RAYMOND – For two years, U.S. Cellular has been trying to build a cell phone tower in Raymond. On Tuesday, Raymond voters will decide the matter at the polls.

If approved, a 125-foot tower would be built on Raymond Hill, near the intersection of Raymond Hill Road and Valley Road. While the site would be set back from the road, the top 50 feet of the tower would be visible above the surrounding treeline, a legal representative for the company said.

According to Auburn-based lawyer Richard Trafton, U.S. Cellular is pursuing the tower to comply with Federal Communications Commission regulations that require it to provide adequate coverage for cell users.

In addition to voting on the RSU 14 school budget Tuesday, Raymond voters are being asked to weigh in, since the tower would exceed what is allowed under local ordinances. According to land use regulation ordinances adopted in 2000, no cell tower structure can be built at an elevation above 600 feet on Raymond Hill. As proposed, U.S Cellular’s antenna, estimated to cost $200,000, would be built at an elevation of 680 feet.

An ordinance also limits tower height to 75 feet. With trees in the area already at a height of about 78 feet, the company is seeking an exemption that would allow it to build a 125-foot tower, on top of which a 12- to 15-foot antenna would be placed. The added height would allow better transmission of cell signals since the technology is impeded by structures such as building and trees, the company argues.

“The FCC license that U.S. Cellular has requires the company to provide service at acceptable levels,” Trafton said. “We can’t do that for the people of Raymond without a tower in Raymond.”

Trafton said Raymond Hill provides the best spot to provide cell phone coverage in the Raymond area. If the town rejects the tower, he says other locations, which he said the company has already studied, wouldn’t provide as good reception.

The tower would not only increase U.S. Cellular’s signal for its own customers but would also allow other companies, such as Verizon and AT&T, to lease space for their own antennas on the tower, thereby increasing signal strength for their customers, as well. Leasing space is a common practice in the wireless industry, Trafton said, with U.S. Cellular leasing space for about half of its antennas.

Another benefit of the project would be to local public safety. Town Manager Don Willard said the town’s public works and fire/rescue departments would be allowed to affix their own antennas to the structure. That, Willard said, “would improve public safety immensely, providing much more robust signal strength at no cost to the town.”

Selectman Charley Leavitt, who is opposed to the antenna proposal, said it would adversely affect the views in the area while also violating the town’s ordinances governing the town’s six major hilltops.

“In 1989, there was a community survey done where the people of Raymond said there were six high elevations in Raymond that they wanted protected,” Leavitt said. “And the Raymond people codified that in the wireless communications ordinance in the year 2000 and named the particular hills and said, we’re not prohibiting cell phone towers, we just prohibit them from 600 feet and above on Raymond Hill, as we do on Tarkiln Hill, on Tenney (Hill), on Pismire Mountain, on the side of Ledge Hill, on the side of even Rattlesnake. And there’s a reason for that; it’s about the rural community.

“It’s what we’ve heard time and time again from the folks in this town,” Leavitt continued. “They want to preserve that rural character. You cannot preserve rural character with a cell phone tower sticking out of the top of a mountain.”

Leavitt also says the ordinance change would violate the town’s comprehensive plan adopted in 2004.

“There is virtually no aspect of this tower that meets the conditions of our comprehensive plan,” he said. “So not only do you have an ordinance, but you have a comprehensive plan that says no towers over 600 feet. And we have worked for a year in assisting U.S. Cellular in coming to a referendum vote to overturn this community’s own standards.”

A June 1 public hearing on the proposal garnered little interest or feedback on the proposal, with less than a half-dozen people attending.

At that meeting, Selectman Mike Reynolds, who proposed last fall that the item go to the voters rather than be decided by the Board of Selectmen, said times have changed since 2000 in the field of telecommunications. Cell phones, he said, play a vital role in Raymond residents’ lives, more so than they did when the town adopted wireless communications regulations in 2000.

“As Stephen King wrote in the Gunslinger series, ‘the world has moved on.’ The feeling in town may be different today (regarding cell phone towers) than it was in 2000 or 2004, and that’s what I said last week,” Reynolds said Wednesday. “Some people don’t even have home phones now. I don’t think in 2000 we could have predicted that, so things change, and that’s why I think it’s important to get the voters’ feelings on this.”

Willard, the town manager, said “the town is not pushing this either way.” He counters Leavitt’s argument that ordinances shouldn’t be changed.

“Ordinances do change over time,” he said. “That’s what happens in the world of ordinances. Times change. Things change.”

He acknowledges another large antenna in Raymond would be aesthetically intrusive, similar to the massive antenna by television station WGME that is visible behind Raymond Elementary School, but he sees the benefits outweighing the visual downsides.

“There are now about eight to 10 dead spots in town that public safety personnel have to deal with,” Willard said. “Will this tower be the answer to all our problems? Probably not. But it will be a huge improvement.”

An abutter of the proposed location, Deb Baker, questions the need for the antenna. She said she has been a U.S. Cellular customer in the past and has had little trouble with signal strength.

Baker also questions U.S. Cellular’s claim that it is building the tower among trees. She says the tower would be located less than one-eighth of a mile from the road and clearly visible from surrounding areas. “It’s definitely not going to be in the middle of the woods as they’ve said,” she said.

The land is listed as being owned by Michael Major and Mary Jean Major. They could not be reached prior to deadline. U.S. Cellular would not disclose details of the financial arrangement to lease the Majors’ property.