City Council - Special Meeting

Hold on. Let me check. Uh, Daniel, are we ready? Yes, we're ready. Good afternoon. It's Monday, March 2nd, 2026, and we're at Carmel City Hall, and I'm restarting this special meeting of the Carmel by the Sea City Council following a recess for tours to order at 3:30 p.m. City Clerk, could you please call the role?

Sure. Council member Baron here. Council member Berter here. Mayor Prom Delves here. Council member Dram here. Mayor Burn here. All are present. I'd like to welcome everyone attending today, both in person and remotely, and thank you for taking the time to participate in our city's important work. This meeting is being conducted in a hybrid format. You may participate in person or via Zoom. You may also watch the live stream on the city's YouTube page or view the recording later if you do not wish to make a public comment. Nova, could you please read the public comment instructions for a special meeting?

Sure. During special city council meetings, public comments are permitted on items listed on the agenda. After each item on the agenda is introduced, the mayor will invite public comment on that item. Each speaker has three minutes to speak unless otherwise adjusted by the mayor. While stating your name is optional, it helps to identify speakers in the meeting minutes. Remote or in-person participants who do not comply with the requirements of the Brown Act will be muted.

Thank you. So today, the council will hear Verizon's appeal of the planning commission's denial of their application to install a small cell facility on a utility pole in an R1 residential district. That is the only item that we have here as a public hearing. This comes to us as resolution 2026-014 consideration of an appeal 26046 Verizon Sequoia Development appealing the planning commission's decision to deny a use permit design review and coastal development permit for the construction of a small wireless facility on a replacement PG&E pole in the public rightway in front of Carmelo Street 4 southeast of 10th Avenue in the single family residential R1 district. I want to be clear that we will conduct this as a denovo hearing, which means we will review the application independently and completely, not simply as a review of the planning commission's decision. Our goal tonight is to build a thorough and complete record and to reach a decision grounded in the evidence and applicable law. Every party will have a full opportunity to be heard. We will hear from city staff, potentially our city attorney and our independent technical consultant, the applicant and their team, members of the public and their representatives, and will then have the opportunity to deliberate among ourselves before making a decision on this detailed resolution. Before we get started, I have a question for our city attorney before we begin. Could I ask it now?

All right. We have received an email with a public comment which claims that Jacob Olander who's one of the staff members involved in this issue has a conflict of interest on this matter due to his previous experience working in the private telecommunication sector. Could you please address this issue? Yes. Do that.

So I have reviewed the public comment regarding Jake Olander and his previous experience working in the private telecommunications sector. Mr. Olander has no financial interest in the outcome of this matter and he has no conflict of interest. Furthermore, people often begin their career by working in the private sector and gain experience and then go on to work in government service and use that private sector experience in their work for the government. Likewise, people sometimes begin work in government service, gain experience, and then go on to work in the private sector. So, in conclusion, Mr. Oander has no conflict of interest.

All right. Thank you. So, we're going to start with staff report and Jake want to come up. Good afternoon, council members. As stated, we're here to review the appeal of planning commission's decision to deny the use permit and design review for a proposed Verizon wireless facility on a replacement P Gen pole on the right of way in front of a property on Carmelo 4 southeast of 10th Avenue. That's appeal AP26046. First, um I would like to say before we jump into this, I have a few slides that I will be um asking for our city special counsel and city um contracted engineers to speak on. So, forgive any technical delays when we're transitioning that speaking role over to them. Um so, we'll start by going into some background and project description. Uh as you can see on the slide, we have a couple pictures of the existing P Gen utility pole on Carmelo. Uh this is our first application we received since the ordinance uh for the wireless facilities was adopted by the city council in 2023 and certified by the coastal commission in 2025. Um the proposed site is in the right of way on Carmelo 4 southeast of 10th Avenue. Uh the existing utility pole is just shy of 39 ft tall and this is for a type three application which requires a use permit for new wireless facility on a replacement P Gen pole. Uh a little further background here is the photo simulations provided by the applicant of the proposed facility. Um the replacement pole top would be 46 ft 4 in tall and the top of antenna

elevation would be 49 ft 10 in. Uh the PG poles can be replaced in the same location. Uh the cubic footage of the antenna would be 2.89 cubic feet. uh which is just shy of the 3 cubic foot maximum for um antennas in in the right of way. And um we have the uh accessory equipment listed as 16.48 cubic feet uh which is what is shown in the plans, but there's contention over this because of some shrouding flaps that cover a gap of space between the equipment itself and the pole itself and the actual cubic footage of the brackets that mount that equipment to the pole. So, uh, it was noted in the staff report that while we don't have the cubic footage of that gap space with the shroud or the brackets themselves, we believe that should those be calculated and push it over that 17 cubic foot maximum that's outlined in the design guidelines. So, just a little rough um meeting timeline. The first planning commission meeting was on the 21st of January and was continued to February 4th due to a large amount of um information that we received. Um again in February 4th the meeting was continued because there's a large amount of uh information that was received and staff uh and our contracted uh engineering firm didn't have enough time to really prepare a thorough analysis of all the materials that were presented um the um feedback that we received from the residences and such. Uh at February 10th, the planning commission denied the project uh and with findings um based off evidence that the project did not meet the requirements for special exceptions. Um they requesting two special exceptions, one for placement in the right of way in the R1 zone and one for placing the facility on a pole that was within 5 ft of the center line of a facade window or door. Uh March 2nd, um we're here and staff is recommending that the city

council deny the application because the required findings can't be met. And uh March 5th is the mutually agreed upon end of the shot clock for this processing. Shot clock is the designated time frame that jurisdictions are allowed to review an application and need to have a decision whether it's deemed approved or uh denied. So, uh, we'll be going through the claims for appeal presented by the appellants. Um, claim one that the denial would violate federal law due to a lack of substantial evidence. um this finding for denial. These are the claims from the Epilent Verizon and Sequoia deployment services that the findings for denial were not supported by substantial evidence that Verizon has demonstrated that the Golden Bow is not technically feasible and potentially not available and the city has not provided substantial evidence for the findings for denial. Um, so for our responses, Verizon submitted uh additional evidence after the appeal uh around the Golden Bow and its technical feasibility and availability. We also had our uh contracted um engineering firm CTC do a review of the Golden Bow Theater. Um so it's up to the city council to determine if they believe that the Golden Bow is a technically feasible and available location to serve the uh coverage gap that Verizon is claiming in the area. um CTC did an analysis of the coverage uh that could be um achieved at the Golden Bow with a macro design facility based off of the um information that was presented to us in the Purecon supplemental reports. Uh claim two for dictation of technology. I'm going to ask for Gail to speak on this slide. Um, and if she is online, she can unmute herself and speak

to these claims.

Yes. Good, good afternoon, everyone. I can't see you uh when the PowerPoints up, but I'm assuming that you're there and you can hear me. My name is Gail Carish. I am uh serving as special counsel for the city on this wireless matter and and have worked with city staff and previous staff on a lot of wireless matters for the city including the update of the wireless ordinance which is this is your first application under that new wireless uh ordinance. So, I'm going to go through a a few of the claims and actually uh hand off to uh Lee Afflerback who is the uh technical consultant from CTC and and Jacob to comment on some more before we go back to uh Jacob finishing the presentation. So on the second claim that Verizon made in the grounds for appeal was uh that the denial would violate federal law because the city cannot de dictate technology. And um in that instance really they're saying the city can't require Verizon to use a macro design at the Golden Bow. So even if golden vow will work which they dispute that it will work as at all um they they say you can't choose you can't direct them to use a macro design and they also say that Verizon um that they have shown that a small cell design which is their favored uh design uh won't work at golden bow. So um uh can you go to the next slide please? Can someone go to the next slide?

One moment.

Ah, there we go. Thanks, Noa. There we go.

So, thank you. So, uh, in response to that, uh, ground for appeal, first I just want to note that this this claim, uh, about dictating technologies, uh, wasn't initially raised by Verizon in their October application. They only began to raise this technology issue after their own consultant, Purecon, provided a uh, RF supplemental report number two, which was dated January 30th, 2026. and that outlined a potential technical solution that would work at Golden Bound that involved some radio the same radios as their their preferred location uh but also uh the which they call the small cell option for go uh for golden bow or for their utility pole but it uses larger antennas. So we've been calling the macro design uh we've been calling that alternative as a macro design just to distinguish it from the first design that Verizon explored for Golden Bell which was using the smaller antennas. So um our position is that the city is not dictating technology here. Verizon relies on a a case um in the second circuit from 2010 that's called New York New York SMA the town of Clarkstown. And that case is actually very different from what we have um uh before the council in several ways. in uh the Clarkstown case involved a facial challenge uh to Clarkstown's wireless ordinance, not a challenge to the city's decision on an individual application. You are being asked uh to decide an individual application. Second thing is the the claim in Clarkstown alleged a violation of a different provision of federal law. Uh there the court was considering whether the Clarkstown ordinance violated a federal law that said that

local governments shall not unreasonably discriminate among providers of functionally equivalent services. Here you are being asked to to determine if the denial of Verizon's application would prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services is a different federal law and the discussion of the antennas and macro or small cell really comes up as part of the alternatives analysis for that effective prohibition analysis and test. In another uh point of distinction in Clarkstown, the court decided that the city's legis legislated preference for certain technologies violated federal law. Um there they found that the the city had the city's ordinance had a system that explicitly screened applicants based on the use of preferred technologies such as multi-sight distributed antenna systems over macro cells and that that went too far in effectively mandating the use of certain technologies and so that's why the court boundary was preempted. Um here Carmemell's ordinance has location preferences not technology preferences. Small cells and macro cells can be placed in the right ofway and know rooftops and standalone towers. Um it's really a difference in antenna size and and some other factors that are technical and can be discussed by CTC. But Carmel's ordinance does not dictate technology. The city council is being asked to review one application for a single location and Verizon has the burden of proof for that special exception. And so in the significant gap in least intrusive means test that Verizon uh has to uh demonstrate uh and that's in the in claim three which I'll

get to in a moment. Verizon is required in in in proving an effective prohibition under that claim to do a comprehensive evaluation of any potentially technically feasible and available alternatives and the city council must determine which alternative best aligns with the city's policies as expressed in the ordinance. So in that context, examining one antenna antenna configuration and height at Golden Bow and taking a look at another in response to public comment is part of an uh alternatives analysis and not um the city dictating technology. Go to the next slide, please. Next slide, please.

Great. Thank you. Uh, okay. The third claim and this this is the claim this is really the the kind of the heart of their claim. I think claim three is that the denial of the application would violate federal law because it would um effectively prohibit the provision of personal wireless service. And there the denial um Verizon makes their arguments based on on two uh different effective prohibition tests which are um in the ninth circuit and and they they claim that they meet both tests. So one test is known as the significant gap least intrusive means uh test and uh Verizon argues that they have demonstrated a significant gap that they have found the least intrusive means being the utility pole in the public rightway and the golden bile alternative is not technically feasible. It's not the least intrusive and it's not available. Um uh uh the second test for effective prohibition is material inhibits test and there Verizon says that it is um it just has to show that it's introducing new services uh improving existing service and um and that it can prove that it a denial would materially inhibits ability to do those things. Next slide please. Okay. So, first we're going to look at the significant gap and least intrusive means uh test and I'm going to um hand things over to CTC in a moment. But just

to set the stage um and the significant gap least intrusive means uh test first you have to determine was there is there a significant gap in service and that is a factual determination and uh the applicant and carriers are not entitled to 100% perfect coverage. Small gaps are okay. uh but it's your you have to make an evaluation as the try or fact and uh to to determine um if there is a significant gap. Um, the least intrusive means portion of the test involves determining what solution is the least intrusive to the city's values as expressed in your code because you're basically being asked to bend your code to allow the facility. Um, the examination requires a comprehensive uh alternatives analysis in search of the technically feasible available alternative that is the least intrusive. So, I'm going to turn uh the mic over to Lee Aerbach uh at CTC to comment on the technical reports and then Jacob will comment on the intrusive intrusiveness and availability.

