By Eliza Ridgeway

joe hu/town crier A 70-foot cell on wheels (COW) stands near the History House on the Los Altos Hills Town Hall property. The tower is temporary.

Two cell towers planned for town hall and Westwind Barn have city officials and residents weighing improved cell-phone coverage versus aesthetic concerns. Los Altos Hills is notorious among Bay Area cities for its spotty coverage.

The planning commission voted last Thursday to recommend installing a Verizon cell-phone monopole at Westwind Barn. The recommendation will come before the city council Thursday and be open to public discussion.

Cingular Wireless has installed a cell on wheels (COW), a temporary mobile cell tower, at town hall as a test case before the city applies for a permanent facility at that location.

The COW, a full-sized 70-foot tower, will allow residents and city staff to assess the visual impact of the tower and its effect on area cell service.

“Improved cell-phone coverage is a huge priority of the council,” Councilman Dean Warshawsky said. “There are many ways of doing it, but it’s going to boil down to more towers equal better service.”

Planning director Carl Cahill said the tower application for Westwind Barn is consistent with the town’s wireless communications policy, a component of the General Plan.

Generally, most of the complaints about tower applications concern their aesthetic impact, he said.

Cell towers typically cost cell-phone providers $300,000 to $500,000 to build and return as much as $1,000 per month in rent to the property owner, Warshawsky said. For an added cost, the bulky antenna equipment box at the base of a cell tower can be buried underground.

While much of the I-280 corridor provides good coverage, portions of the city west of the highway are “spotty at best,” Warshawsky said.

Both of the proposed towers would have the potential to co-locate several cell-phone service providers on them, improving service for more than just Verizon and Cingular customers.

Several other sites are under consideration for tower installations, Cahill said.

He expects an application will be filed within the next few weeks to install a tower on a city water tank on De Bell Road.

Warshawsky said the council would like to approach homeowners who have large parcels of land that could serve as sites for future towers.

“They would get a little revenue from that,” he said.