Minutes_February 20, 2019 - Laserfiche WebLink

Mr. May outlined the elements of what was before the Commission: The first amendment is an ordinance amendment that exempts this category of small wireless facilities from the standards in Chapter 18.110 and authorizes the City to regulate them through a resolution. The second action is a policy adopted by resolution, which would include the rules that are required to be in place. Rules should be in place and should be effective to regulate small cells and, if not, the City can be penalized. He summarized key aspects of the policy as follows: • There are shorter shot clocks and the policy has initial decisions by the Director to achieve compliance within timeframes. To offset that, there is earlier public notice and an expedited appeal process to the City Manager. • There are also detailed location and design standards which are longer to meet the objective requirements. • The policy is easier and faster to amend if and when the law changes. • There are also specific application requirements, compliance reporting, objective standards and standard conditions of approval. • The policy includes a two -factor analysis for location preferences; the first question is what kind of district it is in and the second is what kind of road it is on. For example, if there was an arterial road in an industrial district it would be preferred over a local road even if they were within the same district. The City wants to be able to pick the best location within those less preferred districts. This is helpful to maintain the City's authority in making sure the facilities are built out according to local guidance. • Other policy decisions include the types of structures preferred and not preferred, structures available or not available such as decorative poles, and also the distances by which the City wants them to measure. • The radius within which alternative sites should be analyzed was set at 750 feet because they think this is a reasonable size for a cell using current technology. The cell might get smaller in the future, and they would have to evaluate whether it was appropriate to retain the larger radius. Mr. May noted that correspondence had been received from the industry raising a number of concerns. Although he was not so concerned about legal issues, the comments did raise a number of policy questions. All letters have raised the fact that the City's policy was drafted without stakeholder involvement. He explained that this is because the federal rules are already affected; the proposed standards are meant to be objective and offer streamlining and flexibility so that problems can be addressed. Mr. May then referred to the memo on the dais which included some staff -proposed policy revisions. The revisions focus on the appeals process which recommends it go to the City Manager versus the City Council and that would be the final appeal; there would be notice of the decision and rights to appeal, but it would be on a more expedited basis. Planning Commission Minutes Page 4 of 12 February 20, 2019