Thank you, Gail. Uh I'm Lee Afrobach with CTC. Uh let's start with the uh I can't see the slides either. So but I assume I have the map there. Gale you can you can shake to me if she that's correct the map. Good. Okay. Uh to start with Verizon uh and their consultants uh did a uh very detailed analysis of the coverage area. I must say probably one of the most comprehensive ones I've ever seen. And they they looked at signal power level. They looked at signal quality. By quality I mean uh the the qu the quality of the signal versus noise and versus interference. They looked at drop calls so-called LTE drop calls and they also looked at average speeds that were customers were getting. Uh to me the most critical one is the signal quality. Um what we found that by and large there are plenty of signals uh signal power but unfortunately there's a lot of interference interference caused primarily by adjacent towers horizon towers in different locations. the uh the uh the map as you look at it lays out various colors uh just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the project here. They measured over 7,000 points in uh in the midband which is the particular band they want to operate in uh which is the 2000 uh megahertz band. Um what we found was that the if you look at the color code there the the best quality is blue which you don't see

any of them there. Uh but that that is where the signal uh is there's very little air interference. On the other hand, the worst is the black and that's basically when the noise and the signal at the same level. And that basically what that causes is uh disconnects. It causes very very poor uh uh data transfer and very unreliable signals. You'll notice this is the area I I we have an entire map of this is available in their report. I took the area of the worst area to look at. Starting out here up at Delmare Avenue and looking down below, what you can see is the concentration of the worst service falls in the area between Delmore Avenue uh going east down to Monte coming back uh on uh uh 9th Avenue. That's the area. And I might add that that's relatively close as you're probably aware better than I am uh where it's right close to Golden Bar. So that's that's the worst area. uh I don't not want to and I make it I want to make it clear that there is uh throughout the area primarily about bordered by Kasanova on the east side and on uh in the west side uh the the to the ocean those that entire area has a service that's really below standard. In other words, it's a gap area. Uh I would point out that part of this area, in fact, the major

where we saw the the greatest uh uh gap area is not going part of that is not going to be covered by the proposed site. And that I'm talking about specifically uh between the area between 9inth Street Excuse me. 9inth Avenue and 8th Avenue uh in the area of Kazanova. Can I next slide? Okay. Gail, that's the uh that's the uh drawing of the uh of the the golden bomb, right?

That's correct.

Okay, good. Uh th this is the location that we were looking at. Some of you might remember that that several years ago, in fact, in uh in in 21, uh this site was looked into as a potential option. It never never got anywhere, but it was one that was rejected. Uh it was one of the areas that we were told at the time would be available for use. uh this this looks like a viable candidate. Now, when I say it looks like a viable candidate, I mean specifically that we received information from Verizon when we requested options or alternative sites where they laid out specifically an antenna, which is the same antenna, I might add, that they have in other locations. uh the the direction of the antenna, the type of antenna, the height they would mount and such. So, we had really all the parameters provided to us. The antenna would be mounted on the top of this building, uh probably as far west as possible. The elevation of the peak of the roof of the building is 42 ft. We would anticipate that the antenna would be mounted somewhere in the order of 8 ft or so above that area which means that the antenna would be up uh roughly 50 ft. One of the points that the uh in contention to with horizon is that the antenna would be too low because of trees. Uh frankly uh 50 ft really quite high and we see no reason why trees couldn't be trimmed. In fact, the city has agreed to do that if if that becomes necessary. Although, frankly, from what

I've seen, I don't see that's the case. Can we go to the next slide? Okay, this is Oh, I have to see this slides, too. That's good. We're moving along in technology. That's that's even a better part. Uh, what we did is we put together a model here, a computer model of we think the coverage would be based on the ITU model. That's the International Telecommunications Union. I I will caution you there are numerous models out there. Each one claim to be better than the other one. I use this one primarily because the ITU has uh I think 192 nations are part of this group. So it's I feel pretty comfortable and good got to be good friends in there somewhere. Um what we what we find is that uh the coverage area based on modeling signal strength would be generally uh well would be better than the coverage area with the proposed site. And in addition to that, it would cover the area that will not be covered up in the uh area that we we just talked about earlier doing the uh explanation there. I think that's all I have to say from time. I'm sure there'll be some questions that I'll be here to answer and then I will pick back up from here. I think Gail will have a few more slides to speak to after this, but I wanted to speak to the least intrusive means. So, we've shown the coverage gap. Um, and least intrusive means, as Gail stated earlier, would be what most closely conforms to our um zoning standards and

our local um municipal code. for that we've looked at um the main factor we looked at was how many special exceptions would be required um and I think it would also be um wise to take into consideration location preference. So uh the preference for a facility on private property over in the right of way and then the preference uh in our tiering system for the lowest tier, middle tier and highest tier for uh compatibility with the neighborhood. Oh, this isn't in the highest tier. It's in tier two. Um while the R1 would be tier one for least compatible. So, it's in a more compatible zone. And um as we discussed briefly in the field, it would only need one exception for the golden bow, which would be for height. Um while the proposed small wireless facility is requesting two exceptions, one for the placement of a facility in or on a PD pole in the right of way in an R1 zone and for placing the wireless facility on a PGD pole that is within 5 ft of the center line of a door or window, which would be you take the center line of that door or window and expand it out 5T and then if you extend a plane forward from that if it falls into that zone. So those are the two exceptions required for the proposed site. So we've determined that the golden bow would be a less intrusive means based off of our zoning standards and municipal code as a whole and then I will pass it back to Gail to speak on material inhibits.

Thank you. Uh so the the second uh federal test for u effective prohibition that Verizon raises is the materially inhibit standard and and there an applicant must show that a denial would materially inhibit its ability to compete in a fair and balanced regulatory environment u considering the totality of the circumstances. This is an a relatively new test, so there's a little less guidance uh on it, but courts have considered factors like insufficient coverage, lack of available alternatives, unreasonable costs, and unreasonable delay. And uh Verizon has um effectively um claimed that uh it would be its service would be materially inhibited or its ability to provide service would be materially inhibited if it had to uh go on on u or if it if its application was denied because the go because of the golden bow because the golden bow is they would have to pay rent uh and um they wouldn't be able to use the public right ofway where they're allowed to um put facilities rent free. Um they have regulated pole attachment rates um and that there would be a delay. Um and in our view uh and um we the golden bow is available as you've just heard from from the experts um and renting or placing a facility on a parcel is not an unusual activity. There are many cell sites Verizon included and in the uh city of Carmel included where Verizon places facilities on uh private property and pays rent. We don't actually even know what the differential would be because Verizon has not negotiated

uh a lease with Golden B. So we don't know um if there would be a significant differential in the rent. Um but also uh Verizon um only has the um ability to provide to to be on uh private property um or if sorry only has the ability to be use the right of way um if it um needs to use the right of way according to the California Supreme Court if it needs to use the the right of way um to provide service. It's not an absolute right uh to use the public right ofway. Um finally, regarding uh the delay, I just want to point out that uh Verizon can s submit an application at any time and the city must review it there. The city could not impose a moratorum on applications. I think it's notable that after Verizon's last application was denied, they did not submit a new application for several years. And it wasn't until um they failed to convince the California Coastal Commission that the provisions in your ordinance that they did not like should be changed. Uh it was after it was uh the ordinance was approved by the Coastal Commission that they filed their application. uh the application that you're reviewing now has a 90day uh FCC shot clock for action and actually if they had applied for u a facility on golden bow that would be a collocation and it would also have a 90day shot clock or action u so u our view was they haven't proven that there has been a material or there would be a material inhibition of service if if the

application were denied. Uh next slide please. So the uh fourth claim uh for in the appeal uh and the last one I'm going to deal with in this presentation is the claim uh that a denial would be a violation of state law and it would violate in particular violate their statewide franchise to use a public right ofway and that's in California public utility code section 7901. Now, public uh utility code 7901 does grant telephone companies a statewide franchise to place their equipment in public rightway. And um the Verizon claims that listing the R1 zone of rights away as highly incompatible violates their franchise right under state law and that denial based on a preference for private property would violate their franchise right under 7901. Next slide, please. So, um, in response, I just want to point out a few things that the California Supreme Court has held that section 7901 state franchise is a limited right. It it's limited. It's a franchise, but it's limited in important ways. First, um, the applicant or any any telephone company's use must not incomode the public use. And, and that's phrasing from the statute, incomode the public use. This includes not only um the public use for travel but includes consideration of safety and aesthetics. Uh additionally, telephone corporations have the right to construct telephone lines in the public rights of way. Um uh in a in a limit another limitation on that right is that it's limited only to

the extent necessary for furnishing services to the public. And uh here we with this wireless facility the city uh uh has determined at least the city staff and the experts have determined that there's an alternative uh to using the right of way and Carmel's rationale for having these preferences for placements outside of public rights ofway particularly in residential areas is grounded in valid right-of-way management concerns that are outlined in the ordinance and in the findings. ings particularly tied to the city's unique character and resources which include narrow treeline streets and extraordinary coastal vistas. So specifying areas for heightened review to due to these particular attributes that are unique to your city uh and the area does not on its face conflict with section 7901 as it is consistent with the city's authority under 7901 to ensure that placements do not incomode the public use. Uh where Verizon has another alternative for providing service use of the right of way is not a necessity. Thank you, Gail.

Thank you.

