Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Okay.

Good evening. My name is Joe Huot. I'm the vice chairperson of the Planning and Zoning Commission. I will be presiding over the commission's deliberations on hearing and action items this evening. The Planning and Zoning Commission sits in an advisory capacity to the Town Council. As such, the commission reviews planning and zoning issues and forwards recommendations regarding these important issues to the Council. All members are appointed by the Town Council and volunteer their time. This evening's proceedings will be conducted as follows. First, I will read the hearing item into the record. Staff will then present the case and their recommendations to the commission. The applicant will be invited to address the commission and answer questions from the commission. The floor will then be open to comment from the public regarding the hearing item. If you wish to speak during the call to the public or on an agenda item, On tonight's agenda, please preregister your name with the clerk prior to the commencement of the meeting or any time prior to the meeting on the Town of Prescott Valley's website. When you are recognized by the clerk, please come to the microphone and state your name and address for the record. After all preregistered speaker comments, the chair, in this case the vice chair, may call for additional non-registered speakers wishing to speak to the podium. The speaker will state their name for the registration by the clerk and be at the podium and will begin their comment when directed by the chair, in this case the vice chair. I ask that you direct your pertinent comments to the commission. to the chairperson and not to staff or individuals within the audience. A three minute time limit will be imposed. After public comment has been closed, the item will then return to the applicant if needed, then to the commission for comment and or a motion and a vote. So I would like to call the, what is today? How about that? I'd like to call the September 14th meeting, the Planning and Zoning Commission to order. We could move to the Pledge of Allegiance. Commissioner Rossi, if you wouldn't mind leading us in the Pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay, we got this fancy little roll call. So I guess, do we just follow through with the roll on this? Is that just press the button? Is that?

Yes, just mark yourself present, please.

Okay, there we go. So we have completed our roll call. Do we have, we do have a quorum.

We have a quorum.

Thank you. So we'll move to the call to the public. At this time, any member of the public is allowed to address the Planning and Zoning Commission on any agenda item or issues with in the jurisdiction of the commission, except for items scheduled for a public hearing at this meeting, as there will be an opportunity to speak during the public hearing item. The speaker may have up to three minutes to speak. Any person wishing to address the commission must first register to speak. Registration can be completed online or in person with the clerk. prior to the start of the meeting. Pursuant to Arizona open meeting laws and at the conclusion of call to the public, the individual member of the commissions may respond to the criticism by those who have addressed the commission and may ask staff to review the matter or may ask that the matter be placed on a future agenda. However, members of the commission shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during an open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action. Do we have any... We do not. No people to speak for call to the public. Okay, we'll move on to announcement. Are there any announcements?

No, Vice Chair.

OK, thank you. So we'll move on to the approval of the minutes. So we're looking to approve the July 13th, 2026 regular meeting minutes for consideration of possible action. Do we have a motion or any suggested changes? Oh, there we go. We do have a motion.

Yes, if we can get a verbal motion. It's verbal as well as pushing the button.

This is for the benefit of the Vice Chair, who doesn't generally do this very often, so thank you.

Mr. Vice Chair, I'll make a motion to approve the minutes of the July 13th, 2026 regular meeting minutes of the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting.

Thank you, Commissioner Griffiths. And we have a seconded apparent, have a second? And I'll second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. We will... tender our vote here. And I think we're at results. Passed majority. There's no nays. And so that passes. Motion passed. Thank you. Okay, public hearing items. So if the commission, let's see here, let's see here. Okay. So I'm going to read, first I'm going to read the application into the record. Then we'll open the item up for public hearing. So I will now open, let's see here, let's read that to the record.

Yeah.

So GPA 26-001, Stone Ridge Cell Tower, Consideration of Possible Action. Mr. Norlock, if you're available to give your presentation, certainly happy to hear it, thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair, Commission. As Vice Chair Huot has said, this is a general plan amendment for Stone Ridge Cell Tower. We also have a zone map change, so I'll just kind of wrap them all up in one quick presentation, but it will have two public hearings and two motions. The location of this is a portion of APN 103-61-004C, approximately 0.3 acres. The site is east of Stone Ridge Drive, south of Old Black Canyon Highway, and north of Lucky Draw by the Stone Ridge Golf Course Maintenance Building. There are two requests for you today, a minor general plan amendment and a request to rezone to RL 10 pad for a lot line adjustment. And in the conditions is a special use permit for the cell tower being proposed here. The requests are required because of a lot line adjustment for post cell tower on the Northern property. And we need the entire zoning follows the property line. So we do have to rezone the portion. The general plan designation of the current property is community commercial. The request is go to low density and then rezone to the RL10 pad. This is the site plan provided. It shows the lot line moving from the current property, which is... in the red to the proposed, which would be with the lot adjustment afterwards to the blue there in order to have the 100 foot setback for the cell tower. The proposal is a 100 foot cell tower and the top of the monopine will be up to 105 feet. So it'd be five feet above the actual cell tower. These are the elevations proposed as a monopine design for this area. And then just real quick, and then I'll let the applicant kind of do a presentation as well for me. Two additional conditions, just that the lot line adjustment as shown in the site plan shall be recorded prior to the building permit issuance, and the total height of the cell tower and monopline structure must not exceed 105 feet. So originally we had that the cell tower wouldn't exceed 100 feet, but we'll add in, thank you to Commissioner Griffiths, add the entire structure into that to 105 feet. That is all for me, so I will invite the applicant up that will talk about the location choice, the height, and other things that's considered when choosing this site. So this is Logan Williams with Pinnacle Consulting, and he'll have a presentation as well.

If there's any more questions, yeah. Yeah, Mr. Norlock, does the commission have any comments or questions for Mr. Norlock?

I do. The total cell tower is not to exceed 105, but the tower itself is how big?

100 feet.

100 feet. Yes, sir. Once it's in the location, I happen to know this location very well. So once it's in the location, this tower will actually drop down 20 to 21 feet. Is that what I understand? Below the sidewalk?

Yes, the current site is about 20 feet below the sidewalk on Old Black Canyon.

So basically, once it would be in, the total height would be right around 80 feet.

Approximately to the top of the cell tower. Yeah 85 ish to the top of the monopine itself.

Thank you Any other questions or comments from the Commission Mr.. Vice chair yes, thank you Mr.. Norlock based on what my colleague just mentioned I find that confusing. The applicant's requesting a consideration for a 100-foot cell tower. So regardless, if it drops down, it's still 100 feet.

Yeah, it'll be 100 feet from the area that it's proposed at. And so the area it's proposed at is about 20-ish feet lower than the road, I think is

But that 20 feet lower than the road does not come into play with the 100 feet requested for the cell tower height.

Correct. Correct, Commissioner Griffiths.

Thank you.

Yeah, Mr. Lenorek, I had kind of the same question. I'm looking at the elevation of the existing ground or the ground where they're going to start the tower. Obviously, this is going to be 100 feet. The elevation where it starts is still going to be 100 feet. It's just going to be 20 foot lower than the adjacent sidewalk area or road area.

That's correct, yeah, from the road area.

Has there been any talk about terracing this even further? I know that there was... a comment by the public that we received to look at potential additional terracing and landscape that could potentially give more of a buffer. Was that included in any discussion?

Yeah, talking with the applicant today, they are gonna, I mean, it's required for a landscape plan when they come in with building permits. So they are looking at that and what that could look like and what the landscape plan could look like to help with that terracing of the trees and things.

Any other comment or questions for Mr. Norlock?

Yeah, I do, actually.

Okay, Mr. Commissioner.

