A federal appeals court has granted Milton a victory in its battle to regulate cell phone towers.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday ruled Milton properly notified T-Mobile of its 2010 decisions to reject the company’s plans to build three cell towers in the city. Other issues in the company’s lawsuit against Milton remain unresolved.
Milton City Manager Christopher Lagerbloom said the city is pleased with the progress in the lawsuit. But he declined further comment, citing the pending litigation.
A T-Mobile spokeswoman said the company could not comment on pending litigation.
T-Mobile applied to build three cell phone towers — one 149 feet tall and the others 154 feet — in Milton in November 2009. The following April, the City Council unanimously rejected two of the applications and imposed restrictions on a third, including a height limit of 100 feet, after a majority of residents who spoke at public hearings opposed the towers.
Among other things, the council said the rejected towers were incompatible with nearby residential neighborhoods.
T-Mobile filed a federal lawsuit challenging the council’s decisions, claiming the city violated several provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. One of its claims: Milton failed to deny the applications in writing and with substantial evidence in a written record.
In 2011, a U.S. District Court judge agreed, noting that Milton’s letters to T-Mobile did not include any reasons for the decisions. The city claimed the letters were adequate under the law when considered along with minutes and transcripts of the City Council meeting and hearings, which collectively detail the reasons behind its decisions.
After the ruling, Milton sent new letters detailing the reason for its decisions. But the judge ultimately decided Milton shouldn’t get a second chance to properly notify T-Mobile and prohibited the city from denying the applications.
The city appealed and on Thursday the appeals court sided with Milton. It ruled that while the initial letters didn’t list the reasons for the council’s decisions, the reasons were clearly spelled out in writing in the meeting transcripts and minutes. The court found that T-Mobile had access to those documents at the time it filed its lawsuit and that the documents collectively satisfied the federal requirement that notification of the council’s decisions be in writing.
Unless T-Mobile appeals the decision or asks for reconsideration, the matter will go back to District Court for further consideration. Among the issues still to be decided: whether Milton had sufficient evidence to deny the company’s applications.
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