Area county using communications tower not registered with FCC

CHARLESTON, Mo. -- Mississippi County officials are scrambling to get back in compliance with the Federal Communications Commission.

County commissioners in a meeting Thursday learned from Reg Swan, owner of JCS/TelLink in Cape Girardeau, about problems with a radio tower on which the county sheriff's department's communications equipment is mounted.

"It's a 300-foot tower, painted, lit," Swan said "It's not registered."

The tower is located near the county airport and owned by a rival communications vendor, G and D Communications in Sikeston, Mo.

Swan said his company became aware the tower wasn't registered with the FCC when employees went to install a new repeater for the sheriff's department.

"The tower you are licensed for is no longer in existence," he said, as it came down during the ice storm of 2009.

The FCC permit is for the department's transmitter to be 77 feet high. Swan said it is 300 feet high.

Mike Gentry, owner of G and D Communications, described the failure to register the tower as "an oversight, but we're taking care of it right away."

The height of the tower also is a Federal Aviation Administration violation, Swan said.

Gentry said he has not been running the business until recently and wasn't running the company when the error was made.

"My partner passed away," he said.

He assured county officials "it wasn't done intentionally."

The intent of placing the transmitter higher than permitted was to get the sheriff's signal out over a wider area.

Gentry said he already had made contact with federal agencies to get everything back in compliance.

Sheriff Keith Moore suggested they "forget about that tower [at the airport] and go back to where we were supposed to be in the first place."

Officials and vendors agreed the best immediate response is for G and D to lower the tower near the airport to 180 feet and place the sheriff's radio transmitter at 77 feet as licensed while G and D continues the registration process.

Pertinent address:

Charleston, MO