County Planning Commission members appear ready to send their new master plan for communications towers to the Board of Commissioners.

Following discussion last week during its workshop meeting, the planning panel has put the plan on its agenda for final action at next week's business meeting, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.

Hammered out over three months of discussion, the plan encourages cell phone, pager and radio towers along state highways and discourages them just about everywhere else.

Proposed rules for height, design and location of towers are included in the ordinance, which commission members say should stand alone as a set of regulations separate from the county's zoning laws.

If approved, the ordinance will give preference to towers built along Ga. highways 85, 92, 74, 314, 279, 85 Connector and 54, plus the future east-west arterial highway, Bernhard Road.

If the plan is adopted, towers up to 250 feet in height can be approved without public hearings if they are within 500 feet of the chosen roadways, whereas public hearings will be required for tower requests anywhere else.

Towers up to 180 feet also can be approved administratively, without hearings, if they are on land zoned A-R (agricultural-residential).

Also, new towers outside the preferred highway zones must be two miles apart. The minimum distance between towers on the state highways will be only one mile.

"We're trying to make this thing fair for everybody," said commission member Al Gilbert during a recent work session. The group has had two lengthy public hearings, with representatives of the seven cellular phone companies and tower construction companies present, in attempts to develop a master plan for towers in Fayette.

Federal law requires that the cell phone companies provide complete coverage throughout the United States, but requests for towers have drawn severe public opposition in recent months.

The county Board of Commissioners recently asked the Planning Commission to develop a master plan that allows the phone companies to serve their customers without having too much negative impact on Fayette's residential areas.