Kimberly residents petition against new cellphone tower

KIMBERLY, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Some residents in Kimberly are speaking out against plans for a new T-Mobile cellphone tower. It could go up right behind one man’s backyard.

“First time we found out about it, I saw somebody going through the property next door, and they were parked on our private road,” Kevan Kjar said.

Kevan Kjar said he found out his new neighbor had plans for his new yard two years ago.

“He just said I’m going to build something here, we didn’t know what it was, we just wanted to be good cordial neighbors,” Kjar said.

But what Kjar did not know was that the plan was to build a 250-foot cellphone tower, which would be directly behind his backyard and right next to another neighbor’s property.

“They put it as close to the property line as they could, and that’s what this blue dot represents, the distance from center to out 50 feet, but anytime you put a tower in, our Twin Falls County code requires a no building zone within 125% of the height of the tower,” says Kjar.

Kjar and his neighbors argue that the tower would violate private property rights and the county code. We asked Twin Falls County Planning and Zoning about the project.

“It was denied by the Twin Falls County Planning and Zoning Commission. What was stated was that they felt it was too close to the neighboring homes and that it could have been placed somewhere else,” said Community Development Director for Planning and Zoning John Laux.

When the proposal was denied for a second time, the property owner appealed the decision to the county board of commissioners, who reversed the planning and zoning decision and approved the project, according to Laux.

Residents filed new complaints and petitions, but Laux said the commissioners can still proceed with the plan.

“There’s actually federal law, which is the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which trumps county codes. Our hands are tied, and so we can’t deny it,” Laux said.

That has left neighbors like David and Shanna Roper frustrated.

“That’s the part that discourages me so much. Here, we would entrust our county officials to look after our interests, and at the end of the day, they really didn’t fulfill their commitment to the county,” David Roper said.

Kjar and other neighbors have hired a lawyer to file a motion of reconsideration with Twin Falls County.

We contacted the board of commissioners and were told they would have a written decision at the end of the month.

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