GARDINER – In a ruling handed down on October 2, State Supreme Court Justice Henry F. Zwack annulled the Gardiner Town Board's resolution of December 9, 2008, that opened the way for JNS Towers to build a 160 foot cellular tower on town property in the middle of the town.

The deal with JNS was meant to solve the acute cell phone problem in Gardiner. As Town Supervisor Joe Katz says, "Cell reception here is terrible to worse."

Judge Zwack found in favor of Sensible Wireless, a group opposed to the tall tower. In his 16-page ruling, the judge pointed to the town's own zoning law which says no towers are allowed at all beyond 120 feet and in most locations would be restricted to 80 feet.

Katz says that this is a problem. "There's a lot of stuff involved here. Gardiner is a big place geographically speaking, but the population is small, so the population density is light. So the cell tower companies say the market isn't there to support more than one tower."

Which takes Gardiner cell phone users right back to "terrible and worse," when it comes to service.

Initially, the suit brought by Sensible Wireless ran into a roadblock, when Sensible Wireless was denied standing in the court. But the suit was allowed to proceed because the landowning members of Sensible Wireless were granted standing by the judge.

In his ruling, Judge Zwack noted that he found that, "Many provisions of the town's own zoning laws were not followed, or were violated without any explanation." He found that town officials had acted in "an arbitrary and capricious" manner.

"We thought we were right about this and that we had dotted all the 'i's and crossed all the 't's," says Supervisor Katz, "but the judge decided that we hadn't.

"We're thinking about what to do next," he continues. "Our lawyer is studying the ruling while we work out what our options are. At this point we don't know what they might be."