built further into the park or in the neighborhood’s commercial district.
According to SaskTel spokesperson Greg Jacobs, the crown corporation is taking note of the public’s feedback.
“In this case, the City of Regina has asked us to go through a public consultation process before constructing four new cell towers in the city,” I explained. “So we’re in the process of doing that right now.”
The City of Regina is currently working on a policy guideline on where cell phone towers should ideally be located.
It may recommend that towers not be built close to homes, schools or playgrounds. That policy guideline has yet to be considered by city council.