An existing cell tower in a city park will get an additional 13 feet in height, but an application for a new tower on another piece of public land is likely to go nowhere.

With little discussion, Roswell city council members on Monday agreed to a request by Metro PCS to extend the height of a cell tower at Hembree Park to 193 feet.

“By adding to this existing tower, does that reduce pressure to add [a tower] somewhere else?” Mayor Jere Wood asked Planning and Zoning Director Brad Townsend.

Townsend replied that a height extension is meant to encourage co-location of another cell provider on the pole.

The city has a map of designated areas approved for cell towers, and public property is on that map.

The only control the city has over the height of towers, Townsend said, is the terms of the lease it grants to the carriers.

But granting a lease to a new applicant, T-Mobile, for a new tower is unlikely to happen, according to Wood.

The proposed tower would be on city-owned land at the corner of Jones and Lake Charles roads. A little-used fire station is on the site, which is surrounded by quiet, tree-lined residential neighborhoods.

The application has been discussed by a council committee and was subjected to a neighborhood meeting last month for residents’ input.

According to the mayor, T-Mobile representatives now know the depth of citizen opposition to the plan.

And the Lake Charles area residents who attended that meeting got assurance that the city won’t allow a tower at the site, he said.

“What we told people at that meeting was we were going to take [the fire station site] off our [cell tower] map,” Wood said after Monday night’s council meeting.

“We heard from the public and they didn’t like it, so we told them it was gone. But there’s been some misleading information out there.”

Council members will have to amend the ordinance that incorporates the designated cell tower areas to eliminate the fire station property.

“It has to go through the process. An ordinance has to have two readings and a public hearing,” the mayor said.

City spokeswoman Julie Brechbill said the proposed amendment would first go to the council’s community development committee for consenus. That meeting will be at 8 a.m. Dec. 17 in the second floor conference room at city hall.