THOUSAND OAKS : Council Continues Hearing on Tower

The Thousand Oaks City Council, after a four-hour hearing, has postponed a decision whether to approve a 150-foot-tall radio tower that Cal Lutheran University has proposed building on a prominent ridge overlooking the city.

Council members decided to continue hearing testimony from the public at a special meeting Tuesday at City Hall.

Mayor Robert E. Lewis said he suggested postponing the decision because of numerous speakers who wanted to address the council at Tuesday’s hearing.

Officials said the proposed tower would allow the university to expand its communications and to operate a public broadcasting station that would reach as far as Oxnard and Ventura. But opponents say the tower would destroy their views of the scenic hillside.

More than 200 people jammed the council’s chambers Tuesday, but only seven speakers, all of them officials and experts representing Cal Lutheran, had the chance to address the council. More than 50 others who had signed up to discuss the issue must wait until next week’s meeting.

Lewis said the delay would allow Councilman Frank Schillo, who was absent Tuesday because of illness, to attend.

Many of those attending were opponents who had appeared in a last-ditch attempt to persuade the council to overturn the Planning Commission’s decision last month to approve the tower.

Time is running out for Cal Lutheran, which received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to build the tower two years ago. July 19 is the deadline to have the radio station in operation, school officials said.

The campus wants to construct the tower as part of plans to establish a public station called KCLU-FM, to be broadcast at a frequency of 88.3.

Residents have complained that the tower would interfere with television transmission and that radio waves emitted by the tower could damage their health.

However, two experts said the interference is easily manageable and, because of the low frequency, exposure to radio waves, is not a threat.

“Such exposure . . . will not pose a hazard to human health,” Cal Lutheran consultant Peter Polson said.