Yeah, I'm sorry. That's okay. Mr. Chair, thank you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I had a good conversation with the head of the HOA of Stone Ridge. And in May, there was a, a survey that was sent out to the community. Of the respondents, 71% of the Stone Ridge residents were in favor of the cell tower. One of the comments here from Marianne Mott was asking for actual trees, full-grown trees to be put near the cell tower to beautify it, make it look nicer for aesthetics. What I understand from the landscaping committee in Stone Ridge is that they have master gardeners there that land is very coarse and they have had many plants go in and then die. And to the point where they stopped putting plants in once those plants die, they actually just put rocks in, which actually corresponds with Stone Ridge, if you think about it. So that's a concern right there. If she's concerned about adding trees and stuff like that, that would be an issue with the ground. Any comments or any information on the soil? Has anyone taken a look at that?

Not that I know of. I don't have any information on the soil out there.

Yes, sir.

I'm also referring to Ms. Mott's letter, which I found to be very refreshing these days. Usually it's combat, and this was more like conciliation and compromise. And I did direct a question to Chris about potentially reducing the tower height and what effect that would be on whatever the performance metric is that you use for these kinds of towers. And I gather that would not be a very viable alternative partially because once you put these towers up, you also look to co-location opportunities. So I greatly appreciate Ms. Mott's letter. We did do some research and I'm satisfied that kind of a net 85 from a perceived elevation and the rest of the research on the tower. I'm also, there was another letter from an impassioned person who was very concerned about health risks. So I did a little research and very credible organizations like the American Cancer Society have done studies and have definitively pretty much proven that there were no ill health effects from cell towers. So I just wanted to address those public response items. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Evans. It's just to Commissioner Colosimo's comment on the trees and the request for full-grown trees. A definition of a full-grown tree could be different depending upon the tree. And so I'm a big promoter of landscape buffers to help kind of soften the image. I mean, even though this looks like a tree, it really doesn't look like a tree. I mean, it looks like a thing trying to be a tree. So we'll probably talk to the applicant a little bit about those comments, but thank you, Mr. Norlock. If we could have the applicant, if he's here, come up and talk to us a little bit about some of the concerns that were brought up with the community. Thank you.

Good evening. Logan Williams, 7643 East Indian Bend Road, Scottsdale, Arizona. Mr. Vice Chair, members of the commission, Again, my name is Logan Williams. I'm here on behalf of Pinnacle Consulting. With me today is Mr. Tyler Ross, and online we have Josh Leonard. We have hopefully not too long of a presentation for you. I'm going to go over the presentation itself and the application. Then we have the technical aspects and the Telecommunications Act as well. So if there aren't any preliminary questions, I can go through those and we'd be happy to answer questions at the end.

At the moment, let's go with your presentation and we'll see if anything comes up after that. Thank you.

All right, so as Mr. Norlock said, this is a 100-foot monopine or faux tree design adjacent to the existing Stone Ridge Golf Course maintenance facility. It's going to be the tree freestanding and then with the ground equipment enclosed in a CMU wall that'll be designed to match the design of the existing maintenance facility on property as well. So all utilities will be routed underground from the tree to that compound to kind of offset the overhead utilities other than the pole itself. This will be a 25 by 40 and eight foot tall wall that's gonna surround all this. And there is already existing access to the site off Old Black Canyon Highway. So we don't foresee any sort of pedestrian or traffic issues aside from the initial construction. So here is just kind of the overall site plan, which Mr. Norlock kind of already went over. You'll see to the north that is Old Black Canyon Highway. So we'll be coming off that existing driveway. And then kind of down off the side will be the, sorry. So this is the actual tower itself on the south portion. And the compound will be a little higher in elevation just off of that. And the only reason for that is this is a driveway. And right here you can see the topography a little bit. So placing both, typically we put the tower inside of the compound, but for this exact case, that's not really viable. Here's another just general overview, and then you can see the actual maintenance facility there to the right or to the east. And then just going over the zone map change as well. So again, this is just pushing our setback, so we do meet that 100 foot from the top of steel of the tower. That extra five feet is just the faux branches on top, but the actual steel will be 100 feet tall. In this as well, we're also gonna be enclosing the compound, so it is in our parcel as well, just so it's not split between the two zones. And then as Mr. Evans was saying, this is meant for two additional co-locations, so two additional carriers on top of Verizon Wireless. So the reason for the 100-foot is obviously we need this to be viable for Verizon Wireless, but then we're also talking about two additional carriers who are 10 feet below Verizon, and then whoever that third carrier is is another 10 feet below that. So we also have to keep in mind, you know, is it viable for the very bottom, or are there going to be needs for additional towers if that height doesn't meet all three of their needs? And then in here is where you can see the split between the tower and the compound itself. Excuse me. Here we just have some photo sims. So we took them from the four nearest intersections. This one is to the northwest, about 410 feet from the proposed site. And then the top left, you can kind of see the general views. So this will be view one on the very left. View two is to the southwest, and this is about 445 feet. And then you can see the wall on the top left, as well as the existing maintenance facility on the bottom right. 895 feet from the southwest, or southeast looking west, sorry. And then this is from the northeast, approximately 1,045 feet. So during our neighborhood outreach, we did receive two letters kind of questioning the placement of this and the need for it. So I just want to present kind of an overview of the area. You will see there's a lot of vacant lands. Majority of this is under the same ownership as our parcel. And the main developer in the area is essentially looking to develop majority of this vacant land to additional residential and commercial. So not only is there a current need and worry of safety in the area, but if these areas are getting further developed, I mean the need for service in this area grows with that as well. There as well is just a zoning overlay of generally the same area. So this just shows that there aren't many, if any, undeveloped areas that have a more favorable zoning, aside from that PL zone right here, which is undeveloped currently. However, we did want to stay true to the zone code and meet the residential setbacks. That puts us about here, much lower than the 300-foot setback that we're currently in. So for those reasons, we picked this location being the least intrusive while still meeting the need for the gap in coverage in the area. And then I just have a brief memorandum of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 restricting governments from regulating placement based on the fact that we comply with all FCC regulations, which we do in this case. So that will conclude my portion of the presentation. Again, Mr. Tyler Ross has more of the technical aspects and justifications for this site.

Thank you. If you would hang out there a minute, I'm sure the commission may have some questions for you. So I'll bring it back to the commission for some questions. Commissioner Rossi?

Thanks for coming in. Can you walk this group through your siting process that ultimately landed you in Stone Ridge versus potentially Arizona state land to the southeast?

So I might defer that to Mr. Ross. He'll kind of go over the existing coverage in the area and why this location was needed as far as the general Stone Ridge community.

Thank you. Commissioner Griffiths?

Thank you, Vice Chair Hewitt. Welcome Logan, Mr. Ross, and Mr. Leonard online. Thank you for your presentation. Again, to go with my colleague, Mr. Grossi, why was this location chosen over others considered? So Mr. Ross, I think you can answer that.

So I'm sorry. We have additional slides. I'm just going to toss it over to Mr. Ross to continue this. OK. OK.

I will continue with my other questions, and maybe he can grab them all at once. Absolutely, yeah. Thank you, Logan. How do we know that there's a current need for additional coverage in this area? That's one of my other questions. And are you familiar with three very close cell towers right in this general vicinity for you to address? So I'll give you a break for now.