We'll now be reviewing the fifth claim from the appellants, which uh generally was that the proposed project is consistent with the required findings for approval. Um they outlined quite a few um concerns they had with the findings that were made at the denial of their application um including consistency with the general plan um potential future applications fall zones trees uh the adjacent historic resource and visual and scenic disruptions from the proposed facility. So we'll briefly go through the findings here. Um so the response for the general plan um as noted in the staff report um there are concerns about the consistency with the general plan because the administrative detailed wireless design guidelines are an adopted part of the general plan. Um and the accessory equipment as discussed um cannot be confirmed that is meets our required 17 cubic foot of volume requirement outlined in the design guidelines because right now it's presenting as 16 1/2 cubic feet without including the dimensions of the shrouded gap space between the uh equipment proper and the pole and does not include the cubic footage of the equipment brackets. Um, as for future application precedent, um, because the findings can't be made for this site, um, and therefore the special exceptions can't be granted, the approval of this site without those special exceptions would be a precedent that would be set. Um, so that is a finding that also cannot be made. Uh, as for the fall zone standard or finding, um, the fall zone standards apply to, um, sites on private parcels and not in the right of way. So for this facility because it complies with all of the applicable safety standards, the fall zone the fall zone and therefore the

safety standards can be met for this site. Uh as for trees, the standards specifically in the wireless code speak to new poles in the right of way in tree drip lines. Um and the code itself differentiates replacement poles from new poles. So it is um staff's analysis that the standard for the tree drip line does not apply um for the replacement pole. So that finding can be made. Uh visual impacts. Uh this finding is a little bit of a a multi-step where it says that if the project conforms with all the design st or the design guidelines and zoning standards then the project will be found to make no visual impact on the um well won't make any visual impacts because we can't find that it meets the design guidelines or the zoning standards without set exception. staff cannot make and by extension the city council can't make the finding that there will be no visual impact or no impact to property values which is also tied into that finding. Um and then finally for historic resources we found that there is nothing in the secretary of interior standards that speak to small wireless facilities in the right of way. Um and it's not uncommon for peachy to replace poles or attach equipment to utility poles in front of historic resources without review by the secretary of the interior standards. So the finding for no adverse effect on historic resources can be made. So just a general highle findings analysis um the use permit findings uh because there's conflict with the general plan and the zoning code and therefore is not compatible with the surrounding land uses the project does not meet the special exceptions. Um in addition this find these findings for the use permit can't be made. Uh the findings for the design reviews similarly cannot be made because the

project without those special exceptions conflicts with the zoning code, general plan, LCP and uh the design guidelines and therefore community character. Um the coastal development permit is similarly there's conflict with the general plan um and therefore the findings for the coastal development permit can't be made. Uh for wireless type one through four applications, there are findings that need to be made in order to approve a wireless facility. And as stop me if you've heard this, the special exceptions can't be made. We can't make these findings and therefore the findings for approval are not found. Um with that, staff recommends that the city council adopt the resolution as presented by staff. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer to them. uh and Gail and CTC are available as well as the director of community planning and building Anna. Thank you.

Thank you, Jake. All right, any questions? And I'd like to keep make sure that the questions are to clarify the information that was provided so we avoid getting into a discussion and start deliberating too early. Give the give the applicant a chance to speak to. So, uh, Hans, do you want to start? Do you have any questions? And these are questions specifically for the staff as opposed to for Verizon. Correct. We'll get to that.

No. Okay, Jeff, we've got a new order here. I'm trying it out. Happy to go second or first. Um, a couple questions for you, Jake. Could you, uh, three questions. Could you first comment on what the city's policy is regarding staff reports on appeals when the lower body, which in this case is the planning commission, makes rulings or statements that are not supported by the original staff reports?

I will defer to director of community planning planning and building Anna Janette for this one. Thank you. Um so just to repeat your question is what is staff's policy when um going to an appeal authority when a lower body has made a decision that a lower body has made a decision that uh didn't necessarily comport with staff's original recommendation. So the city has a general policy. Could you talk about what the Could you just sort of explain what that is?

Sure. Um generally staff is um um supports the a lower body's decision and that would be based on findings and evidence. Um and this particular case or with all appeals there are also a denovo hearing. So staff also has to weigh any new information um that was presented or looking at the facts of the situation. In this particular case, um staff brought forward the recommendation or the denial of the planning commission forward as a recommendation for the city council. Then in order to support that denial, staff provided the findings and evidence. There were um a couple of findings relative to safety that the planning commission felt the project did not meet. um when staff took a look at um that information specifically to the fall zone that doesn't apply in a replacement utility pool. Um it's specifically mentioned um it's specific to new towers. So to to clarify so so I understand the planning commission one of the one of the things the planning commission talked about and raised an objection to was the the the finding about the safety finding about fall zones and staff didn't think that that was necessar legally defensible and so you changed uh that you omitted that finding uh in the resolution that we that we have in front of us.

Right. the the the evidence that supported the finding that the planning key mission made is not the evidence that's before you today. Um staff shows that it actually does meet that finding because the um the fall zone doesn't apply. So not only would it not be defensible, it would be inappropriate does because it doesn't apply. So you carried forward you carried forward, you know, it's our policy. So you carried forward the denial the the overall recommendation to deny but just omitted that particular finding because it wasn't necessarily it wasn't necessary to um to to complete that recommendation to deny.

We could not say that it doesn't meet the fall zone because the fall zone isn't applicable.

Correct. There was another thing that the planning another audition that the planning commission brought that planning commission um disagreed with staff and that was a 17 cubic foot limitation on the size of the on the size of the equipment that was mounted on the pole. And so when when staff um originally brought the staff report to the planning commission um both the original original report and the second original report, the later original report, you clocked the the limit you clocked the you measured the cubic foot limitation of the equipment as being about 16 1.5 cubic feet and the planning commission took issue with that. Um, can you maybe this is maybe I'm back in the Jake realm. Can you Can you talk about

dealer's choice? Can you I'll let you you two decide. Um, argue about it. Can you can you talk about how we went from below 17 cubic feet to above 17 cubic feet?

Um, this one seemed to have some room for interpretation. Um because the seemingly the largest amount of additional cubic footage that would be um associated with the accessory equipment would be this gap space uh that is covered by wings or flaps from the shroud on the accessory equipment. Um initially we hadn't counted that or weren't intending to um but the planning commission expressed that they believed it should be incorporated because it's shrouded. Um so um we went with their recommendation because if it seemed open to interpretation and we deferred to their judgment on that. So the the space in question would be there there's the accessory equipment cabinet that's uh has all the accessory equipment the radios the the splitters all the all the technical stuff. Um and then there's a gap space that's required between the uh equipment and the pole a standoff space. And that space itself uh the shroud extended into so there wasn't just a empty gap there. And so the planning commission thought it was appropriate to include that uh cubic footage of that that void space covered by the flaps in the cubic footage. Um and then additionally there was no cubic footage calculations for the brackets themselves that hold the accessory equipment to the pole. Um and so we deferred to the planning commission's uh judgment and included the we don't have those calculations so we can't say definitively how much additional cubic footage would be there but if you included both the gap and the bracket it would be um seemingly reasonable to assume that that would exceed the cubic footage of 17 since they're already at 16.5 cubic feet with the accessory equipment which is the the shrouded cabinet the P gen meter and disconnect and and um so that's that's how We got to that. Thank you.

Mhm. Bob, no questions. No question. No questions. All right. I have a question. I'm going to ask the applicant this as well. So, there there have been some discussion in some of the materials that we received about the applicant's ability to expand the equipment on the pole once it's installed. Can you tell us a little bit about that? and and is that something we can consider in making our decision? And maybe Gail has to to rule on this as well. I can speak to it briefly and if you want more detail, I'll defer to Gail. Okay.

Uh the type of application that I believe you're referring to would be a 6409A eligible facilities request, which would be for a request for modification to an existing wireless facility at a future date that allows for certain amounts of expansion to a facility. Um there is some caveats to that that it can't defeat the concealment element of stealth facilities and there has been some um disagreement uh raised by the residents that whilst the city determines that because there are stealthing elements on this site such as the shrouding and the painting to match the poll. We believe that the proposed site as presented would be considered a stealth facility and therefore would allow us some discretion for eligible facilities requests in the future for expansion that would not allow for defeat of those concealment elements. Um so that's just a kind of general overview. Um, based off my conversations with Gail, um, we don't believe, uh, we have the ability to, um, make rulings on this application based off of speculation of future modifications to a facility. Um, just to to speak more even more generally and go more high level, um, it would seem to be if someone was presenting a singlestory house that they were building and they were denied because they were under their floor area limit and they could potentially do a second story in the future, that wouldn't be grounds for a denying of an application. So similarly in this case proposing to deny an application due to the potential for future expansion is beyond the scope of what uh we have the ability to regulate.

But it is true that they could do that. There is uh an ability for a ministerial review of expansion of facilities that don't defeat the concealment element for stealth facilities. So yes, there is um the potential for future modifications, but the city maintains its stance that this is a stealth facility and we wouldn't allow anything that would defeat those concealment elements that are in place. Okay. A question about the pole. Yes. I was looking at the pole when you're out there and it's just a standard pole. It's not very large, but the new one would be significantly larger in diameter. It's a bigger pole. It's going to be 8 ft deep instead of five.

Yeah, I think it goes from about 5 and 1/2 ft deep to about 8 and 1/2 ft deep. Um, and I don't know the exact increase in diameter, but I believe there would be um some increase in size. Not, you know, it's not going to increase to three, five, you know, 5 foot diameter, but it will expand in inches.

Is there anything that could trigger something being a new pole versus a replacement pole? I mean, what what categorize when would that happen? Um that would be if they're putting a pole in the ground in a place that there isn't an existing uh site there. So that would be um if they wanted to put in a say a new metal pole across the street and run power from the Pen pole across it, we consider that a new pole. if they somehow convinced PG to install a new uh utility pole somewhere that would be uh considered a new pole but um a replacement facility in the same location in our code and I believe from P Gen's own understanding is considered replacement and not new doesn't matter how big it is

exactly and mayor I believe Gail our wireless attorney did raise her hand on Zoom and maybe want to add if that's okay with you sure go ahead Gail

sir I was just gonna add Um uh just with respect to the discussion of section 6409. So there are u uh defeating the concealment is one of the criteria but there are several other criteria that would have to be met. So it's not an automatic sort of thing. An application you don't have any pending applications now. Uh you may never get one. That's what makes it a little bit speculative. But an application that would come in would have to meet all of the criteria in in the federal uh regulations. And uh so you'd re really it's not a given that that a new a new application for expansion would be able to to meet that. For example, if they needed to replace a pole for the expansion, that would not would mean it would not qualify as an eligible facilities request because you can't replace a structure. Uh, another is um if there was excavation outside of the immediate area of the pole that were required, that might kick it out of the box. There there are other limitations as well. the size of um the height or expansion. So u that is that's just more I just wanted to add a little bit more. It's not just defeating concealment, but there are several other factors.

Okay. While I have you Gail, can the cost for for Verizon to lease or rent the space on the Golden Bow, is there any criteria where that can become an issue? Does it matter how much that I mean if they say it's $10,000 a month and they don't come down is is is there any point at which Verizon can come back and say hey that's just too high u that it's a potential argument that they would make as a factor to consider in that materially inhibit standard. Right? So, you're going to be asked today, the council is being asked to make a decision based on the information that you have in the record. And one of Verizon's arguments is that it would be more costly to be outside of the public right of way. Um and we don't have any specifics on numbers but even that just consider there's still a question given the whole um uh uh consideration of all the circumstances whether that would actually rise to the level of being a material inhibition because it is a a common thing that Verizon and other carriers do is that they they uh rent space input facilities outside of the public right ofway. way all the time.

There's probably some reasonable and customary kinds of of charges for that. Yeah. Um I've got a couple questions for Lee if he's available. Are you there, Lee? Yeah. Yes. Slowly.

Okay. There are two things that really struck me. one that the the poll you I believe you said, correct me if I'm wrong, that the proposed location on Carmelo between 10th and 11th doesn't actually solve the problem that they're trying to solve. I was surprised at that. Maybe I missed it in the report, but is that true? Well, what I saying is that it won't cover the entire area of where we found the problems or where they found the problems specifically. If you look at the area on and you'll see a map there when uh Mr. Conroy is there, I think he can point that out better to you. But that area is as we said as I said uh looking at the data that we've collected there or they collected there that is the area where the the interference or the quality of the signal is the worst case and that is if you look on the map uh that I had uh is between 8th Avenue excuse me 9th Avenue and 8th Avenue. that area the the signal the desired signal and the interference signals are pretty much the same amplitude. So the radio or the the cell phone gets a little confused to say the least.

