Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
Hurley — It’s possible cellphone coverage in Iron County will improve after the Iron County Board of Supervisors’ finance committee approved an agreement with U.S. Cellular Thursday to allow the company to lease tower space from the county.
The company will pay Iron County $1,300 a month to lease space on two of the county’s towers, one located in the Mercer area and the other in Upson.
“I think it’s real fair,” said Darrell Petrusha, who has been working for the county on various communications issues the past few years. “They’re only putting up two omniband antennas, so the wind load on the tower — that’s what you pay for, the more wind load that goes on the towers the more you pay — so the wind load is next to non-existent on them.”
The deal doesn’t prevent other companies from leasing tower space in the future, which Petrusha expects will almost certainly happen in the coming years.
There is no expiration date to the agreement, according to the information presented at the meeting, and the agreement includes language that increases the payments by 10 percent every five years.
In other action, the committee:
—Voted 3-2 to reject a request from county employees Diane Schmidtke and Lori Prenderville to receive a pay-out for vacation time they were unable to use this year. Joe Pinardi and Opal Roberts voted against the motion.
—Expressed interest in exploring the purchase of the Hurley VFW building, with the possibility of relocating the county health department to the building rather than continuing to rent its current office space.
—Approved allowing county conservationist Heather Palmquist become the northwest area coordinator for the Land and Water Conservation Association. The position is funded through fees collected by the association.