Well, thank you very much for the questions. Again, my name is Tyler Ross. I'm an RF engineer. I'm gonna adjust this here, try to not have to break my back while I'm doing this. But I'm a professional RF consultant engineer. And those are some great questions. I'm gonna do the presentation if that's okay. I feel like a lot of that will be answered in here, and I'd be really happy to go back and go into more detail if I haven't satisfactorily answered those questions. Just to give a quick overview here, so when we build these towers, there's two primary reasons we ever put up a cell phone tower. There's coverage and capacity. Those are always the two main reasons that we ever put up a tower. And in this case, we're gonna see we have a need for both. And just to give a brief plain English of this, coverage is providing service where it does not exist, and then capacity would be providing bandwidth in an area that may have coverage, but we'll see here that one of the sectors is gonna be overloaded. As you brought up, there are existing towers, and we do have some coverage maps that do acknowledge that. So again, the objective of the new site is to provide both coverage and capacity. We wanna provide additional bandwidth for customers along Old Black Canyon Highway and North Stone Ridge Drive. We also wanna provide additional coverage along the highway as well, North Stone Ridge Drive, and then we'll say to the south, east, and west of the proposed tower, additional coverage is needed. Couple fun facts here. Why are sites like this important? Approximately 96% of Americans in the US own a cellular phone. 57% of American homes rely exclusively on cellular phones. And at minimum, 84% or more of 911 phone calls to emergencies or services are made from a wireless device. This is information about the tower that's been gone over. Again, we're gonna be looking at a 100-foot monopine tower with an antenna center line at 95 feet for the anchor tenant, Verizon. Why here? Again, we're gonna see that there's overloading in surrounding sectors, causing lower throughput. We have a lower coverage rate to the east, south, and west of the proposed tower. Here's a map with the green pen in the middle there. If you can see that, that's the proposed site there. This is a look at the proposed site in the area and then all the existing Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile sites around the area. As you mentioned, there are a number of sites existing. For Verizon specifically, we see 1.2 miles to the north is the closest existing tower, and then the furthest away is about 7.2 miles down there to the southwest, or I'm sorry, southeast. Okay, so this is the important part here. This is going to get into some of hopefully answering those technical questions. This right here is called cell mapper data. This is open crowdsource data gathered from actual Verizon users. And again, in plain English here, what we're looking at here is light green would be ideal coverage. Dark green is going to be not good coverage. And then as we get into orange and red, we're getting into really not good. And as you can see, there's a little arrow there with the proposed site kind of right in the middle there, and there's a lot of that dark green there. I'll get into more about what that type of quality coverage will entail here in a minute. We'll have, I think, a little better zoomed-in map of this. But for the moment, that's coming from crowdsourced data from CellMapper. This is another website coverage map that provides crowdsourced data from a different source. And again, we can see the proposed site there kind of in the middle. Essentially, this is going to be red is bad, or it's red and orange-ish. Sorry, I'm looking here to see if it makes a difference for you guys. But essentially, red bad, green is good, yellow is kind of in the middle. And you can see we just have a kind of a plethora of all of it here. And I just want to iterate, this is only kind of telling part of the story, and I'll put all the pieces together. Because again, we're looking at both coverage and capacity here. This is going to tell the story of coverage, but it's not going to tell the story of capacity. So You might look at this and say, well, it looks pretty decent in the proposed area for coverage. But again, it's not calculating or accounting for the capacity to the north that the current sector for Verizon's tower is providing that's pointing south to this area. Now, I think this is a better map to give you an idea of what's going on. Again, this is going to be looking at coverage. This is an RSRP plot map that's reference signal receive power. Basically, what this is going to be saying is this is the expected signal quality from any given tower that we're looking at here. And as you can see, we're looking at the tower to the north. It's a Verizon tower. There's one to the east and west that are further away. But in the focus coverage area of the red circle, we can see that there is a lot of green. And just to give a breakdown here of what this means, the green is gonna mean that for indoor coverage, you're gonna get a good quality use on your cell phone. So there's a lot of green here. It looks good. The coverage appears to be good. But again, it doesn't tell the capacity side of the story. Moving on, the yellow is what you would expect to get a good quality signal within your car or vehicle. And then red is gonna be, you're only gonna get a usable quality from outdoors. And again, I do wanna reiterate that in the circled area, it does look pretty good from a coverage standpoint, but it doesn't really do any justice to the capacity side of this.

So Mr. Ross, This existing and proposed coverage, is this what we have now? Yes. Okay.

Sorry, yes. So this is your current coverage. This would be current Verizon user coverage in the area.

What is your tower going to do then? Where's the map showing what your tower's going to do?

Right here. The next slide is going to be with the proposed, right there. So we run propagations on what's currently actually happening today. And then we run a propagation of the tower built with the latest and greatest. And this is what that would look like now. So even looking at your low band coverage, we go with existing. And then we add, we see that a lot of the yellow fills into green. So a lot of the areas that would be expected to get good quality only in your vehicle or outdoors now turns to good quality use indoors as well. Again, this is only for the low band coverage. This is gonna be your lower speeds. I guess to translate that to something meaningful, this is going to be better for talking on your phone, but this is not going to be so much. I have more plots that are going to show your mid-band coverage, which is going to be more of your high-speed internet usage. So what people are doing typically on their phones, the in-demand stuff for games, watching cat videos, or whatever it might be. But this is your low-band coverage. It does go further out. But again, this is only showing what it's covering. This isn't telling the story about the need for capacity. because that tower up to the north there, there's a sector pointing directly south that is currently covering the proposed tower area, but there is a capacity need from Verizon's end to have another tower to go ahead and offload what that existing sector is doing.

So does the proposed coverage and capacity with all these colors, It's based on your wanting a 100-foot cell tower. If we came back with a cell tower 60 feet or 80 feet, what happens to this proposed coverage and capacity area?

That is an excellent question. I can tell you the lower you go on your proposed tower, it's going to affect what you'd expect to get in return. I don't like to just shoot things off without having it in front of me. Usually we would run a comparison analysis to actually show you the visual. I do not have that in this case. But off the top of my head, if we were to say, hey, okay, drop the center line 20 feet, I would estimate probably a 20% reduction in coverage inside the targeted area.

I have one more question. I'm so sorry.

No, no, please.

If we have... this amount of coverage and capacity discrepancy in this area, why are you not putting up and wanting to put up and install additional towers left and right? Why are you just doing one?

It's hard to say. That comes down to more specifics with each wireless carrier. In this case, Verizon, that would be more of a strategic business decision that would be outside of my, it could come down to financing. A lot of that's gonna be like proprietary information that they're not gonna divulge in, but it could be financing, it could be knowing where customer complaints are coming from. There could be multiple factors like that in there, something I wouldn't necessarily know about from just a RF standpoint, if that answers your question.

Thank you, Mr. Russ.

Certainly. Moving on, this now is gonna show you Again, this is looking at current coverage. This is called a best server plot. And again, this is looking at your low band coverage. This is telling you which sector of existing towers is expected to cover a given area today. And as expected, we see that tower that's approximately 1.2 miles north of the proposed tower. That southern sector is covering the entire area here. So it's doing all that work. Now with the proposed tower, it would offload a lot of what that other tower is currently doing. And that's where the capacity need comes in. And as we can see here, you have three different colors now in the target area. That would be each of the three sectors of the proposed tower offloading from all the work that the existing sector of that tower is doing. Now, this is our mid band coverage. This is where you're gonna talk more of your high speed internet stuff that typical phone users are gonna be doing a lot of the high demand bandwidth stuff today. And we're gonna see a drastic difference here. So this is current coverage. And again, green is you would expect to have a good indoor quality. Yellow would be in your vehicle. Red would be you'd have to be outdoors to get any kind of usable signal. And then the blue, I know it's not on the legend here. This usually doesn't show up always, but blue is just essentially a dead zone, not usable for these bands of carriers. And this is the proposed signal. And that's the proposed tower right there. And as you can see, we lost all that dead zone, all that yellow turns to green essentially, and a lot of the red minimizes to yellow as well. So while the low band didn't look like it was making much of a difference from a coverage standpoint, the mid band is making a drastic change with the proposed tower.

Mr. Ross.

Yes, sir.

approximately what is like the mileage and coverage? I mean, in that circumference that we're looking at there approximately, kind of a circumference, what is the, what would it be like in miles? Quarter mile, half mile?

My estimate here, and I want to be transparent, I did not put this specific one together. I'm actually covering for one of my associates that did. But knowing that the tower to the north is 1.2 miles, my guess, and of course it doesn't help that it's like an oval versus a perfect circle, I would say approximately half a mile. would be the coverage area that we're looking at targeting this right here.