So are you saying that if if we approved the location that Verizon wants that they would put that in and then come back and say we still have a gap and we need another one.

Well they still would have a gap or you could Mr. Conroy can explain that to you, but they answer your question. The anything north of that it's shown as a gap here would be a gap because the signals coming up from the south and if you go back again I don't have a drawing of that but you will be seeing one. Um my my drawing here was primarily to explain that there is a gap here that a very legitimate uh uh point that they're making here and however it's doubtful that one small cell going to solve the problem but the area above there clearly as you can see from the presentation I made would have a problem.

Okay. And in your second that two slides later you said I believe you said that putting it on the golden bow would actually provide better coverage based on your analysis than putting it on the pole on Carmelo. Well I was what I sort of meant to say was it would provide better service up north there where the heaviest gap area is. Okay. Uh obviously it's not going to provide service as far down as there as a service having the site located several blocks down because it's matter of distance.

Okay. Thanks. Anyone else have any questions? Okay. Um we're now going to do the uh applicant. Thank you, Jake. Nice job. Thank you, Councilman. Appreciate all the work you put into that. All right. So, uh, Verizon's going to come up now and I'm going to give you 20 minutes. That's what the planning commission did. I'm going to give you plenty of time. I want to make sure you are able to to educate us as best you can since I did watch that hearing, but Mr. Mayor. Yes. Uh, I was going to ask for 30 minutes, sir. Um, how many people do you have? Three. 10 minutes each. You think you need that much? Yes, sir. Is this going to be more detailed than the last time?

This is extensively more detailed. I'll make my uh portion quick and fast because if you watch the prior hearings, a lot of that will be repetitive, but Rich Conroyy's uh section is uh quite detailed and he needs the time. So, you really think you need that much time to your point. All right, I'll let you do it. Don't get to do this again. If if you can minimize it as you go, we appreciate it. I will, sir. I'll skip uh skip the stuff that's repetitive as much as possible. Okay. Thank you. Um, good afternoon. No, your timing. Okay, I'm sorry.

Good afternoon. Pete Schubin, Sequoia Deployment Services representing Verizon Wireless. The project team is listed up on the screen right now with our first slide. There'll be three presenters, me, Rich Conroy with Purecon Solutions was already mentioned uh by Lee and Paul Albert with uh with Mackenzie and Albritain. Um a little history here going back uh applications 2019 the application the process with the city actually started in 2017 in the discussions uh three applications this is the third for this particular problem uh September 19th 2020 2021 then October 2025 uh there was some discussion about that time you know that we didn't come back in right away the city was working on a new code we were working with the city on that new code providing comments, feedback, information on alternative designs, freestanding polls, things like that that explains that gap in timeline there. Uh project design, uh staff went through this adequately. It is a small cell under all known rules. Uh photo sims we've seen before. I'll skip this. Um this is uh up the street from where we were today. And we showed this to show that in Carmemell utility and telephone equipment on telephone poles is something that is quite common. It's throughout the city. These are different poles and it is almost on every block. And that's in the alternatives analysis that rules some poles out because they're already occupied by equipment. We looked at 28 alternatives just for this application. If I mentioned before the three applications, that one is just north of these 28. We looked at those poles to the north. And on the first application, we looked uh the one on 10th in San Antonio, we looked at the area to the west and rolled those out. So the literally going and looking at

every pole in the neighborhood regarding what could work. And in the search area, we're looking at a R1 zone exclusively. The site design does comply with city standards. Uh staff went through this is the height. Uh antenna volume, equipment volume required the wings. We will come back to that when we look at diagrams. Uh concealment uh polemounted equipment. It's important to note that staff agreed with all of these points in the first application. We worked with staff, we worked with you in the development of the code to make sure that there was a design that would comply with the city's code that we could present. And it does. It also complies with the zoning code with regard to where things are located and it satisfies all of the findings for the use permit, design code, coastal development permit. Uh it's not detrimental to health, safety, and welfare. Now, back to the wings. Uh Jacob was mentioning u this is a detail that's in the plans. We could talk about it extensively if you'd like. I I don't think you want me to go into that detail, but it's the gap between that hard dark line that kind of runs down the middle on the top diagram above the pole and then you see these angled things that fill in the space. That's there at the request of the city. So, we put that in. Staff said that doesn't count as the volume. The planning commission says that does count as the volume. Now, you're over the limit. Those could just simply be taken off and the argument goes away. or the council could find that that is that airspace does not add to equipment volume because it's not equipment volume. It's there as an architecture element at the at the request of the city. And these are just sections of the pole and I'll get to it on the next slide. When you look at GO95 and P Gen rules compliance, what you are doing is you have to look at the elevation of the pole. You also have to look at sections of the pole because you have to comply at each section for

climbing. And those gaps, as you look at the show, there's 4 in gap that surrounds the pole. Those gaps are there to show compliance at each equipment level, antenna level, other utility point level for climbing space. This is the elevation out of the plans. Uh it's important to note that it is PG Greenbook and GO 95 compliant. Those are the technical rules for attachment to utility poles. Um, street side is six o'clock. When you look at this, if you're standing at the street, it's the bottom of the clock and you have the clock. As we were out there, Jacob commented the between the nine and 12, that back corner of the pole where the equipment is. This is looking diagonally across the street to look right at the side of the equipment to show everything uh without the tree or any obstruction. Now, these heights of all these attachments, they comply with GO95, they comply with the green book requirements. How this works is we go to PG& we want to attach to this pole. We talk to PG about attachment heights, future plans that we may not see because they own the pole and they control the pole. We work out all those heights and put those into the plans. Uh earlier in the process, people said prove that P Gen approved this design. Um P Gen issued the construction sketch which specifies the equipment and the location shown. They issued the contract which references the plans. Then P Gen used the Verizon plans for their pole replacement work with the city. So what they did is they took our plans and said, "We need to replace this pole for this project." The city said, "No, that's premature. You show the wireless equipment that's not approved with the use permit yet, so we have to stop." All of these things point to PG& agreement that it complies with their standards which complies with GO95 and that everyone is agreement from a technical standpoint that this works. Just a quick po comment regarding FCC guidelines. It complies 04% at ground

level of allowable emissions. So less than half a percent of allowable emissions at grade based on the design uh noise studies there's we did the noise studies provided the information this is all passively cooled there's no fans uh the equipment is designed to just have air flow over it and we'll get to that when we talk about the golden bow why that's important to comment on so it's silent. Now with regard to the golden bow um it is constructible. We did meet out with the executive director of the Golden Bow uh talked about their property, their use, their needs, what of space was available and we can construct a site there. Not the site that Leaf Arobach presents, but we can present a site that will work construction standpoint, meaning we could build it. What it does is it does not work for other reasons that will be discussed. There's a whole bunch of technical reasons aside from, you know, can we actually hammer nail things together and put the elements out there? That works. Nothing else does. So, what that looks like is this photo simulation right here. That is a 4ft square by 10 ft tall chimney. What that does is that allows all the radios and antennas to be placed above the roof. Now, that's important from the Golden Boughs perspective. placing anything inside the building, heat generating equipment like the radios, requires fans, requires cooling, rack equipment because there's no uh the fiber available here requires rack space that has to go outside. That would go on the side of the building. If we move that into the building, we need to cool that. It takes up space. It introduces fans in the backstage area. If we move any of those elements below the roof, uh, in layman's terms, we would call that cooking off, meaning it just produces so much heat that it stops functioning. It shuts itself off to protect it. It literally just destroys

itself with the heat. We then have to have air exchange equipment. Cool that. Those are vibrations. That's noise. That's space that the Golden Bow found would be disruptive to their operation. So, the agreement with the Golden Bow would be everything goes above the roof. that requires a large chimney to house that equipment. Now that includes passive ventilation. What we did is on these sides where the antennas look through, the antennas could see through will transmit through the material. On the back side would be louvers. Air could get inside the chimney. The hot air then rises out the top and it just naturally pulls through. If you confine that space too much, it doesn't work. The air gets jammed in there. it cooks off. This next slide, this is from a drone taken at the location where that chimney was shown looking towards the coverage objective. This is 7 ft above the roof. So, this is the center line of the antenna. This is what the antenna would be looking out and see. And you see all of those branches and even in the distance, what you see is you can't see the coverage area. What you see is trees and that is uh one of the technical reasons that will be discussed later. CTC came up with a chimney design. Uh it's infeasible from Verizon Wireless's needs. It's 28 in in diameter. Now that's only two antennas, not four. Uh it does not the location they show on the roof ridge does not work. I was inside the roof underneath looking at the roof framing, looking at where we would place it, how we would have the building support the load, and it wouldn't work directly on the roof. Just has to move off a little bit. But with a round structure at this size, that small footprint then blocks access from the canenna in under the roof. What happens here is they have a 43 cubic foot volume. Uh the proposed design that we

contemplated had 160 cubic feet that's necessary for cooling for that air flow that was discussed and also those entries back and forth underneath up into the chimney. They do not provide any space for that cooling for that entry air in in this diagram rights being in the con in the the cylinder itself. So there's no cooling here that would cook off. Also in their diagrams they discuss that they would place heat generated equipment under the roof which is prohibited by the golden bow because of the space and the heat issues we talked about before. And then they would require redundant cabling. You'd have to cable up into it, then down, then back up. There's not enough physical space with their proposed design. Um, we know all of this from experience. This is a great design from about 20 years ago. Before we did radios up with the antennas, when radios were on the ground, when you had rows of equipment cabinets, when it was all down there, we would do this. Then when we tried to retrofit those sites over history, it doesn't fit. It doesn't work. So they still exist and what you see is other structures nearby on a roof, a parapit wall, something at the sunset center. That's how it's done there. The parapit hides the radios that are outside. We don't have that situation here. We can't make it work that way here. So the golden bow is not an alternative because it's not technically feasible. And with that, I'd like to hand the presentation off to Rich Conroy. Yeah, he'll be doing his slides. He's up.

Share my slide. How long is it going to be till he's here? He's here. Um I think uh Daniel's going to show the Zoom on the chambers. Yep, there we go. All right, we're good. There he is. Can you hear me? This is Rich Conroy. Yes. U and my slides I just tried to share my screen. Is that visible? Yes.

