A Call Against Cellular Antennas : Neighborhoods: Homeowners liken proliferation of towers to billboards and urge city to limit or ban them. Phone firms say they are necessary to serve growing number of users.

Homeowner association leaders, who in their time have battled everything from liquor stores to satellite dishes, have identified what they claim is the newest threat to their property values: cellular telephone antennas.

The antennas, which cellular phone companies say are needed to fill gaps in their expanding networks, are mounted on poles 30 to 90 feet high, bringing what residents condemn as an industrial aesthetic to residential areas.

Homeowners want the city to come up with tough restrictions on where antennas can be located and how they should be disguised, much as the city imposed restrictions on satellite dishes in the 1980s. Some want to ban the antennas in residential areas.

“They are an ugly intrusion into the neighborhoods, much like the proliferation of billboards,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

Because of a swell in the number of cellular phone users, applications by cellular phone companies for antenna permits are rising sharply. In the first four months of this year, the companies filed 30 applications for antennas with the city of Los Angeles--a rate 60% above the past several years.

Homeowners and cellular companies have clashed on the issue. Several months ago, a city zoning administrator denied Airtouch Cellular’s request for an antenna complex in Sherman Oaks. Two weeks ago, Airtouch Cellular tried to persuade a Los Angeles City Council committee to overrule the administrator; committee members said they were leaning against that request.

Residents say they don’t trust the cellular companies, claiming that the firms have been less than straightforward about their antenna plans.

The California Public Utilities Commission seems to agree.

The PUC last year accused Los Angeles Cellular Telephone, one of the two cellular companies serving the Los Angeles area, of intentionally building cellular facilities without state authorization. The agency also alleged that the company systematically tried to “avoid obtaining local permits or approvals in order to expedite construction” of its cellular facilities.

The PUC investigated about 160 L.A. Cellular facilities in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and found violations at most of them.

L.A. Cellular acknowledged that in some cases it began building cellular facilities without state authorization, but that it did so unintentionally. The company said that it has made good-faith efforts to comply with the commission’s policies.

L.A. Cellular paid the commission about $5 million to settle two investigations, but did not admit any wrongdoing.

The state is investigating all other cellular companies in the state, including Los Angeles’ other company, Airtouch, for possible violations.

Kent Wheatland, a PUC investigator, said some companies have illegally erected antennas without building permits and begun using them without a certificate of occupancy, which is also illegal. Others lied to the commission about having obtained local permits when they had not, Wheatland said, while others went ahead and built antennas without bothering to get state permission.

For John Michaels, an East San Fernando Valley resident, even one antenna was too many. When L.A. Cellular announced plans to erect a 60-foot transmitter tower up the hill from Michaels’ rustic hillside neighborhood in Sunland, he and neighbors fought back.

For two years, they flocked to hearings, launched appeals, even raised a weather balloon to show their councilman how obnoxious the antenna would be. Finally, this spring, the homeowners, L.A. Cellular and Councilman Joel Wachs worked out an agreement under which the company would build the antenna in a supermarket parking lot.

City policies require that cellular companies go through a zoning permit process, which entails at least one public hearing for every antenna a firm wants to build in a residential or commercial area. The companies are allowed to put antennas in industrial areas without special permission. There are no requirements that antennas be hidden or landscaped.

The great disparity among antenna projects, however, makes drafting guidelines difficult at best. For this reason, Los Angeles zoning officials take the view that the current system works pretty well.

“Personally, I don’t see a problem at the moment,” said associate zoning administrator Dan Green. “But if there were any pressure to change things I would be happy to participate in any discussion to work to that end.”