So have you been to Stone Ridge where this is gonna be? Have you seen the site?

I personally have not, no, sir.

Okay, because I know really well the community center that's right there, and it's gonna be close to the community center right off Old Black Canyon. Above the community center, when you start going above, It is almost nothing in coverage. And there are a lot of residents in phase four and five right there. So I know that this is a need. But at the same time, I just want to make sure that, you know, we're going to be covering these people, too, that it's going to be enough.

No, certainly I completely understand that. This is gonna be, again, the best server. This is, again, to no surprise, that northern sector is the only sector on that northern tower doing the work essentially right now for the mid band. And you can see here it gets very splotchy because, again, it doesn't propagate as far as your low band does. It requires proximity to get the most out of the latest carriers like 5G carriers. And then with our proposed, we see that the proposed tower is taking over a lot of what the work of that northern tower's south sector is doing. And again, in summary, this is showing a need that the sectors are overloaded to the north, showing a need for capacity. We have areas that need service improvement, especially to the east, south, and west of the proposed tower. And not only will it improve Verizon's service, but having a tower here will also make it more attractive for other carriers to wanna put their antennas up there and improve for your other major wireless carriers as well. I do have an appendix. as famously said, but wait, there's more. I do have some graphics here showing, again, with the hopes that other tenants would wanna join the tower as well and follow suit. Very similar to Verizon's layout, we say AT&T from the proposed tower and where they're located around, it's very quite similar to Verizon's. Cell map or data for AT&T is drastically different from Verizon. It looks like there's a lot of significant gaps in coverage here. There's no orange and red. Essentially, if there's blank spaces, there's just no coverage. So I would conclude that AT&T has it even worse off than Verizon based on this data. And this is more crowdsourced data now from CoverageMap for AT&T specifically. And then I just wanna briefly, quickly show you T-Mobile as well. They're on a lot of the similar towers, but we see the similar spacing from the proposed tower as well. T-Mobile also lacks a decent quality coverage in the same area. That orange and red and that dark green is not good. And then we see a complete mix, and then they even have this, I wanna call it almost black color, it's really dark red, but that's even worse. but it just, it's hit or miss all around here, and that has to do with the elevation changes and the tower distances and such like that. It was brought up, the health stuff always gets brought up, a very valid concern. Again, the FCC is the governing authority about that in the U.S. And when we design these towers, we are well within the umbrella of what they've determined are the safe operating levels. But I do like to explain just kind of a basic overview of why the health concern isn't there. You have an electromagnetic spectrum of energy, right? And on one far end of that, you have things like x-rays, gamma rays, and those are what we call ionizing energy. And that's the stuff that you don't really want to get exposed to. We all love getting those dental x-rays that they have to do, and they usually throw that lead vest on you, and the x-ray tech steps around the corner of usually a solid brick wall. Well, that's because getting exposed to that energy, it's ionizing, it is dangerous to be overly exposed to that for human DNA. And it does have adverse health effects. Now, on the other end of the spectrum is RF energy, the radio waves, and those are what we call non-ionizing energy. They don't affect human DNA, and we get exposed to this through a lot of different ways, and there's a little list here of things that people might not realize, but your car radio, your television, your Wi-Fi access point in your router in your home, cell phones, light bulbs, wireless baby monitors, and TV remotes. We're exposed to it in a lot of different ways, but the byproduct of RF energy is it dissipates heat, that's it. It dissipates heat, it doesn't affect human DNA. So that's why there are regulations in place. The FCC has broken it into the general public limit of exposure for a cell phone tower, and then there's occupational limits of exposure for the cell phone tower. And the general public would be anywhere that they wouldn't even know they're being exposed to these towers. It could be in the park, on the sidewalk, driving down the street. And then the limits that the FCC allows for occupational exposure is different. They're allowed to go a little higher. But again, these are gonna be professionals that know that they're gonna be around the tower. In this case, really it's gonna be people that are allowed to go up there to actually work on the tower itself. They're gonna be trained, they're gonna know everything. But they're gonna be exposed to a slightly higher and allowable rate than what the general public would be. But again, the byproduct of exposure is heat. So I hope that kind of answers some of that as well. But I believe that, and actually here, I had a slide about it. So there's two isolated groups, general public and occupational, but they've determined the safe value the FCC has. They lowered it by a factor of 10 for occupational. And then for general public, they took that safe exposure value, lowered it by a factor of 50, and that's what the general public is exposed to or what we use in wireless carrier studies. And I'll actually pause right there. I believe that's the end of my part of the presentation. Did I answer all? I know you have quite a few questions to begin with. I hope I answered them all. Are there any I missed?

A plus, Mr. Ross.

Thank you. Mr. Ross, if you wouldn't mind one moment. Commissioner Evans, you had your hand up. Do you have any questions? He didn't? Okay, good. Any other commissioners? Commissioner Rossi?

Mr. Ross, I I asked Logan here a question earlier about the siting process. Without understanding the scope of your project, I'm assuming from what we've read here and seen, it's to benefit the customers in the Stone Ridge area. And Commissioner Kalisimo had alluded to there's other areas that this current location may not impact. To kind of understand your siting process, not just for inside of the Stone Ridge LLC, but that area, the coverage map that you're showing, vacant land, and there's state trust land immediately to the southeast where a lot of that coverage is even more scant to kind of understand

And I'll actually have to defer because from an RF standpoint, what we generally do is we issue a search ring. We say, hey, this is our general area of interest. And the real estate experts will go out and talk with the landowners and do all that discussion. So from an RF standpoint, I can only answer that. I can't really say why not across the road or, you know what I mean? I don't negotiate with the landowners or anything like that to know those pinpointed specifics. I just know, like, from an RF standpoint, we throw out a ring, we say, hey, this is our general desired area, and then real estate will go out and tell us what kind of magic they can work in finding something that fits within that area.

Understood. The reason that I ask this is, you know, working with a private entity or an LLC, that process of obtaining those rights is fairly quick, but dealing with something like a state trust can go into years. But what I'm getting at there is to provide this coverage the best quality, is timing a contributing factor to the site?

From an RF standpoint, absolutely. We want to get the latest and greatest as soon as possible. But again, I don't know what the weighing factors were with easier versus waiting longer. I believe pricing could factor into that. Things that are really outside of The areas of concern for my profession, if that makes sense. I don't want to dodge the question, but maybe my colleague can better answer that.

No. While I have you up, I did want to ask on the topic of co-location, is there rack space for local law enforcement, fire departments, things of that nature to utilize that space, or is this strictly for commercial comms? Sure.

Sorry, I'll have to defer that one as well.

No worries, thank you.

All right. First, I'll go over the state land to the south. So as you saw in the propagation maps, most of the surface is going north, east, and west. South is just gonna be the residents that are in that area. So as soon as we're crossing over, I don't wanna call it a mountain, but it's a pretty sizable hill to the south. So even if that were a viable candidate, you're essentially blocking off everything to the north, east, and west. Typically, these sites are where the users are in the most plain terms. So being in the middle of state land south of the development, blocked by a mountain, would typically not be a viable place to go.

Right, and I'm not talking about being on the other side of the mountain. I'm talking about being on the north side of the mountain that could expose you further to the east, where currently it could be limited by that said mountain.

Well, I mean, then we're talking about building on the side of a mountain and then building roads up.

I'm ignorant, so that's why I'm asking.

So again, yes, it would be a timing issue, and then we're getting into that. As far as CAFMA, I actually did have a meeting with them last week. As far as radio goes, they don't have any issues with this communicating internally. They do understand that there is an issue with residents getting out to the fire department, though. From my understanding, they're also moving to Starlink, so they wouldn't necessarily need any sort of repeaters, as far as I'm aware. That could change, and we'd be more than willing to accommodate them. But based on my meeting last week, that was not a concern as far as their repeaters or equipment.

Understood. Thank you.