All right. Great. Thank you. Uh council members, uh good afternoon, good evening. This is my name is Rich Conroy with Purecon Solutions. I'm the president of Purecon and a senior radio frequency engineer with over 38 years experience designing wireless networks. Um my presentation here is really going to be focused on the RF engineering analysis of the golden bow as a technically feasible alternative. And while I go through that try to address some of the other items that have come up already, I have four main topics to go through here. Uh CTC's attachment six where they reviewed Purecon supplement report number four. Uh Purecon's golden bow analysis. Uh I will go through that. CTC's attachment number five, the way they went through the golden bow analysis. He showed some of those graphics earlier and some technical fact conclusions. There's three points from CTC's attachment number six review of my supplement report that I want to address. One was the um comment that I redefined the gap from the original versus what I called it as the gap remaining. So, I'll go into that and explain the differences there. Uh, CTC's claim it showed the exhibit tonight of the poor sonor near 8th Avenue in Kasanova Street has no relevance. I will point out why that is the case. And then furthermore, CTC uses incorrect down tilt assumptions in their modeling that comes directly from their report in attachment six. This exhibit here that I'm displaying represents what I'm what's called the uplink maximum available path loss 127 dB. It shows a map on the left hand side with various dark green, light green, and yellow colors. And what this is

representing is the user's device trying to reach back to a cell site. These systems are two-way. The cell sites communicate in a downward fashion to the user devices and they do that at typically um significant higher power level as you would expect than the user device. User device is much lower power and the system needs to be designed to operate in both what both directions. Having a a site transmit out far distances where the user device cannot reach back will result in a gap. What this map is intended to do is demonstrate, we can look at the lower left here. When you're close to a site, you have strong signal and you have about 10 dB of margin. You're inside a building, you have other factors, other interference. You could still reach that cell site. As you move further away from the cell site, the user, you're in the green area, the light green area. You still have a good amount of margin to reach that cell site. But when you approach the yellow area, that's the area where the user device wants to hand off to another stronger cell. That's an area where the device is subject area where it becomes marginal and there's only 0 to 5 dB. And then the gray areas, you're completely in a dead zone. You're not communicating back to the nearby cell tower. I traced that area and I called that the gap remaining. That gap remaining is based upon what would remain when the existing sites are operating and the two planned approved sites are operating. This is the gap that remains. I then removed all those colors and just displayed the one exhibit on the right in my report with the sole purpose to show what the site geometry and spacing is that any candidate should have with regard to

existing and approved sites. This being the gap remaining, one would logically seek if you think of it like a puzzle piece, the center of that puzzle piece would be somewhere around the area where the proposed site is SF00001. It is obvious from a proximity and a a geometry standpoint that the golden bow is not within that gap area remaining. It is outside the gap remaining. It is also in existing coverage area of existing sites. For that reason alone from an RF engineering perspective, it would be ruled a technically infeasible candidate. We we should not have to go any further from an engineering perspective. But we did. The next thing that Afroach brings up in his report um is this review of the sonar map that he had displayed. He had indicated here that there's there's an area of dark black. This whole area that I identified has poor signar and yes there is an area of dark black near 8th a and kasanova. The question is why? Why would that area have poor signar when there is two sites within a block from it? The answer is is clear and he actually said it is receiving strong signal from two sites that are very close to one another creating interference. The sunny sunnyside rooftop here was a settlement to move a small cell that was planned to be an omniirectional antenna and divided into two sector antennas and those sector antennas are creating their own internal interference in that area. But furthermore, the golden bow site cannot even correct the problem. The golden bell site even in my supplement report number two said was not feasible because it would create more interference to the overall

network. It could not be designed as an omni would have to be sectorized and sectorizing would have to focus the signal in the northwest and the southwest directions only because anything pointing to the north, east or south would cause more interference. So even if the golden bow was used, it would not solve this problem. This problem would still remain. The only way to solve this problem is to perhaps take one of these antennas off of the sunny side. It's not going to be corrected by the Golden Bow. Uh therefore, it's irrelevant. Pointing this map out. It doesn't change the cell site geometry. The Golden Bow is not located within the gap area and it cannot rectify the problem. Anyway, CTC in this report also used an incorrect downtilt assumption. They assumed that the Golden Bell can be designed with no down tilt because the surrounding Verizon sites currently operate that way. That assumption misunderstands why those sites are operating with minimal downill today. Verizon's existing macro sites operate that way because they're attempting to stretch coverage across the terrain constrained areas with no infill sites. That's not the optimum network configuration. That's a compromise. Basically, they're using the existing macro sites to try to fill the area. The areas that we've drove showed a significant amount of interference. That's what those sites are causing. However, they're allowing users to have some access to the system, albeit very poor access. The small cells that Verizon's planning on deploying, the whole small cell design is specifically done so these surrounding sites can later be reoptimized with necessary electrical downhill to control interference. We can't do that today. Verizon if Verizon

was to downhill today those areas where it has poor Sinaar high interference would be completely absent of signal there'd be no use so instead of operating poorly it would operate at not at all so they cannot do that today until the small cell systems are deployed CTC's rooftop modeling that they showed later assumed today's compromised condition is a permanent design state it's not and it's not appropriate to model it that Okay, now let's go into the golden bow analysis. There's the feasibility criteria to analyze an alternate. It needs to be analyzed with the same criteria. As a reminder, Verizon is deploying a small cell network to densify their mid-band inclusive of Cband. Midband is a higher frequency and provides more capacity, better quality service, but it does not travel as far. It's got a very small smaller range and that's why Verizon designed these small cells to infill these areas so they could do that down. The criteria proximity is key. Proximity to the area requiring service the gap remaining. You want to have a facility in the center of that gap so users as they reach the edges of that gap they still have an equal distance to the center where the site was. Alignment with planned small cell deployment geometry should be aligned with the other sites with regard to distance and spacing. Compatibility with antenna configuration. Verizon's deploying omnidirectional antennas. That's antennas that provide circular coverage in 360° with four transmitters, four receivers. It's a myo type of configuration. That omni configuration minimizes interceptor handoffs. What that means is once you're in coverage range of that omni site, you don't need to hand in and out to other

sectors. You're in that particular coverage area that improves the quality, improves the service within the site. And furthermore, the omnidirectional antennas are equipped with 10° electrical down tilt on the small cells that allows the coverage to be localized, minimizes overlap, and improves the call quality. This allows maintenance of two-way communications like I spoke about earlier. Uplink limited design conditions. So I have three here that we're going to analyze or three that we did analyze in my report. The first is the proposed small cell versus the golden bow as the small cell equivalent. That is the most appropriate. That's basically saying we're trying to deploy a small cell. We're going to look at a feasible alternative to see if an alternative is feasible. It needs to be challenged with the same criteria. That's item one. Item two and three is basically asking us to change our technology to a macro style type antenna. That's not the desired technology. In my supplement two, we pointed that out and we said that is not a feasible alternative. We said it clear as day. It's not feasible alternative. But we analyzed it again here and we tried to analyze it here in a method that demonstrates what the uplink limited effects are. So this next exhibit on the left, this is a sidebyside comparison of the proposed small cell on the left to the golden bow location. If the Golden Bow is modeled as a small cell equivalent, that's with an omniirectional type of antenna as best as we can fit on that rooftop. As you can see on the left hand side, the dark green, very good margin for users on the edge of this gap area seem to have equal

range to that center. And it covers very well. It covers most of the of the gap all the way down to the southern portion. And it does provide some coverage out past the Golden Bow. We look at the Golden Bow location. It provides virtually no coverage within the gap area whatsoever. That's modeled as a small cell equivalent and clearly shows that the Golden Bell rooftop is not technically feasible of remedying the gap in service. Then we look at two degrees electrical down tilt. This requires a macro style high gain panel antenna. That number one violates Verizon's small cell criteria. So we're taking a technology change to try to make this alternative site work. It provides extended signal range. We cannot have extended signal range as was explained by even Lee Afroback. That causes interference. It requires sectors now and now we need to have multiple sectors that violates the small cell design criteria again because it requires intercelloffs. It creates intercell interference issues and poor performance. The next slide shows we evaluated the uplink performance again to see how the users can reach the golden bow. We show extended signal range creates interference and it leaves extended holes. So again on the left we have the proposed site condition and how it fills the gap remaining and on the right we have the golden bow configured. Again this is AWS that's 2100 megahertz band and this shows the golden bow with a northwest sector and a southwest sector. The northwest sector is propagating too far. I showed that in my other exhibits in the report that it's just not enough down tilt. But more importantly, the center of the gap has less than zero margin. The users are too far away to

communicate back on an uplink perspective. And that basically shows that users are centered gap have the longest distance. The site's not centrally located. Once again, the Golden B rooftop in this example is not a technically feasible alternative of remedying remedying the the gap in service. Then we looked at the golden bow with a minimum with a minimal of 8 degrees electrical down tilt. Now uh in CTC's report they asked why didn't we evaluate anything between 2 and 8°. That's um because 8° comes from basic geometry using antenna height above terrain the vertical beam width and the target ground intercept distance. We basically solve for the down tilt that places the upper boundary of the antenna main lobe at the ground at.35 mi given the rooftops height above terrain and line of sight profile. Radio frequency engineering is extremely geometry driven. You have to do geometry and we're looking at getting the antenna signal to be controlled. So it does not provide extended range. There's an exact down tilt that is calculated. So, anything between two and five is no good. It's going to extend that range into interference. It's going to overshoot from that rooftop and they're going to basically reduce the ability to serve the center of a gap. Again, this requires macro style high gain antennas. Violates Verizon small cell criteria. Requires multiple sectors. Same issue as before. And we evaluate it in the same manner. When we look at the 8 degrees down tilt again with the AWS band that's the 2100 MHz band on the left hand side we have the proposed site again provides uniform uplink margin throughout the gap area the golden bow while our interference

range now has been controlled appropriately using the 8° then the.35 miles range the center of the of the gap area has 0 to 5 dB margin meaning users in this particular area in their homes and in the entire south area are going to have difficulty and gaps in reaching back to the to the cell site and the performance will not be not be performing properly. So we show here uplink margin 0 to 5dB is the central portion of gap below zero and this whole southern portion of gap. Once again a golden bow is not technically feasible to remedy the gap in service. Also I want to remind that Verizon's deploying Cband that's a 3700 megahertz band. That's significantly more capacity more throughput more channels. has the same issues as AWS band. However, it's a higher frequency, doesn't cover as far. I want to point out this was not modeled by CTC leafroach. Even his image he had tonight had a label of 3700 MHz. That is inaccurate. He could comment on that later, but that is clearly inaccurate. When we look at the Cband the 3,700 MHz again on the left is the proposed site fills the central portion of the gap equal ranges to the users at the French whereas the golden bow at Cabban again leaves a huge gap in the center of the gap area leaves the complete southern section devoid of any coverage.

Rich, we're down to five minutes left. if you can.

Yes, I'm almost done there. So, once again, a golden bow rooftop is not technically feasible. A few things on CTC's golden bow analysis. Um, they indicated Lee Arobek indicated he could not perform maximum allowable path loss uplink analysis without Verizon's input. That's technically inaccurate. He was already able to perform propagation analysis. He therefore has the path loss values. he can perform the uplink analysis. He makes an incorrect statement about regarding down tilt. Um that assumption that the way it's done today is not the way that you need to model it for the proposed systems of the future. It is not model with the same criteria used to evaluate the proposed small cell. He ignores the critical design criteria. Does not model interference or sonar. Page eight of his report makes a statement. However, there nothing's represented in the plots. Did not model Cband and I question the clutter of terrain database whether the model was tuned or what antenna patterns he's actually using. We look at his information provided on the left here is 2100 megahertz. I have that highlighted. It also says it in the call out here. But interference is a problem. This whole area to the south is going to be interference. This area where he was indicating the sonar problem was before is going to be interference. It's going to be interference because it's overlapping with the other adjacent sites. They all are operating on the same frequency. Therefore, you cannot have them overlap at equal powers. They will cause interference. Again, this extensive extensive coverage in this area to the southeast is questionable because the antenna pattern

is only about 65° at 2100 MHz. The fact that it's covering all the way out here makes me suspect there's something wrong with the antenna pattern in his model. This is the excuse me, this is the mayor and you have 3 minutes left. So, do you want to allocate your time? That's 3 minutes total time. So that leaves me three

on the right. He doesn't provide this information on the extended. He calls out 1950, but he labels it 3700. This is clearly not 3700. It's bigger than the the uh 2100. So again, I question his data needs to be reviewed. Some technical fact conclusions. The Golden Bow rooftop is not a technically feasible alternative. Fact number one, it cannot meet the cell geometry proximity requirement. It's not located near the center of the gap, located at the edge of existing coverage. Fact number two, cannot meet the service requirements under the same small cell criteria. Small cell equivalent analysis. Fact number three, cannot meet the service requirements by changing antenna design to macro style. Low down causes destructive interference. The required downfield doesn't provide effective service. Requires sectorized antennas. Creates intercell handoff. for quality and mid-band including Cband cannot support C-band coverage within core gap area. The conclusion and it's the same conclusion we've been making since we've first brought this up is not a technically feasible alternative.

