A LOOK AHEAD They are sprouting in L.A. at the rate of two or more a week. Now the city considers . . .

With cellular phone antenna towers sprouting up in Los Angeles neighborhoods at the rate of two to three per week, city officials are struggling to manage the proliferation and make sure they are not eyesores.

New, tougher rules drafted by the city would require special permits for more of the antennas and would set minimum standards for their proximity to houses.

The ordinance being considered by the City Council also requires poles and rooftop antennas to be camouflaged with paint, screens or landscaping and includes provisions aimed at forcing companies to cluster their antennas together on one pole as much as possible.

“The controls now in place are simply inadequate to protect our neighborhoods from being overwhelmed by cell phone antennas, and they do not have the force of law,” said Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who serves on a council committee that is recommending the changes.

City planners estimate there are about 1,000 antenna sites in Los Angeles and they get between 100 and 200 applications for new antennas each year.

Kathy Delle Donne, a member of the Tarzana Property Owners Assn., said she went to a planning hearing in the San Fernando Valley on Friday at which eight applications for new antennas were considered.

The new ordinance is long overdue, she said.

Industry officials, who have opposed the city changes, say there is a legitimate need to provide antenna towers to serve the growing demand for wireless phones and pagers.

Kevin Tamaki, a Pacific Bell spokesman, said there is no need to adopt an ordinance that codifies and expands current guidelines, because companies are acting responsibly in placing and disguising the antennas.

“We disagreed with the committee. Things have worked very well with the current process,” Tamaki said.

Industry officials say the state of the art allows antenna towers to be disguised as pine or palm trees, so that many people do not know they are there.

“If you stare at it long enough, you can tell it’s not a real tree,” said Daniel Green, an associate zoning administrator for the city. “But if you drive by at 50 mph, you won’t notice it.”

Councilman Hal Bernson, who heads the planning committee, agrees that the industry often does a good job of camouflaging the poles. He said the city must let the industry serve its customers, but that too often in the past multiple towers have gone up near one another when the antennas could all have been clustered on one, camouflaged pole or rooftop.

That concern is weighing heavily on the residents of a quiet stretch of Yarmouth Avenue in Northridge.

City officials are considering an application to allow Pacific Bell to build a 65-foot antenna tower disguised as a palm tree, adjacent to an existing 55-foot tower, also built to look like a palm tree, according to Debbie Dyner, an aide to Councilwoman Laura Chick.

“What are we creating here?” Dyner asked. “Are we creating a forest?”

City planners cannot consider health questions when deciding whether to approve an antenna tower, because that is under the jurisdiction of the federal government. “We can only consider aesthetics,” Green said.

The city adopted general guidelines three years ago that called for the antenna towers to be camouflaged and landscaped as much as possible, but Miscikowski said the planners have broad discretion to interpret and follow the guidelines because they have not been adopted as requirements in the city municipal code.

As a result, some antennas are built to blend in and not be a visual blight and others are not, Miscikowski said.

So, council members are recommending that existing guidelines be provided in more detail and put into the city municipal code through adoption of an ordinance requiring that the rules be followed.

The proposed ordinance also would expand and toughen the requirements.

For instance, cell-phone antennas can be built in industrial zones without permits now. Under the new ordinance, a wireless company would have to get a conditional use permit if the tower were in an industrial zone but next to homes.

The new ordinance would also set a minimum distance from houses, equal to 20% of the height of the antenna.

Additional landscaping requirements would be set, and screening would be required so that no more than 25% of the tower and antenna is visible from adjoining properties.

But Miscikowski said perhaps the most important change would require a cell phone company to provide a list of all its other towers and antennas when applying for a new location.

With all of the companies providing the city with a database on the location of existing towers, city planners would have more leverage to get companies to co-locate new antennas on existing poles, even if the poles were owned by competitors.

The ordinance also would require poles to be designed to allow for other antennas to be added later.

The goal, according to Chick, is to have fewer sites.

Half a dozen companies testified against adopting an ordinance to regulate the antennas, noting the city Planning Commission also recommended against putting the rules in the municipal code.

Tamaki said the city can more quickly change guidelines than it can adopt an ordinance to amend the municipal code.

“We appreciate having flexibility because the technology changes so rapidly,” Tamaki said.

But Miscikowski said the proliferation of antenna towers requires the adoption of enforceable, uniform standards.

“Once the City Council approves this ordinance, Los Angeles will have a law with teeth, and not just a series of inadequate, outdated guidelines,” Miscikowski said, adding that she hopes to bring the proposed ordinance before the full council by late June.