Amber Wickersham enjoys taking her son to the park.

She would think twice, though, if cellular phone towers were located there.

“Not around kids,” she said Tuesday, watching her son play in South Park.

“We need more cell phone connections, but we don’t need radio waves around the kids until it’s been proved safe,” Wickersham said.

And she added: “It would make the parks ugly.”

City officials are aware of such worries. But they also know cellular phone companies pay good money to the owners of land where towers are built. And the city owns a lot of parks.

That’s why members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, during an informal discussion Tuesday, gave the green light to the idea of locating towers on city property but said the tower requests must be judged on a case-by-case basis.

“There may be some parks where it’s appropriate,” said Parks and Recreation Director Fred DeVictor. “There are others where I hope the city would say ‘No.’ Right in the middle of South Park, for instance.”

The towers, which carry cell phone antennas and have other equipment installed around their base, can reach heights of 100 feet. Because of the towers’ appearance, neighbors often fight construction of the structures on private land in their areas, making public land more attractive to the wireless companies.

Bill Penny, a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, agreed the decisions should be made one by one.

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“Obviously, there are a lot of places you wouldn’t want to put it, politically,” he said. “But I don’t think there are big negatives to it.”

The city hasn’t been deluged with requests to build towers in parks. DeVictor said a company recently discussed building a tower at Lyon Park in North Lawrence, but the proposal was withdrawn because the park was built with federal funds and state approval would have been required.

Cell towers are located on other city properties, including the water tower at Water Tower Park near the Kansas University campus and at the Clinton Lake Water Treatment Plant on Wakarusa Drive. Each company pays the city $1,500 a month, City Manager Mike Wildgen said.

“It’s not huge,” he said. “But it does say our property is valuable, and we should be compensated for making it off-limits to the public.”

Tuesday’s advisory board meeting was at the Lawrence Indoor Aquatic Center — in the shadow of a cellular phone tower on the property of Free State High School.

Tom Bracciano, the advisory board chairman and the school district’s director of facilities and operations, said the district received $20,000 a year for allowing the tower.

Even with the promise of money, board members worried about the issue of liability.

No studies have shown that cell towers, whose antennae emit low-power radio-frequency radiation, pose harm to their neighbors, Bracciano said. And the tower was designed to look like nearby light poles at the Free State baseball diamond. Advisory board members said companies that wanted to build towers in city parks should be required to take similar measures.

“That’s what you want to do, is make it blend in with the surroundings,” Penny said.

Members said they expected to receive more such requests in the future.

“Wireless is big and getting bigger,” Penny said.

Bracciano agreed.

“Somebody’s got to get the revenue from the cell tower,” he said.

Wildgen said no Lawrence City Commission discussion of the issue was planned.