Thank you, Rich. That is all. So, uh Paulite Council Verizon, uh I see I have one minute. I could do it in five minutes. I could come back and do it on rebuttal if you prefer. Um, but I saw that the the staff had a 40m minute presentation and Gail about 20 minutes. I I could go ahead go five minutes.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. Paul Albert and outside council, we very much value your time. So Rich is very professional and knowledgeable in his area and so is Lee Afflebeck. But in CT the golden bout as Rich was explaining simply doesn't work for technical reasons. Lee modeled. We were asked by the public to try and see if a tall macro antenna would work uh and and modeled and said yes, you can get some signal in it. But as you heard, the issue is not signal strength. Lee himself said there's plenty of signal. You just heard him say that. Our problem here and with all small cells is not signal strength. It's the comparison of adjacent signal with other signal that's in the area and signal quality. that signal to noise issue. We're trying to get a dominant signal. So your phone is listening to one antenna, not to to multiple. And Lee is spraying coverage, the green, you know, some people call it crayons on a map, but this green coverage over our large area, exacerbating the problem that we have right next to the Golden Bow and actually wiping out the the other small cell that we're going to put in, the O2 small cell that's already been permitted in the county, was part of our settlement to move them out of the city and into the county. So, it completely exacerbates the problem. And I'd love to have Lee come back and explain that. But I think if you re read Lee's report, read Lee never says that this golden bow is technically feasible. He says there's a problem. I don't know what the trees are going to do. I don't uh I don't know what the path loss is going to be. I don't know what the signal quality or or other issues are going to be. He doesn't have the data to really to answer the question. And uh here Purecon has answered the question. So the bottom line is for Verizon the golden ballast it's not technically feasible doesn't work and and we need to convey that to

you and see if we can somehow uh resolve our dis our disagreements the golden bow also also is going to require I didn't check my time the golden bow is also going to require historic review it's on a historic site our location is adjacent to a historic site but we're going to have to go to the state historic preservation office we're going to have to get a height exception we're going to have to go I saw you out We're going to have to go 10 ft above that roof line with a 4x4 uh faux chimney or whatever it is. We're going to have to enter into a lease that usually takes about a year. The rental rate at the Sunset Center, which was part of our settlement agreement, we agreed with you it would be a thousand a month. I don't think we're going to get a th000 a month uh at the at the Golden Bell. Um and so for all of these reasons, heights, historical trees, we have to trim the trees. Uh there's no tree trimming where we are. And it's a big deal, I know, to cut trees here. So, we think actually it's much more intrusive and it doesn't work. And based on that, that's the whole basis of our arguments. And I could probably stop right there because without the golden bow, there is no solution. And that's there's no denying the site, frankly. Uh, and the that whole concept of big antennas came from public comment, the attorney from New York saying, "Oh, you can do it with bigger antennas." Well, you can't. And if you read our report, it said, "Well, we tried these antennas, but you read the full report and it says they don't work." Um, I'm going to quick the joke is you have two lawyers in a room and you get three opinions. Clearly, we completely disagree with the analysis, the legal analysis that you heard with respect to prohision of service on the under the telecommunications act. Uh, Lee and and Mr. Conroy from Purecon both agree there's a gap. No issue. The second issue is our we do we have the least intrusive location and we think absolutely two foot antenna on top of a telephone pole versus a site that doesn't even work and it's going to make the system work and it's going to ruin our small cell technology. We can't even

put our other small cell in because it's going to throw so much signal. So no question there on prohibition of service. With respect to the materially inhibit standard you keep hearing and this is from the seventh circuit. the New York attorney threw it in there that it's the totality of the circumstances. Well, if you look up the totality of the circumstances, it's the accumulation of obstacles that confound the carrier is the materially inhibit standard for totality of the circumstances. And in this case, we're talking about delay cost uh unreasonable delay and unreasonable cost and the fact that we can't build the network that we want to build. And so we absolutely think this is a prohibition of service case under the telecommunications act. Um there's also the moratorum order. Moratorium order FCC uh says that if a community continuously denies a certain category of facilities, it's the same thing as a moratorum. And we have had seven now, this is our seventh application for a facility in the rightway over the last seven years. And yes, I've been here. Um, and it's clear that nothing's being allowed in the rightway. In fact, one of your findings is that it would create a precedence if you approve this one. Oh, we might have to allow more on the right.

Clearly a moratorium on facilities in the rightway. Was that light flashing, meaning I was done? Um, the the uh I'll end then with section 70. Oh, I could get into Carl's bed. Gail said that you weren't legislating technology. If you're not letting us put small cells, small cell geography, put small cells that have to be next to each other, have to be in a residential area to serve that small area, that's legislating technology. So, we think that you can't dictate that technology that way. The last one is 7901 gives a statewide franchise to place facilities in the California rideway, goes back to the Civil War without any fee. Uh, she said, well, if there's an alternative, it doesn't really matter. There's no alternative. Why don't you save that for rebuttal?

Thank you. There's no alternatives analysis to 7901. We're gonna give you some time to rebut. You've been very polite. Thank you so much. I have I am a nice guy. So, uh, Mr. Mayor, questions now or questions on questions now? Yes. I have a I have a number of questions. Go ahead. You start. Um, uh, thank you. Um, a question for staff first. Um, about the shroud. Could I uh could I have um Oh, yeah. Could you come up? Yeah.

So, Mr. Schubin Mr. Schubin uh made the statement that when they submitted the plans uh the first time around um the sort of I talked about this before, the 16 1/2 ft cubic foot plans, um it didn't have a shroud and then or it didn't have the uh it didn't have the the is that I don't think that's the right word. The uh the flaps. Yeah.

And that the city asked them to put the flaps in and then the planning commission uh basically pixade the whole thing based on the flaps. Um, could you shed some light on that sort of sequence of events? And then, uh, my follow-up question to that would be after you shed some light on that sequence of events, could you, was that information known to the planning commission? I'm trying to pull up the completeness review right now. Okay. I have another question for another staff member. If you'd like me to go on and I can come back to you in a minute, that'd be great. Thank you.

Okay. Uh, second question for staff member. Um, and I know I've talked to br I've talked to I've talked to Brandon about this before. Um, Mr. Albertan brought up the subject of the historicity of the theater and the historic uh the, you know, the historic n the historic stuff that Verizon would have to jump through to get that in his case the chimney posted to the top. Um, is that the case? like what would the review process be for the chimney given the theater?

Um staff would have to consult with um May Clovis who is our historic consultant. She would have to review any um any proposed plans and then she would have to um make a consistency determination whether or not the development on that structure is consistent with the Secretary of Interior's

one standards. One additional note to what um Miss Janette said is that the building the the Golden Bow was historic for its use, not the building itself. There's been development projects, modifications already approved to the exterior of the building. It's not about the building itself. It's about the use on the site because it's a use that typically wouldn't be allowed in a residential neighborhood. So, it's the use as a theater that that is the historic part of that that site. So the question that me Clovis would be forced to answer is not whether or not the the architecture of the smoke stack is compatible with the architecture of the theater. That's right. It's whether the use of the whether the use of the RF antennas would be compatible with the use as a theater.

That's right. It' be the site as a whole. So, not just the particular building or a portion of the building. I don't know whether like and I'm being honest like I don't know whether to laugh at that or whether to be a ghast at that. Maybe they're the same thing. Do you like what should I be doing? Like should I be like if I was Verizon like if I was applying if I was applying to put this thing on the top of the roof like

would I have certainty that that would get through you know the his the city's historic code like uh and and then in and then in sort of as part of that process would that actually go to the HRB or or would that or is that is that a counter decision? it would go before the HRB and then if it's a use permit ultimately the planning commission.

So, so if Verizon submitted another application for the Golden Bal Theater, which presumably they would have to do if we went down some version of that road that that application would also have to go before the HRB. So we'd have to pick up the for the planning commission. Then we have to go for the HRB and we'd end up in a situation like uh seventh and Dolores where you know like that project where it goes it like jumps between uh jumps between um projects it jumps between boards and the council like over and over again to get the

Well, I don't think we'll comment on what on that part of it, but certainly the process would be HRB and then planning commission. Whether or not it goes back and forth like seven and Dolores, I'm not gonna make that comparison. But yeah, thank you. Are you ready or I have one more question for Gail? I

I can answer the question. Okay. Uh I just pulled up the completeness reviews that we provided to the applica applicant. Um based off our we provided two completeness reviews, one in November and one in December. Um I didn't recall requesting specifically wings or flaps. And in reviewing the completeness review, there's nothing specifically in there mentioning it. So, I'm curious if the uh statement by the applicant/appellant um was specifically about previous work they had done with the city um maybe on previous applications. So, I'd ask for clarification from Mr. Schubin. I'm not sure. Sure.

Yeah. Mr. Olander just gave you your answer. That was previous discussion. Uh why the city was working on their code. We presented design options back and forth to the city discussions. Uh what if type comments and that was one of the comments that came back out of that. What could you do to close the gap? We could put the flaps on or the wings, however they're described. Yeah, we would like to see that. That's just that was just an aesthetic aesthetic. Completely aesthetic. There's no other than other than aesthetic. There's no functional uh reason for it. There's no equipment back there. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And then I have a question for uh something brought up for Gail. Is Gail still on the phone?

Yep, I'm available.

Great. Um Mr. uh Conroy and then uh Mr. Conroy made the statement in a couple of his slides which uh we by the way do not have a copy of I don't think and that was a do we have a copy of it? And that was a pretty significant hindrance um to not have copies of the slides. you saw me sitting here taking pictures of them that Verizon is deploying a small cell network and then Mr. Albertton made the statement that um uh Verizon you know if we don't allow them to build the uh to put the put the antenna on Carmelo that Verizon wouldn't be allowed to build the network that they wanted to build. And I'm a I'm a little confused like is that do we have an obligation to Verizon to allow them to uh to use Mr. Albertton's word build the network they want to build? Is that what our like legal obligation is? Uh that's a great question. And so your legal obligation here is to review this application which is for a single facility and determine whether uh the applicant has met the the standards for approval. And so the the the um the issue about uh you know small cell network uh it's not they haven't presented an application. You're not considering an application for a small cell network. you're considering an application for a single uh facility and in the uh effective prohibition test the significant gap least intrusive means you're evaluating whether there are uh what is the least intrusive means to fill the gap. If you find there's a significant gap and and that evaluation uh requires the applicant to look make a comprehensive

evaluation of alternatives uh which uh that's where the you know whether you have to find what is the least intrusive means that is technically feasible and available uh and most uh hones hones most closely to your your policy that is reflected in or ordinance because what they are asking for is that you as I said in my initial presentation that your rules would have to bend uh for their uh for uh for their facility uh to avoid a conflict with uh federal law.

