The waiting may come to an end 6/1 for the Family Life Network, a Christian radio station that wants to erect a broadcast tower in Brant, NY, 25 miles south of Buffalo. WCOM-FM applied for permission to build the 299-foot tower last August and is still waiting for an answer. The Brant Town Board will conduct a special meeting 6:30 p.m. 6/1 on the tower app. Several months passed as Erie County, NY reviewed the plans, and several board meetings went by because members were ill or could not attend.
Family Life Network, with headquarters in Bath, NY, broadcasts on more than 70 outlets NY and Pennsylvania. It wants to build the tower on a wooded, 87-acre parcel on Milestrip Road in southwestern Erie County. The station is set to air on 89.3 mHz with 8-kW and is licensed to Silver Creek, NY.
The town, which has four cell towers, has no ordinances or laws regulating broadcast towers. The four current towers obtained special-use permits from the Town Board after submitting architectural renderings.
“The town is trying to impose regulations on the tower that they really can’t,” Code Enforcement Officer Gary Brecker told The Buffalo News.
Family Life Network was asked to complete a long-form environmental impact statement — something it never had to do for the 17 other towers it has erected over the past 28 years. The organization, founded in 1957, is not to be confused with Family Radio, whose founder recently predicted the rapture would occur 5/21.
In addition to providing specifications for the tower, which has a 24- inch base, and an 11-by 16-foot building, the Family Life Network also had to provide architectural drawings showing the access road and how emergency vehicles could turn around.
