City's third party review - Laserfiche WebLink

Before delving intothe report, the following is intended to correct widely held misunderstandings and beliefs of many lay people that are at the heart of the issue of the siting of wireless facilities. It is best if the reader understands some of these basic issues related to wireless facilities, wireless serviceand wireless facilities’support structures. Understanding Some Basics Related to Wireless Service and the Siting of Wireless Facilities Line of Sight (vis-à-vis Height of the antennas) : Contrary to the often heard assertion, Cellular service is notLine-of-Site. If it were, the service would not work indoors or in a vehicle. RF signals can penetrate materials such as foliage and most structures, and in most instances can be propagated at sufficient (legally-permissible) power to do so. Allowing a New Support Structure/Tower : A community is only required by (federal) law to allow a new support structure(or a ‘substantial modification of an existing facility) to be built if i) there is a “substantial” gapin service, i.e. noservice, but not necessarily because of a lack of a particular type/level of service (e.g. 4G LTE); and ii) it can be reasonably demonstrated that there is no other way of to mitigate the size of the gap. In today’s world with the recently significantly increased proliferation of cell sites, especially into residential areas, more and more communities are prohibiting towers, per se, e.g. in residentially zoned areas, areas of visual sensitivity, and historic preservation and renaissance areas, and are requiring carriers to find alternatives to erecting new support structures, i.e. towers, to accomplish what the carrier wants to do with respect to providing services. Impact of filling a gap/solving service issues : Under federal law a community does not have to allow a carrier to fillgap in service (whether ‘substantial’ or otherwise) from a single facility. Nor does federal law require a community to allow a carrier to fill a gap in service (or solve any other issue) in the least costly or most efficient manner, e.g. using a singlefacility. In other words, under federal law cost is not required to be taken into account when permitting.The federal law is silent on (does not address) the issue of cost.It is not uncommon to require that a gap in service (or some level or type of service) to be served from 2 or more facilities, if doing so would minimize the [visual] impact or would otherwise be deemed to be in the public interest. Signal Strength : Signal Strength is measured as a logarithmic function. Thus, every 3dBm increase in signal strength doublesthe previous signal strength, and conversely each 3dBm decrease reduces the signal strength by half(i.e. 50%). Also, the lower the number the stronger the signal. Thus, for example, an increase in signal strength from -101dBm to - 85dBm results in a signal that is approximately 33 times as strong. New Towers :Anew tower is seldom a technical ‘necessity’ other than in rural areas where the facility is intended to cover a large area and there are no utility poles, silos, billboards, etc. to attach to. 2