So the answer to my question like do we have to allow them to do that is not really. Yeah. Not really. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. Uh, I just wanted to comment that I agree with what Jeff said that, um, this copy we received um is missing just about everything that was shown in the slides, and I think that that's a hindrance. Um, and it's filled with other information that was not shown. So, it would have been helpful to have it be consistent so we could follow along. Uh, I do have one question for anyone from Verizon. Um, as part of the settlement agreement in 2020, um, node 002 in South Carmel and Carmel Point was located on Valley View in San Antonio. And I was wondering when that changed to 26226 Isabella and why

I missed I'm sorry. Why did it move out of Carmel and into the county? Is that the question? Why did the initial location was Valley View and San Antonio? I actually have a picture of it. I don't know know if it's too much trouble to bring up the slide. So, I'm just wondering um since that was part of the original settlement agreement and it was closer to the original location actually was near Dale's house I think was near San Antonio and 13th or so. Um so why did it move from San Antonio and Valley View all the way to 26226 is Isabella? This is the current location I'm talking about. That pole right there would not be a viable uh pole to attach to.

So why why was that part of the agreement? I see it's got that box that's probably Comcast equipment. Well, there's there's there's the box. There's the c there's there's several. I don't think we need to go into it. the location uh my understanding was at that time was more generalizing a site around that area and then we went out and found when went again we did this same exercise of pole by pole will this work will this work will this work and we found a pole where it does work and the pole's actually been replaced and is waiting uh hasn't been built because of uh fiber delivery delays but it's quite a bit further to the south in Carmel point.

We had to go that far. We walked the neighborhood, looked at all the polls. We have to go that far to find a viable poll that met all the criteria. But doesn't that also affect the area right now that we're discussing for this current application? I will have to defer that to Rich Conroy because of how much it would move. That's that's a technical. Okay. Thank you. But yeah, we we originally came in with five nodes that would work in the community and in fact

Pete picked them out and then walked around with the public works director who picked five different bowls, but they all worked like sprinklers on a lawn to fill the gap. And so when we in the settlement agreement agreed to move nodes three and four under the Sunset Center and the other two nodes out to the county, that compromised our network. Absolutely. And it makes it much harder for us to fill that sweet spot in the middle where we again it's not a coverage problem. We got plenty of signal. We're trying to provide a dominant signal uh to that one area which is what we're unable to do in terms of not building a small cell network but solving the problem that we have and that's why for us it's a prohibition. Sorry, next question.

Anything else? Okay. Um, so I guess my question is for the Verizon folks. So in we've now had four pretty voluminous reports from um, Purecon from your um, technical group. Um and in the first three they all focused on um down link, right? Basically downloads. And then if you get to the fourth report, it sort of shifts to uplink. And so my question is if you all were so concerned about uplink, why didn't you have that in the first three reports?

Well, because it wasn't an issue with the small cell that we're proposing. It only becomes an issue when we responded to public comment and tried to uh it was the New York attorney saying, "Oh, the Golden Bell works. You just got to put high gain tall antennas out there." So, we have this so we have antennas that went from 2 feet to 96 in and from 8 dB gain to 20 dB gain like five times the signal strength. And if you try and do that, you try and move our small cell off to the side, then you have an uplink problem. And the uplink problem, as he explained, is the phone getting to the the phone has to talk to the antenna as well as the antenna back the other way. And I think I can answer that question.

Oh, I'm sorry, Rich. I didn't know you. Please go ahead.

Yes. So, so we always analyze the uplink. Even the drive test data we performed, we collect down link signal, but the resulting signal strength that we look at is the subtraction of the maximum allowable path loss based upon uplink which is 127 dB. That's how we get to the neg 95 dBm that we need because we look at what is the worst case link and we use that path loss. We represent it as one solid color shown to down link. That's typically the common way that it's done. It's easier to read, easier to understand. When we're dealing with analyzing an alternative that is clearly outside of the area of need, we had to go to um representing it in different colors to represent what the uplink perspective is from the user. So, one can understand that this golden bow is not a feasible alternative. Can you go back to is there a way for us to bring up um the Purecon presentation?

And we submitted that before noon today. I don't know why you didn't get copies of that. I mean, I could email it to somebody right now if you'd like. We submitted them together, your slides and and the other slides. Okay. I want to go back if I can, too. I It's somewhere around PDF page 12 of your presentation. Rich, can you pull up page 12? Yep. Pull it up right now. So, sorry. Thanks for your patience. That's page 12. Page 12.

Is that the right page or I could go up or down? Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jeff. While you're looking for that, we We do have a set of slides here that look like this. Oh, okay. To your to your point that we don't have to your point that you submitted something. We do have a set of slides, but most of the slides that you a lot of the slides from the presentation are not in here. Were they Were they Rich's slides? They're just Mr. Schubin's

I don't have any idea. Like some of the slides look the same as um Okay. I Sorry. I didn't Yeah. Council member, the slides are up. Uh they're on the city's machine. We did submit them. They were there. We just he went through them for speed of having to come back and tell us next slide. That's why he showed them, but they're they're here and they're on the machine that staff has. Okay. So, I guess the confusion may be that there was Rich's Rich's slides were separate because he's a separate consultant. Okay. So, um, I'm trying to find I need to because I was just sort of looking at this as you were going through it. Scroll up just a little bit for me, sir.

Nova. Oh, it's you, Nova. Scroll up, ma'am. Ma'am, um, go up again. I just want to see. I'm trying to figure out make sure I have the right map. Go up just again more. Um, up again. Just want to make sure I'm looking at the right one. Okay, go down. I'm looking for those maps with the colors. There's some more like farther up. But farther up, the ones that look like this though are the Well, yeah, there's another one. That one is that That's what I remember.

Yeah, I think I'm looking for the one where um Yeah. Go down more. Not this one.

Not that one. Let's see. So, this one is comparing um a sideby-side comparison of if you did a small cell on the golden bow and a small cell at the proposed car set, right? So, okay. So, keep going down one more okay this is the one I want. So this if I'm understanding correctly is um a comparison of the car this is uplink in both maps and it's the Carmelo site versus the um versus the golden bow site. Uh and the comment was made that on the right hand side which is the golden bow map that it leaves quote unquote you know a big gap which is that part directly to the west which we you know I don't know that we've had a chance to evaluate um we were looking I think at different metrics but I think one thing that jumps out to me is Um, on the left hand side, you still have an equivalently sized gap in the northwest corner of your red dotted area, don't you? Yes. That's that's always been a gap in that northwest corner. But this 2°, not only does leave a gap in the center, the one on the right, the exhibit on the right, it's also to the north. It's propagating too far. It goes well beyond this area. It goes across the water all the way over Pebble Beach.

I guess my question is if you're trying to fill gaps, it looks like they both result in a pretty equivalent size gap. They're just in different spots, but they're both pretty big gaps. And this is based on uplink. Correct. This is based on uplink. Yes. Okay. And then the next question I have is if we go down, I think we there's one where they're looking one more. Yeah, this is one where they're looking at I think 3700 megahertz. So, this is the kind of Cband. No, this this is still AWS the 2100. Okay, go down. Go down a little bit more. There's I thought there was a 3700 MHz one. Yeah, two more down.

Okay. So on this one um you know I think again the comment was basically made that the lefthand map was substantially superior in terms of how much it could fill this gap. And um I would tell you that when I when I look at this it's not immediately obvious to me that that's necessarily the case. I think if I tried to calculate the the area under the green shading, you know, my naked eye sort of tells me it's probably about the same, you know, in terms of area within the red dotted quote unquote identified gap. You're creating about as much dark green area in both scenarios. Um, and so my question for you is, are you able to quantify that? Do you have that data? Can you tell me sort of how many square miles or whatever the metric is that's in the dark green and the yellow in either of these maps?

Well, the point is that it's not how many square miles, it's throughout the center core of the gap, users are not able to reach back to the golden bow and then outside the gap area, the golden bow is just creating interference. So it's creating harmful interference at the existing network on the outside of the gap and on the inside it's it's incomplete at filling the gap because its location is improper. You say it's incomplete but again when I look at this I'm seeing about the same area. Correct me if I'm wrong Rich but that upper right hand green area you're looking at is conflicting with the sunset center. So it is creating a problem. It is providing signal where there's already signal. So that's

yeah, but on the interior of the gap turned on. You're looking at one site. So do your maps do your not your maps don't take into consideration interference? This map doesn't but are Rich, you can speak to that, I guess.

Yeah, this map is not looking at interference. It's just looking at the uplink path loss, but from the basically the core of the gap back to Golden Bow where the where the gap area is inside there there's no service. Um and the whole yellow area is no service in that core area of the gap as well uh because it's competing against other existing signals that already are creating interference. So it has to have substantial margin in the central core where the golden bow is showing half of the margin half of the dark green outside of the gap area and the other half inside of it with the remainder being yellow or or dark gray. again, it's location is not in the proper spot.

So, I'm I'm interested in this this interference question. Is uh is Lee still on the line from CTC?

I Yeah. Uh Lee, I think they have a question for you. Yeah, I'm just going to go here. I was I was enjoying the conversation so much. Uh, Nova, you pull up. I had a couple here. We got some engineer trainees on this project. I can see that. Okay, here's I'm alive. Pull that up real quick. Yeah, Lee, hold on one second. We're pulling up another slide. Okay, just so you know, Lee, we're not laughing here. This is sort of serious. If I can just interrupt. Does Lee, do you have these slides? I I'm not sure that they made them. I

I have seen them before and I'm I'm familiar with the subject. So, I will do my best. Okay. Rich will correct me if I'm wrong. Okay. So, Lee, can you see what we're presenting on the screen? I can. One of my favorite slides on the left. It's one of mine, too. It took me some time to figure it out.

Right. This is This is the one where I where when I bring it up, I think it gets uh Rich's blood pressure up. Uh that's the one that's the one where where I think we all agreed going out that that's where the the major problem is. You'll notice that yeah, there's there's there's uh spots going up and down that corridor on the left there. Sun cos.

Let me uh let me just let me get you started for a second. So, let me ask my question. So um the dark I think you know in reading your response to the fourth Purecon report was helpful for me. You know basically these black dots are the worst um downlink locations, the worst reception. These are the places where they had you have drop calls, right? And so, um, one of the things that you noted in your report was that this area, you know, unfortunately the Golden Battle location is not marked on the left-hand map, but maybe somebody could do it roughly with their cursor. Um, little over to the left more, but no, further left. It's it's anyway to the left and left more. Left and down. It's kind of the down left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left left somewhere in there

kasanova streak between stop that's it that thought you got it you're right on fire

so the um you know the interesting thing is that I think in my mind's eye when I was sort of hearing about this appeal I always envisioned that the quote unquote worst part of the gap was closer to the actual um proposed poll on Carmelo. Um but it turns out that that's maybe not the case, right? There's only like one of those black dots over there. Um and really the the worst area is this this area that's honestly pretty pretty close to where the um to where the Golden Bow is now. um League, can you just speak to that for a second? Um you you made some mention of that in the uh in your report. Um, and so to what extent do you feel like based on your analysis and your modeling that that area with all those dark black spots between I think roughly Camino Royale and Lincoln between 8th and 9th um to what extent do you think that a a a macro facility at the Golden Bow could help address that or do you think the interference issue is uh fatal.

