When a Tampa company wanted to build a 150-foot-tall cellular telephone tower on the city's west side two years ago, city officials said, no way.

This week, the City Commission sent the same message to another company by voting unanimously to reject a new plan to build a tower on Gulf Road and Tarpon Drive.

But that might not be the last Tarpon Springs has seen of Ridan Industries, the Tampa-based cell phone tower company behind the most recent plan.

"We are definitely considering our options as far as going to court," said Ridan Industries president J. Kevin Barile.

And citizens' increasing dependency on cell phones for everyday communication virtually ensures that Ridan Industries would win, said City Attorney John Hubbard.

"Everybody knows towers aren't terribly popular," Hubbard said. "But both the state and federal government have decided that they are important. Cities must accommodate the placement of cell phone towers to ensure that there's proper coverage and so 911 callers can be located."

Under a 1996 federal law, towns like Tarpon Springs have few options when it comes to fighting cell phone tower expansion in their communities. Communities must allow towers to be built to ensure adequate coverage for emergency calls, Hubbard said.

Two years ago, Hubbard argued this same point in Pasco County as an attorney for Crown Castle International, a company that applied to build a cellular tower there in 2001. He has since stopped representing Crown Castle, but the experience helped him understand the difficult position federal communications laws sometimes put cities in, he said.

"We have no choice in that we must provide a location that ensures coverage," Hubbard said. "The city better get moving real fast and locate a suitable tower site."

Cell phone service in the western half of the city is unreliable, at best, Barile said. Cell phone users in the area typically can receive signals from towers closer to U.S. 19 in their cars or in their yards. But calls are frequently dropped or simply do not connect at all, he said. Roughly 200 to 600 calls a week are blocked because of lack of capacity and weak signals in the area, he said.

That's why, Barile said, Ridan chose the small plot of land on Gulf Road to build what's known as a "stealth tower." With its modern accents, the 150-foot high structure is designed to blend in with the landscape and would be part of a proposed 7,000-square- foot commercial complex, Barile said. Up to seven cell phone carrier companies, including T-Mobile and Verizon, will be able to lease space on the tower, he said.

City zoning laws prohibit the company from building the cell phone tower in residential areas, limiting the number of options where the tower can be built. The .89-acre plot on Gulf Road is part of a small portion of land in the neighborhood that is zoned for commercial use, city officials said.

"While our project isn't perfect, it's the best option," Barile said.

Several residents at Tuesday night's City Commission meeting disagreed. Homemaker Gloria Sakellarides lives about 100 yards away from where the company wants the tower built. She urged city officials to fight back if Ridan sues the city over the tower's placement on Gulf Road.

"We all know that the majority of residents don't want this cell tower, so I don't even know why we're at this point," Sakellarides said. "If we're threatened by these people we shouldn't just bow down and say, 'Okay, just put your (cell phone tower) in.' "

But Barile, who recently won a lawsuit when Pinellas Park tried to fight plans to bring a cell phone tower to that city, said residents are fighting a losing battle. He agreed with Hubbard's assessment that the law is on Ridan Industries' side.

''With the passing of time more people are going to start accepting towers as part of the landscape just like utility lines and telephone poles," Barile said.