Controversy continues around an AM radio tower in Pensacola, Fla.
City council members used strong language this week in criticizing construction of the tower in a conservation district, according to a report by the Pensacola News Journal. “Words like illegal, lied, fraud and malfeasance were all used as council members tried to sort through how a 350- to 400-foot tower was built where the city’s zoning laws say it shouldn’t have been,” the newspaper reported.
The tower serves an AM station now licensed to La Promesa Foundation, which recently acquired the station from Divine Word Radio and airs Guadalupe Radio Network programming. But Divine Word, founded by Gene Church, still owns the structure.
The tower is on city land next to a stormwater pond in a neighborhood prone to flooding, according to the report. “It’s just messier now than I ever thought it could be,” it quoted council president Charles Bare. “We’ve got to address this somehow.” The site reportedly had been used earlier for a radio tower but construction of a larger one is part of the controversy.
According to a letter in the FCC online database, WDWR 1230 kHz holds a waiver and “satellite status” to locate its main studio in Midland, Texas, at a station also licensed to La Promesa Foundation.