Mr. Vice Chairman.

Yes, Commissioner.

Logan, thank you. Commissioner Colosimo, based on what you heard Logan say and Mr. Ross and your concern about lack of coverage for the growth area in Stone Ridge, what are your comments and concerns? I'd like to hear that, please.

Full disclosure, this is going to be a quarter mile from my house. and i am in favor of this okay um where it's gonna be where old black canyon is that part of old black canyon turns into a dirt road so there's there's virtually nothing there there are homes up on the hill they were custom homes that were built and they will probably get a look at this thing BUT OTHER THAN THAT, THERE AREN'T A LOT OF RESIDENCES NEARBY WHERE THAT LOCATION IS GOING TO BE UNTIL YOU GET PAST THE COMMUNITY CENTER AND THEN YOU START GOING NORTH. THEN THERE'S A LOT. BUT I'M TELLING YOU, THOSE ARE DEAD ZONES. I HAVE BEEN ON THE PHONE TALKING TO NEIGHBORS UP IN THAT AREA AND IF THEY'RE OUT WALKING THEIR DOG, IT'S DEAD. THEY HAVE TO CALL ME BACK WHEN THEY GET HOME AND USE THEIR WI-FI. SO ON A PERSONAL BASIS, I SEE THIS AS A SERIOUS NEED FOR THE AREA.

Thank you. Logan, again, let's... If the cell tower heights were reduced, what would that do to your coverage, your gap in coverage? What would that do?

I don't have an exact percentage, but again, the further you go down, not only are you decreasing the anchor tenants' efficiency in the area, but then you're also opening up that co-location might not be viable. And to your point, then more towers might be needed in the area. Whereas if you have one taller tower, co-location is highly encouraged under your code. So then you're inviting those carriers to go on that one singular tower versus having a need for several in the same area.

So this is a personal opinion only. I would much prefer to see a cell tower pole only and not dressed in a monopine outfit.

Your thoughts on that? We can certainly look at alternative designs. In wooded areas, I mean, we're doing a lot of work in New Mexico and kind of the high desert up east, so trees typically don't work. This seemed like a situation where it might, so we kind of just put that on the drawings and presented it, but we're certainly open to alternative designs. The only thing that I will say is, again, going back to the actual footing of the area, something with multiple support legs is not gonna be viable, so it's gonna have to be a sort of monopole. So singular support and then having a shroud on top of that so you're not necessarily seeing the antennas. But then it would just be a pole rather than a disguised tree.

Thank you.

We could probably surround it with tinsel Christmas trees from the 60s.

With that, I will have Mr. Leonard present, and then I'm going to be his designated...

If you don't mind, Logan, I've got a couple of questions to add on to what Commissioner Griffiths had added. So, I'm just curious, the foundation, specifically where this comes from. A need in the community, I understand that. Was that prompted by complaints or calls, or was it just you guys recognizing the gap and then...

I believe it's one of the maps that they use is, again, pulling users from Verizon. So I believe that's one of the things they use. As far as on the actual carrier side, I'm not exactly sure how the RF engineers. Do you mind if I add to that?

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. There was a meeting for the Stone Ridge residents. They have their monthly board meeting just like all the other HOAs do. And this topic came up. There were actually a lot of complaints that came in. And that's why I mentioned that when they finally sent a survey out, Tom Lowe, the developer, asked that the HOA send out a survey to everybody. I think like 33 or 35% of the people responded, but that's very normal in an HOA. But of those, 71% said they want this thing. So if that helps.

Thank you. So if, you know, let's assuming that this, you know, the people in the area, pitchforks and torches, you know, they want to get their cell phone coverage. Was there any input in the community with regard to what's there? To Commissioner Griffith's point about, you know, do we want to see a tree? Do we want to see a monopole that maybe has colors that reflect more of a natural, you know, blend-in environment kind of situation?

Sure. So part of the zoning process, we did have a neighborhood outreach. It's a 300-foot buffer from the entire parcel. So not only just the tower location, but it's essentially that entire area. I'm not sure what hole that it's actually on, but it's a buffer from that entire hole, so it's much larger than a 300-foot radius. I believe it was 102 unique property owners. Of those 102, there were two responses. Both were more so about the placement. I mean, I'm sure they didn't like the look of it either way, but it wasn't an alternative offered up. On that same notice, there was also an invite to a neighborhood meeting where we could discuss things like this if anyone had questions about it. No one attended that meeting. So it was me and a RF consultant as well sitting on there waiting for questions.

Do you, I mean, obviously this probably isn't your first application that you've had to go through. Do you have a sense for what people are going for? I mean, do they really like these trees? Is this something that you have a sense that in most places people do want some sort of a camouflage to these towers?

Certainly camouflage. I mean, again, the trees, in my experience, I don't typically have a lot of sites where a tree would make sense. We have had one that was in the middle of a mining pit that a tree was suggested. But in that case, I don't think it would work. Typically, I mean just something that covers the antenna shroud is what I deem to be the least intrusive, but again, Could be biased, but again, it's just a utility pole with a lampshade on top of it or something that looks like a board.

And I'm assuming that the support structures around are going to be camouflaged in the way of either paint or something to reflect the natural.

Yeah, we could do glow in the dark if you want, whatever type of color code you want.

Yeah, that probably would go. So I have a question that might be better answered by Mr. Ross with regard to, so we're talking a little bit about height, you know, and is this a line of sight thing? Look, I'm a novice here when it comes to these things. Is it a line of sight thing or is, you know, is it, you know, if a 100-foot pole, is down in elevation by 40 feet, so now only 60 foot is exposed. Is it going to get the same results than a 100-foot pole that's 20 feet and you're only seeing 80 feet?

Yeah, no, absolutely you're correct. It's a line of sight thing. You know, I like to use the analogy of like the human, you know, our eyes are up here and if they were built down in our ankles, we would be very limited on what we could see at any given time, right? And the same things with these towers, you know, the further down you put the antennas on the pole or sink the entire pole down, it reduces the line of sight, if that answers your question. Basically, anything down is not ideal from an RF standpoint.

So this being even at 100 foot, this being lower on the slope or lower on the area where there's only maybe 80 foot or 85 foot exposed, you're losing a little bit by the installation at that level.

Possibly, I would say something that small might be negligible, because the antennas themselves, they do have what we call a horizontal and a vertical beam width, so they don't just see a single line, but they see a spread that we measure in degrees. So, you know, if you move it just a couple feet difference, it's not going to be the end of the world, but when you're talking, as was brought up earlier, like a 20-foot drop, we're going to want to run an analysis to give a, because it's going to be a percentage drop that's probably upwards of 20% to a quarter of a percent of efficiency.

I mean, drop in, when you mean drop in elevation, not height of pole.

Correct, yeah. When you put, any time you put the antennas lower down on any pole, it's gonna have a negative effect for what we're, you know, essentially looking for.

Okay, all right. Well, thank you. That answers my question, and I know that there may be some continued presentation. Certainly, unless there's any other questions. Oh, Commissioner Grassi, sorry. Just a small chair.

Thanks, Vice Chair. On the topic of mono-polar, mono-stealth pine, or whatever it was called, versus traditional steel, is this something that is just a plain steel, or is it like self-weathering that eventually turns to like a rust color that would match the better aesthetic of the area?

It would be like galvanized steel, and then non-reflective paint.

Do you guys have the ability to produce a self-weathering steel that can eventually rust into a natural color?

Yeah, I believe we actually have one that essentially would, yeah, would be non-reflective and then would look weathered. Yes.

Understood. Thank you.

Mr. Vice Chair, I have one more question. And before I go into this, I want Logan and Mr. Ross and Mr. Leonard to know that I failed trigonometry. Okay? So get that. The fall zone, because you have a hundred foot tall pole, you now are requesting a different property setback line to allow for the hundred foot radius for a fall zone. But the pole is not really 100 feet tall, 20 feet of it is below ground level.

