Southold officials dialed up efforts to fix spotty cell service Tuesday — zeroing in on a large town-owned property as a possible home for a new tower.

The Town Board focused on a sprawling parcel between Boisseau and Youngs avenues, south of Route 48, in Southold as one possible location, weeks after adopting a new code that places town-owned property among its preferred locations for new towers.

“This doesn’t mean we’re picking this, but it’s a huge property,” Councilwoman Jill Doherty said at the work session. “We could maybe put it on the northern end and still leave plenty of room for recreation and housing, or whatever we do with the rest of the land.”

The push comes after years of complaints about dead zones and weak reception across large pockets of the North Fork. A townwide survey last summer found that nearly half of 773 respondents reported getting only one bar of service at home.

The latest talks offer no immediate fix. The town has not selected a site or approved a new tower on municipal land, and Tuesday’s discussion was an early step toward finding a location.

The code, approved June 16, establishes standards for where and how wireless facilities can be located, including requirements related to visual impact, environmental constraints, lot size and tower safety.

“Now that we have an updated code, I feel it is the town’s responsibility to take the lead and make better cell service a priority,” Ms. Doherty told The Suffolk Times after the work session.

The debate over where to put new wireless infrastructure in Southold goes back more than a decade. In 2014, the town considered a cell tower behind Town Hall, but the proposal was rejected amid broader public opposition, including concerns from Southold school parents and objections tied to the property’s location in the historic district, according to previous Suffolk Times reporting.

As a next step, officials asked Planning Director Heather Lanza to identify town-owned properties that could meet the new requirements.

“We want good cell coverage, and we want to find the right spot for these things,” Councilman Brian Mealy said.

Also discussed during the work session was the ongoing rewrite of the town’s community-housing regulations. Assistant Town Attorney Julie McGivney said the effort would amend six existing chapters — 17, 34, 117, 207, 240 and 280 — and create a new Chapter 112 consolidating housing regulations, definitions and procedures. A draft is expected to be ready for review in December or January.

The board also continued work on its response to federal immigration enforcement, moving toward a resolution and police procedures while putting the proposed local-law route aside for now. Police Chief Steven Grattan said he and Town Attorney Ben Johnson plan to work through a proposed outside-agency policy governing how Southold police interact with other law-enforcement agencies and notify town officials, with the board aiming to have a draft resolution ready for its Aug. 25 meeting. Officials are also still working through when schools and the public should be notified about verified enforcement activity.

Councilwoman Alexa Suess said the town is looking at reviewing individual outside-agency incidents as part of the broader process.

Chief Grattan separately presented a proposed 10-hour, four-days-on/four-days-off police schedule that could be tested for one year. He said the plan could work with current staffing without reducing Greenport coverage and would provide a two-hour overlap between shifts during key hours. The chief said the department currently has four vacancies and described the proposal as an effort to reduce fatigue from extended stretches of overnight work.

The board also continued work on its open-space acquisition priorities, including how preservation should be balanced with community-housing opportunities in hamlet and HALO areas. Farmland remains the top priority, while officials also discussed passive recreation, smaller open-space parcels and whether privately protected subdivision land should qualify for future acquisition. A draft project plan is expected to go to stakeholders before returning to the board and eventually proceeding to a public hearing.

The post Southold eyes town-owned land for new cell tower to improve spotty service appeared first on The Suffolk Times.

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