SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL - Laserfiche WebLink

Pleasanton City Council December 9,2013 Page 2 of 3 At a minimum, the Council must consider: 1. Prohibited zones must be eliminated. The Proposed Amendments leave in place the ban on facilities in any residential zone, certain other zones, and in a host of locations, including schools, senior centers, and parks. As the Planning Commission staff report points out, this puts a large part of the City off limits to wireless facilities. This de facto ban on wireless services apparently due to perceived health risks is in clear conflict with established federal law.2 The concept of prohibited zones must be deleted from the wireless provisions of the Pleasanton Municipal Code. 2. Buffer zones must be eliminated. Like prohibited zones, the 300-foot buffer zones around prohibited zones further exacerbate the federal law violations. Provisions of the Proposed Amendments allowing for concealed facilities in buffer zones are an improvement; however, buffer zones should be deleted from the wireless provisions of the Pleasanton Municipal Code. At a minimum,fully camouflaged facilities should be allowed in buffer zones. There is simply no lawful justification for excluding fully camouflaged facilities. 3. Overreaching"network design" restrictions are preempted, ignored and must be deleted. Longstanding provisions of the Pleasanton Municipal Code that presumably allow the City to design wireless networks through required"master plans" and"drive tests...in which one person holds a transmitter at the proposed site and another drives away from the site with a receiver" are entirely preempted by federal law and have been generally ignored. These provisions, along with provisions allowing a"technical expert" to dictate alternatives and aesthetic design, must be updated to comply with federal limitations on the authority of local jurisdictions. In particular, the reimbursement of"technical experts" must be reasonable and limited to true radio frequency signal expertise and not subjective aesthetic considerations that are not within the purview of such experts. We encourage the modest revisions proposed to the Pleasanton Municipal Code recommended to the City Council by the Planning Commission. However, coupled with these modest revisions, we encourage the Council to direct staff and the City Attorney to 2 See 47 U.S.C. §332(c)(7)(B)(i)(II),47 U.S.C.§ 332(c)(7)(B)(iv).