It's below grade from Old Black Canyon. It's not below ground.

Oh, yeah. So is the fall zone still affected? And do we need that entire radius? That's my math question. It's solid?

It would be 100 foot from grade.

I'm sorry?

It would be 100 foot from grade. So it would be 100 feet if it were to fall in a completely straight line. However, if we're, sorry, go ahead.

Okay, so we have a 100 foot tall pole, 20 feet of it is below grade, below.

Below the adjacent grade, yeah.

So that 20 feet is not part of the fall zone because it can't fall.

No, I mean, I think what we're talking about is the difference from the, street above. That is 20 feet. That has nothing to do with the height of the tower. They're comparing it to where if you were standing on the road, I guess what you're saying is the 20-foot difference would make it 80 feet, but it's still 100 foot.

So we still need that fall zone radius for 100 feet? Correct, yes.

And I would suggest, Commissioner Griffiths, that we want it a little further, you know, than closer, probably. It's a little bit safer, obviously.

Okay, perfect.

Yeah.

Trigonometry class over.

If that's all, I'll pass it over to Mr. Leonard, but anything else?

No, go right ahead. Thank you.

Yeah, Josh, if you just want to screen that. Thank you very much.

That'd be great, Logan. As Logan mentioned, I'm remote, so I don't have the ability to control the slides in my presentation. I'll just say next slide as we move from slide to slide. Before jumping into my presentation that I had planned for tonight, I wanted to make a couple of just off-the-cuff comments. The first is I wanted to commend the commissioners for the excellent questions that you've had tonight. It's clearly a very thoughtful and prepared group of commissioners that we've come before and appreciate that very much. I'd also like to put a bow on a couple of questions that were asked by a couple of the commissioners. First, in response to Ms. Commissioner Griffiths, I failed trigonometry too. It's why I went to law school. I also want to note, in response to her question about why we don't put cell towers everywhere throughout the area, there are two primary reasons for that. The first is a cost-benefit analysis. Cell companies, cell carriers don't make money by building cell towers. Cell towers are on the expense side of their ledger and don't make them any money. So what they look to do is maximize cell coverage and be able to adequately serve their customers and provide the kind of service that their customers have become accustomed to, which is pretty flawless cell coverage without flooding an area with towers that can be costly. The more important consideration actually is that too many towers with antennas would be as not harmful, but would degrade signal because there's interference between the antennas of these several towers. So instead of putting cell towers throughout and having a lot of shorter ones, what they do is they try to find a height that's a compromise between the tallest that they need or the tallest that they would like called a boomer tower and a short little neighborhood tower and be able to co-locate sites on there. Again, there's a perfect distance or a perfect ratio that they try to reach, and that's what they've come to here with the 100-foot height. Commissioner Colosimo, you asked about ideal tower distances from each other. Ideally, shorter towers, I call this a shorter tower because we deal with some significantly taller towers, but shorter towers like the proposed tower at 100 feet should be spaced out in a honeycomb pattern, at about one or about 0.5 miles apart. That isn't always the case. That doesn't always happen. And part of the reason that doesn't happen is because not everybody wants to lease land for a cell tower. And so there's some geography and some private property rights issues at play there. Commissioner, I believe it was Commissioner Grossi, You asked about serving the neighbors, the adjacent neighborhood that needs coverage. And what I would say is that although perhaps the mid-band spectrum won't directly serve them, one of the benefits of this cell tower is that it offloads other users around the periphery of the coverage area of this site. by pushing them to other towers, which then makes it possible for greater coverage from existing towers, and that honeycomb pattern creates a network of cell towers that work together to provide coverage where there isn't coverage. I'm going to butcher this last name, and I apologize. I should have paid more attention to how it was pronounced when it was first said, but Commissioner Huat? That's close enough. That's good. Thank you, and I apologize. That's all right. You asked how this location and height were determined, and I wanted to go into that just a little bit. Carriers determine their needs in a particular coverage area based on metrics that their radio frequency engineering team is constantly monitoring. That includes the location of failed calls, the locations of dropped calls, locations of poor call quality, and locations of poor capacity or low bandwidth. They also have these modeling tools that take into account terrain, natural obstructions, man-made obstructions, several other factors, including typical climate, is even an input into that modeling. And using that modeling, they can show what a proposed tower would do in terms of signal and where it would improve coverage area. And that's what you saw on the plot maps that were showed a short time ago. I'm not an RF engineer. I play one on TV. That's my spiel about the responses to questions that were asked and that I wanted to put a vote on. What I'm really here tonight to talk about is the Federal Communications Act of 1996, which is applicable to our application and to our proposed wireless telecommunications facility. Next slide, please. The Federal Communications Act preserves local zoning authority, and I put kind of here. I'm going to come back to that in just a second and explain what I mean. It also prohibits the consideration of alleged and unproven health effects of radio frequency emissions. It states that any denial or any decision for that matter must be supported by substantial evidence in a written record. It states that you cannot deny an application if denial would, quote, have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services. And I'm going to come back to that one too. And then the last one is it can't discriminate between wireless carriers. And by that, it just means that if you approve a cell tower for one wireless carrier, You can't, because that wireless carrier has coverage, let's say AT&T has coverage in an area, you can't deny Verizon the opportunity to provide coverage in that area as well. Next slide, please. This is where the Federal Communications Act preserves local zoning authority. It starts out with, except as provided in this paragraph, nothing in this chapter shall limit or affect the authority of a state or local government or instrumentality thereof over decisions, regarding the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities. I've highlighted or I've underlined and bolded the start of this, which says, except as provided in this paragraph. Next slide, please. And here is the except as provided in this paragraph. It says that the regulation in place of the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless services facilities by any state or local government or instrumentality thereof, and I'm going to skip to sub two, shall not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services. Next slide, please. Federal courts have applied one of two standards in determining whether or not the denial of an application for a cell tower would have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services. This that's on the screen right now is what's considered the older federal standard. It's got two prongs. The first prong is that a cell company is able to establish and prove that a significant gap in wireless service and coverage exists. And second, the second problem, that the proposed site is the least intrusive means of filling that gap. And again, that's the older federal standard to show that a denial of a tower application prohibits service. Next slide, please. The newer federal standard is a little bit more nuanced. It's also much more deferential to wireless companies. It's simply whether denial of an application for a wireless telecommunication facility, a cell tower, would, quote, materially inhibit a carrier's ability to provide wireless service to its subscribers and customers. Our application meets both of these federal court standards and as a result is entitled to approval even if it doesn't meet all of the standards contained in Prescott Valley's ordinance. As we've discussed, though, and as we've shown, our application does meet all of Prescott Valley's standards, and we're happy to present it to you today. Next slide, please. This was mentioned a little bit earlier in one of the prior presentations, but another one of the provisions of the Federal Communications Act states that radio frequency emissions, RF emissions, can't be considered and can't be a reason for denial so long as they comply with FCC standards. And that's important because opponents of cell towers almost always try to say that unproven health effects allegedly attributed to RF emissions will create a health hazard. I appreciate the commissioner, and I apologize I didn't catch your name when you said it, that had done a little bit of research outside the record and had looked at the American Cancer Society's website to show that those health effects are actually not attributable to RF emissions. But in addition to being an incorrect statement of medical policy, the argument that RF emissions affect health can't even be considered so long as the antennas on our facility comply with the Federal Communications Commission's standards, which they will. I'd also note that this is also covered in Prescott Valley's own ordinance at 13-08-070.J, which states that, quote, no decision shall attempt to regulate radio frequency emissions except to require that applicants meet FCC standards. That's a really well-written ordinance because it doesn't cross over into being opposed to federal law. Next slide, please. And I'll tell you just in advance, this is my last slide. Under both the old federal standard, which requires that significant gap in service and the least intrusive means of filling that gap, and also under the newer federal standard, which requires approval if denial would quote materially inhibit the wireless carrier's ability to provide wireless services, this application is entitled to approval. The applicant has established that its application in the proposed cell tower complies with the requirements and standards in Prescott Valley's ordinance. And again, we're pleased to present this application to you and would stand for questions.

