Someday the two Gunflint Trail towers called “Gunflint Magnetic” and “Gunflint Midtrail” may be replaced. Someday the county may own the land they are on, and people may be able to use their cell phones up and down the Gunflint Trail. But it’s a tortuous road to get there.
On July 11, Sheriff Mark Falk, County Attorney Tim Scannell, and Radio Systems Coordinator Duane Ege, who comprise a county-boardappointed communications tower committee, updated the county board on progress toward a tower lease agreement with AT&T, which is offering a pretty good deal to Cook County. AT&T has offered to erect two new towers—which would be owned by the county—to replace the ones already in place, with an agreement that it will be given free rent for 25 years, after which it proposes to pay $8,000 a year to rent tower space, with 3 percent rent increases annually.
It sounds like a good idea, if only they could make it happen. Both sites are currently on U.S. Forest Service property. Cook County has had contracts with the Forest Service for the county-owned towers that are there, but those contracts have expired and need to be renegotiated. In the long run, the Forest Service has approved both sites for land swaps with the county, but that process may take awhile.
The proposed towers would be no higher than 200 feet and have guy wires keeping them up. According to Duane Ege, they would have a less intrusive profile than the ones that are in place now.
Ege said he would like to see Cook County own both pieces of property, lease the towers to numerous companies, and make full use of the state’s new Allied Radio Matrix for Emergency Response (ARMER) communications system that would allow all public agencies and emergency response units to communicate directly with each other.
“I think from a public safety perspective, that sure is significant,” said Sheriff Mark Falk. Cook County’s communication technology is 20 years behind what some other places have, he added.
Some counties are backing out of their intentions to gear up to the ARMER system, Ege said. It would cost $1.5 to $2 million to build the infrastructure to fully implement the system in Cook County, he said, and a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to run it.
Things keep changing so much and so fast, Attorney Scannell said, that hiring someone to coordinate this initiative would be better than trying to squeeze time to work on it into already busy schedules. AT&T representative Mark Hemstreet of Insight Communications indicated that working with a single point person would be more efficient than trying to work with a committee.
Commissioner Jim Johnson said he thinks there’s been a big shift in public attitude regarding cell phone coverage in Cook County. Some business owners have gone from not wanting either the towers or coverage in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) to wanting coverage available to their customers because they expect it.
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