Thank you very much for that. We have a Commissioner Colasimo has a question for you.

Do we know which carrier our first responders are using?

I'm going to ask Logan if he knows that right offhand. I'll tell you that it varies greatly by jurisdiction. AT&T in particular offers what's called a FirstNet service that provides service to to many first responders around the country. I don't know which one is used by Prescott Valley's individual, so I'd leave that to Logan.

I didn't mean to make a grand entrance here. I do not know what they currently use. They are moving to the Starlink, though, based on the CAFMA. So current user, I do not know.

Thank you. This is Vice Chair Huot. I've got a question about, you know, we talk about the standards and, you know, the federal, that are outlined in the Federal Communication Act. As long as these RF standards fall within the requirements of the Act, Is that tested regularly? Are there mechanisms to say, yes, that's meeting the standard? Is there some sort of a watchdog, if you will, or some sort of a testing mechanism to ensure that something hasn't gone awry and they fall outside the limits?

Commissioner Huot, I'm going to ask our RF engineer to directly answer your question. I will tell you that the devices that are used on these towers. It's kind of like a circuit breaker, for lack of a better term, in an energy circumstance. They won't produce more than is authorized under the Federal Communications Commission. And if it looks like they're going to ramp up, they'll actually shut down. But I would defer to our RF engineer who's there in person to talk about testing. Great, thank you.

So the short answer is yes. There are very strict limits and guidelines both internally for the wireless carriers, and the FCC can come down and run audits as well. To give you a little bit more meat on this, so when an RF engineer designs these, and to answer the question, like, A lot of the antennas aren't even capable of some of these max exposures. We don't have to worry about residential or commercial vehicles going 400 miles an hour down the road because they're just not capable of doing it, right? They're built limited. And the same thing with these antennas. A lot of them are built limited. But then as RF, we design them. And then you have teams that look at that. They're usually called regulatory analysts, regulatory specialists. Their job is to look at the design, make sure that we're in compliance with all of that. So they're like an even higher safety net before these sites even get turned up on air. Post on air, they're constantly checked and looked at by what most of these carriers would call system performance teams that go back and check and double check. And they're the ones that look at customer complaints and performance, but they also look at what powers are we transmitting at? Does anything look fishy? That kind of thing. So you have Internal checks before it even goes up, and then they have constant monitoring. It's taken very seriously. They don't want the FCC coming down and asking questions, you know.

Thank you. Commissioners, any other questions? Commissioner Evans?

I just have a quick comment for Mr. Leonard, and I mean this in the nicest possible way because we were educated on the Federal Communications Act, and I greatly appreciate that. and it was probably the most artful iron fist in a velvet glove speech I've ever heard. Thank you very much for the information.

Thank you, Commissioner Evans.

Any other questions from the commissioners?

Okay.

Any other questions for the applicant? No?

Okay.

Well, we'll certainly open this portion of the hearing up to public comment. Have we received any public comment?

Yes, we have one person registered.

Okay, if you wouldn't mind coming up and stating your name and address, and if you wouldn't mind speaking into the mic. We don't have a remote mic, unfortunately, so.

My name is Elsa Campbell. I live on 1052 North Hobblestrap Street, which is about a quarter of a mile where they want to put the cell phone tower. And I have an urgent need that this cell phone tower goes in. I am in the black zone. I have serious health problems. When we came here, my husband and I came to move here to be near my family, and we both have serious health problems. He had to go on hospice care. Hospice used cell phones. We had problems talking with the hospice staff sometimes. I never knew if I could even call an ambulance. I have to use a... Internet cell phones who spark light that goes out sometimes I'm on my third cell phone this one works a little bit better But lately in the last two years I've developed a problem where I faint and I fall on the floor So I keep my cell phone with me on a good day. Maybe I have one bar There's something about the weather here during monsoon season sometimes I have nothing and And if spark light goes out, I have nothing. I've had people tell me I had to get my diabetic supplies driven up from Phoenix, and there were drivers here. They would lose their GPS system. They didn't know how to get to my house. And so then I didn't have my diabetic supplies. I used this. This records my blood sugar. The best app is on a cell phone. It's not reliable. That information would go to my doctor if I was seriously ill. I have to use a reader, which costs $300. That does not go to my doctor. I've had my doctor call me once when I was seriously ill on my Sparklight phone. And fortunately, she left a message and the spark light went out for two hours. I had no cell phone to call her. She wanted to make sure that I wasn't because I had lab work that said I was very ill. She wanted to find out if I needed to go to the hospital. There was a two hour break there where I had no communication. That is why it is needed. And the hospice people told me they couldn't even use their iPads. They were supposed to put, when they came in for my husband and document everything, they couldn't even use their iPads to document. They would have to drive somewhere else to put it in. And now after listening to them, I understand that sometimes you get cell phone in your car. Now I understood what they were telling me. It made no sense to me. And I am visually impaired. I do not drive. I do not have a car. There is no way for me to get somewhere if I need to go to the hospital and let somebody know. I live with that anxiety every single day of my life. That is why this tower is needed. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Campbell. Appreciate it. I believe we have another speaker.

Tom Lowe.

Mr. Lowe, thank you. Just, by the way, I like your shirt.

No Wildcats. My name is Tom Lowe, and I'm with the company that developed Stone Ridge. This is hard to sit through. Thank you guys for volunteering to do this every month. This is kind of a straightforward thing for me. We have had people calling us for 15 years to put cell towers in, and it's handled straight by the office. There's been a flat no for 15 years. I just don't like them. And the hope was that if we waited long enough, they would go somewhere else surrounding Stone Ridge. The problem has been that because it's such a large project, there wasn't anywhere else for them to go. And things got so bad over there because the coverage was getting worse every year, not better. I don't know what the technical reasons are for this. You live there, you understand the problem. We were the ones that get the calls. And it's just finally gotten to the point where it became such a safety issue, as you just heard, that I really didn't have any choice. We had to do something. And so we started working with these guys. And with all due respect to them, There was only one site that we're going to allow a cell tower on in Stone Ridge. And this is it. And it's got to work because it's the only place we're going to do this. So I can't have something that's going to go in and still be aesthetically... Not what I'd like. I'm the one that's requiring that it's a tree. I'm sorry. And you have to understand my position. We've got a 2,000 acre project over there. I can't take the risk of having a cell tower, which we basically lose money on, to destroy the rest of our project. So I'm very sensitive to the aesthetics of this thing. But I'm most concerned of a 94-year-old father that lives in the project. that got rid of his landline. And this has become so prevalent over there that, like the women that spoke before me, this is the only option they've got. So we're moving forward on this. This is the only one that... This is the only location I'm willing to do and it's the only one we're willing to do. And they have told me that with time they will add other carriers to this tower so it won't be just Verizon. And hopefully we can take care of everybody's needs, particularly the older community in Stone Ridge with this one tower. And it's next to something that I consider to be an eyesore already, which is our golf course maintenance facility. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lowe. It's just not, you know what I'm saying. Yes. So anyway, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Mr. Lowe, thank you for being here. Thank you, Vice Chair. I will, Mr. Lowe. Yes. I will go on record saying that I acquiesce to your pine tree.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other public comments registered?

No, Vice Chair.

Thank you. So I will close the floor to public comment and bring it back to the Commission for any further discussion, deliberation.

Mr. Vice Chair, before we do that, I would like Mr. Norlock to review the stipulations.

Very good point.

Thank you, Vice Chair, Commissioner. So yes, so what we have is the, would you like me to go through all of them?

Absolutely.

Okay, absolutely.

Mr. Vice Chair, if I could just mention. Yes. We do have two votes. One is for the general plan amendment and one is for the rezoning. I believe any stipulations will apply to the proposed rezoning, not to the general plan amendment.

Thank you, Ivan. We can certainly do that.

Okay, so then any other discussion, general plan amendment, on the general plan amendment, internal, here? I agree with Supervisor Griffiths. I'd like to hear the additional requirements under the zoning map. So with that being said, if there's no further discussion, we'd entertain a motion for GPA 26-001, Stone Ridge Cell Tower.

I move that we accept GPA 26001 as presented and recommend it to the town, positively recommend it to town council.

We have a motion with a second from Commissioner Gosselin. I second. If we could take our vote. Thank you, so we have five ayes. Motion passes. Thank you, Chris. We will move on to ZMC 26-002, Stone Ridge Cell Tower. This is consideration of possible action for that item. Mr. Norlock, if you wouldn't mind.

Yeah, and this is a public hearing, so you do need to open that.

Yeah, if you just outline the requirements. Mr. Vice-Chair, if you would go ahead and call the public hearing so that folks can speak to this as well.

Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I opened that up first as a public hearing.

Yes? Yes, Vice-Chair.

Okay. Well, I will open the floor, public hearing, for ZMC 26-002, Stonebridge Cell Tower. Is open, Mr. Norlock, sorry.

Thank you, Vice Chair. So I'll just go over the conditions for this. So the first one being in accordance with town code, section 1313-110G, the use of a cell tower allowed by special use permit is expressly authorized at this location as a condition of this rezone, being including in the approved site planning zoning entitlement plan. And then... We adjusted number two to the total height of the cell tower and monopine structure must not exceed 105 feet in height. So that'll take place there for number two. And then the third one is the facility shall comply with all applicable FAA, FCC building code, fire code, and other federal, state, and local requirements. The fourth one, facility shall provide for co-location consistent with the approved application and town requirements. The fifth one, any maintenance or replacement of equipment including the skies, the monopine, must mitigate any pollution, degradation, fading, or habitat impacts. Sixth one is any change or modification to the skies of the cell tower needs to be done so in writing to the Director of Development Services for approval. And then the seventh one we'll add is the lot line adjustment as shown in the site plan shall be recorded prior to building permit issuance. So if I could get... these two that I've put back on the screen in a motion if we accept those.

Mr. Vice Chair, I have a question for Mr. Norlock. Yes, please. Number six, any change or modification to the disguise of the cell tower? Well, we've heard here at our meeting this evening from Mr. Lowe, it's very adamant that the only tower he will approve is the monopine tower. So there isn't going to be any change or modification, or should we put in monopine? Monopine has been approved, and any change or modification needs to be in writing. I feel I'd like to have monopine in there.

Yeah, we can absolutely add that in there. Mr. Legler?

Mr. Vice Chair and Commission, the challenge of course is that the HOA isn't actually making the decision in this case. This is a recommendation you're making to the town council with a condition. And, of course, who knows 20 years from now whether someone will want it to be a monofine or not. You're free to recommend however you think that ought to read, but you do need to understand that the recommendation is coming from staff and from the Commission to the Council ultimately, and that's the decider.

Totally understand, Councillor, and I would like a thumbs up from my fellow commissioners to put monopine in number six?

Commissioner Griffiths, I would kind of echo that. Maybe something more general that a monopine, I guess, is good. I'd like to make sure that as part of the site there be some level of landscape or acceptable color scheme that blends into the local landscape. And I think That would be something that I would support for sure.

So Mr. Norlock or Councillor Ivan, maybe you could wordsmith number six.

to change it to put mino pine in there. Is that correct?

Vice Chair has some concerns on the landscaping.

Yeah, just an appropriate landscape scheme that would blend into the environment. I think there's some concerns from some neighbors that they have something that blends in. I'll

defer to Mr. Legler, but I think that it might be easier to maybe just make a new condition for landscaping separately.

Mr. Vice Chair, it can be done either way. If you just want to put that language in that, or add one, whichever.

Yeah, I think adding one would be, you know, something that the community would support, right? Something that, I think adding a condition would be acceptable, instead of modifying it, unless Commissioner Griffiths has another recommendation.

Any change or modification to the disguise of the cell tower changing the agreed upon monopine? Mr. Norlock, are you looking that needs to be submitted in writing? Are you okay with that?

It needs to be submitted in writing to the Development Services Director for approval. I think that would work.

Is there any way we can, we need to read into record what our new stipulation is.

Yes, with the motion. Correct. That would be included with, it'd have to be included with the motion.

I think that's fine. Yeah, that would work for me. I mean, as long as there's no objection, I think that's fine. Well, he's clearly stated that he wants the monopine. Yeah, so I think just adding the monopine.

I'm fine with that as long as we do that.

Yeah.

Thank you. Yes. Fellow commissioners.

So, Chris, what does that look like? So we just add a motion with a stipulation that would be a minor change to stipulation number six, I believe it was, to define that as a monopine. Is that what you're looking for, Commissioner Griffiths?

Okay.

Okay. All right, thank you, Chris. So now, any other questions from the commission?

Mr. Norlock, will these changes in the stipulation, then they will go to the council with our recommended changes?

Yes, they will, as long as they're in the motion, absolutely.

Okay.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions from the commissioners? Okay, I'd like to open the floor to any public comment.

We do have one. Tom Lowe.

Only if you have questions. Only if we have questions. Thank you, Mr. Lowe. I don't believe we have any questions. Thank you for your input, by the way. So with that, if there's not any other public comment, I'll close the floor, bring it back to the Commission for deliberation, and a motion.

If I share just a comment. I would encourage the applicant for future proposals, bring someone from your real estate group. My vote was very close to being a no tonight based off your citing. Being able to bring that representative to better explain the land acquisition component would go a long way in kind of satiating not just commissioners, but members of the public and understanding truly this is the best place for this.

Thank you, Commissioner Crossey. Any other comment from the commissioners?

Mr. Vice Chair, I do want it to also go on record that I was considering a no vote on this tonight. But thank you to Mr. Leonard for bringing some great information forward. I understand better the line of sight. Commissioner Colosimo, thank you for sharing that 71% of the homeowners in Stone Ridge desire, need, and want this. And... I totally understand that this is the least intrusive area where to put this cell tower. It's where it needs to go, so I will be supporting that.

Thank you, Commissioner Griffiths. I echo those same comments. I was a little hesitant with the 100-foot pole, and after really reviewing this, there's certainly no sense in putting forth something at a lower height that's not going to allow for coverage and it's to solve the problems, right? It's a real need. There are people in the area that need these coverages, too, as Mrs. Campbell spoke about needing service for medical reasons. But after understanding this item a little bit better and all that goes along with it, I'm supportive as well. So thank you. With that, if there's no other questions or comments, I'd be happy to entertain a motion for... Go ahead.

I'll make a positive recommendation to move ZMC26-002, Stone Ridge Cell Tower, for a positive recommendation.

And then we'll obviously need to have some clarification on item number six of the requirements. Is it...

Will that motion need to carry? Mr. Vice-Chair, if you just want to reference the conditions as they've been presented by staff and modified by you, I think we're fine.

Okay, would you amend your motion?

Yes. So I would like to amend my recommendation for ZMC 26002, Stone Ridge Cell Tower, with the stipulation of the modified language for stipulation six, the disguise approval. Anything else you want me to add? As stated in the discussions. As stated in the discussions.

Thank you. We have a motion, we have a second from Commissioner Griffiths. Move to the vote.

That motion passes.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Norlock. Appreciate that and for the presentations. If there are no other further actions on the agenda, which there are none, I certainly would move, entertain a motion for adjournment. We need that, we do. I will make a motion to adjourn. We have a motion from Commissioner Colissimo and a second from Commissioner Griffiths.

We're out of here.

Thank you very much for everybody who's attended.