Well, let me say that part of the problem here is the interference that comes over uh from the founders building but two 2.7 miles away. Correct. Basic basic basically what we have here is a signal that's coming down directly aimed and focused in that direction. Not correct. Excuse me. That's not correct. Let's just let's just have one at a time for a second.

Yeah, let me just finish that. That's the problem that we have along the the area there coming down down below up top there where we we're talking about we've got interference from numerous sites there. So, I agree with what Mr. Conroy said that something's got to be done to pull out some of the excessive RF because what we saw when we backed and we looked at all the measurements what we saw was that there were so much noise signals coming in uh unre undesirable signals all in the same frequency that you have this very uh this problem here from what I can see now on this chart here showing what they're proposing I don't see that there's going to be coverage provided from this site and I could be wrong without modifying the the radiation characteristics of the existing uh sites uh the downtown sites specifically. So right now uh there's not the basically the area that's the worst area is not going to get substantial improvement and that's shown by this drawing that one that we have here we're basically to get around that these are now the basically this is shown as being white here which I guess means no signal at all. I don't know what that code is. So, um, so yeah. So, basically what you're saying is,

um, the it's a band-aid. Get some band-aid down below. Yeah. And the area that that shows the worst signal, it doesn't actually do anything to um to improve that. Um, okay. Um, can Mr. And then just quickly, could I, if you could just scroll down, Nova? One more.

Okay. So, the uh the map on the right here um Lee, this is your this is your map um of computer modeled um down link. And my understanding is that that green shaded area um that those are areas that have at least the minimum uh required signal for inbuilding coverage so that could actually penetrate into somebody's home. Um is that correct? So how would you if you had to give a voice over on what is that map on the right mean? What's it telling us? What's that map on the right telling us?

What that's telling you, this is the calculated uh theoretical calculation based on the model that we have of the the minimum service required for inbuilding coverage. I might add this is the antenna that we were given the information uh from Mr. Conroyy's team. Uh this is not a CTC idea. It is our model. Uh it is our model. We set the uh the tilt on this at 5 degrees. And we did that because everywhere else the tilts down to zero. So they give maximum range. The only way to fight it is to essentially create an area buffer of zones. We I my my training is uh with the Federal Communications Commission. So we generally spoke in interference. We didn't speak about overlap because overlap doesn't really mean much. It's the ratios that we we're looking for.

But you're like if I'm looking at the I mean obviously the map on the left we now understand is now is an uplink gap. We've talked about that and you know how it just sort of moves the gap around or whatever. But in the if we're talking about downloads, um you know, the the gap on the left is still pretty similar to the original gap that they maintained except that it, you know, extended further south toward the point. Um are you am I understanding this right that you're basically saying that the your computer modeling shows that um this golden bow site at 5° could uh a macro facility could uh provide coverage to essentially that entire gap.

No, I'm not I think that there are more holes than that. All all I was trying to show that it is a viable site for a certain amount of coverage. If you go back and look on the left hand side the gap you'll notice all of a sudden the area where we have the red all this could be all the uh black in other words basically where it's one ratio there is uh it's it's been excluded. In other words, you look at the streets there and all of a sudden the area that was was on your on their listing there to be black uh is no problem. That's why I said the caps moving the goalposts have been moved.

Right. And then you had, you know, they they had made uh I think the attorney for Verizon had made a comment that in your report you hadn't made a definitive statement that you thought that the Golden Bow site was technically viable. Um, do you believe that the Golden Bow site is technically viable?

I believe it's technically viable. I don't believe it's technically viable to cover all uh the entire area they want to cover or have the cover of the area that they define the problem. Initially when we when we looked at this project here, I was asked by the uh members of the planning commission of uh why I did not select this as an optional site. And I said the reason I didn't accept that as an optional site was because uh there was no way they were going to cover from there in an omniirection area. Uh if I look at this engineering here uh I in my own mind I would be designing this with with at least two small cell sites. uh one up where the the ill- fated uh application we had before up north and then one down below at the site we're looking at an hour roughly in that area from an engineering standpoint not about any other reason. So that's and when I see that the area I mean if we really do believe that that the all the 7,000 measurements we took here mean something we have to realize that that has to be addressed and I don't see them being addressed.

So recognizing that it's a pretty you know it's a pretty decent gap and it's hard to cover it with a single site. Um, are you you're saying though that it is a it's technically viable to provide pretty good coverage that's roughly on par with the proposed Carmelo site.

Well, it remember that site is down below. I I I'm not willing to say that because again we're we're talking about doing when we put this together, we were not concerned about uh protecting other sites that are not protected. What I mean by that is that right now the way it system that Verizon has it set up is that the sites that come over from uh from both the founders and from the golf course up there create uh over interference overlap whatever you call they are the ones in fact if you drive down a scenic drive there you're actually on the on your cell phone you're actually communicate ating uh with uh the founder site 2.7 miles away, not these sites that you can almost see.

Okay. All right. Thanks. That's how strong the interference in the signal is that strong that it overrides all the things that are within the the the city proper. I've got some questions, but I'm going to hold until after we take a bio break. Five minutes. Is that enough? Let's come back in 10 minutes. Come back at Let's just come back at 6:00. Everybody has a chance. So, we're taking a break.

Wait, can you hear me?

We got about a minute to go. Are we ready?

Okay, we're back in session. Um, I'm going to reserve the right to to call Verizon and any other witnesses back for questions so we can move into public comment. I'd like to get the public involved soon as possible. So, we're going to go to public comment. Um, how many speakers are there that want to speak from the public? Like 10. All right. I've been I've been asked if we could seed time for at least five people to uh let uh the representatives attorney

take their time. I'm fine with that. I think I think the other people here are I think there's some questions that we need answered. So, um, thank you all for being here. Um, I'm going to just go ahead and give you three minutes, but but as soon as when do you want Ariel to come up at the at the end or after prefer to speak last, he said. So, that's all right. So, let's get going.

Okay. Good. Oh, good evening, Mayor Burn and city council members. My name is Christy Hollandbeck. Before I begin, I want to invite everyone to raise their hands if they support the planning commission's unanimous denial of the Verizon application. Thank you so much. I sincerely want to thank all the neighbors and residents that are here tonight. Your presence truly matters. I kindly ask Mayor Burn to give our attorney extra time. Thank you. And um to speak to the commission tonight. This proposal touches on important legal and planning matters and his insights are very helpful for your decision. Mr. Strauss, who traveled from Berkeley, is here with us today and is an expert in California telecom law and is happy to answer any questions. We also have a short video that we respectfully request permission to show and three residents are willing to give up their speaking time to make this possible. Can those three people please raise their hands?

Yeah. and Isabelle. So, those were three of they they were three of the 10. Yeah. That raised their hand. So, you're done.

Taking on a massive corporation with seemingly endless resources has been grueling. The exhaustion I But through the exhaustion, I've stayed focused on why we're doing this. It's to protect Carmel by the Sea. Oscar Wild said, "When it rains, look for rainbows. And when it's dark, look for stars." For me, those rainbows and stars are our neighbors and friends and this extraordinary village. Generations before us stood together to preserve this place, a rare escape from the modern suburban world. Now it's our turn. Verizon deliberately chose to site in the heart of our residential district, directly in front of a historic home, one of our most sensitive locations in our village. That was not accidental. If they can place a tower here, they can place one anywhere. Residential zoning won't matter. Historic preservation won't matter. Our design standards won't matter. And if we can't enforce our wireless ordinance in a neighborhood like this, what is the ordinance worth? This isn't about whether we can make a phone call. Residents have said they are satisfied with their phone service. This is about expanding corporate infrastructure in the least appropriate location because it's convenient for them. Technology is evolving rapidly. Broadband options already exist. Satellite and emerging systems are reducing dependence on traditional towers. We should be moving infrastructure underground and minimizing visual impacts, not installing industrial equipment in front of living room windows. And yes, this feels like a David versus Goliath situation. Here is our Here is our wireless ordinance. Sorry, it's this thick. And this is what was submitted by Verizon

a information. I'm giving you 30 seconds more because we took time. Okay. And but what concerns me most is the size of the paperwork. It's not just the size of the paperwork. It's the shifting justifications and the changing narratives from Verizon. I believe this council cares deeply about Carmel. I respectfully ask you to step back from the legal noise and look at the bigger picture. Protect our neighborhoods. Uphold our ordinance and stand firm for Carmel. Thank you. Thank you. If you could hold your applause, please, I'd appreciate it.

Good evening, city council mayor. Um, my name is Jeannie Ferrara. I'm a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. Um, as a real estate agent, it's my fiduciary duty to protect the people I represent. The National Association of Realtors found that 79% of those surveyed said that under no circumstances would they ever purchase or rent a property within a few blocks of a cell tower. N also found that property values can decrease up to 20% depending on how close a cell tower is to the property. The lowest priced home in Carmel is around $2 million. 20% of $2 million is $400,000. Will you, the city council, be liable to the Carmel homeowners homeowners for any loss of property value? Insurance costs have risen dramatically in recent years, and many homeowners have been cancelled when their homes are in high fire hazard areas like Carmel. Insurance companies have even left California to avoid the cost of damage from devastating fires like the ones we've endured in recent years. Verizon has already recalled 2.5 million mobile Wi-Fi hotspots due to fires, fire risk, overheating, and minor burns reported. Will you, the city council, be responsible to caramel homeowners for any loss from fire caused by cell towers in residential neighborhoods? 30 plus countries around the world including the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil have banned Chinesemade 5G technology because of national security concerns. Fiber optic, on the other hand, is secure. It can't be hacked. It operates at the speed of light and has no fire risk. Californians have already paid for fiber optic to their homes in their phone bills over a 20 plus year period. The irregulators versus the FCC lawsuit in 2020 exposed the largest accounting scandal in American history where telecom corporations fraudulently funneled the money already paid by their customers for fiber optic to the

premises into wireless technology instead. Where is that trillion dollars now? In real estate, we call that bait and switch. The FCC is a captured agency whose revolving doors include commissioners that are former CEOs and lobbyists of the telecom industry. In August 2021, the FCC was ordered to update their safety standards in the federal case environmental health trust at all versus the FCC. The FCC has refused to update their safety standards since 1996, even though a $25 million industryfunded research concluded that wireless radiation raised the risk of brain tumors. Two of the the world's largest insurance companies, Lloyds of London and Swiss Reinsurance Company, have put wireless radiation in the highest risk category next to smoking and asbestos. Will you, the city council, be liable for damages to the health and safety of the citizens and the environment of Carmel? Cell towers do not belong in residential neighborhoods for so many reasons. The Caramel Planning Commission has already denied Can I just Can I five more seconds? Um, the Caramel Planning Commission has already unanimously denied Verizon's application. Approval of the application would be against Carmel's wireless ordinance and against the public outcry from Carmel residents. There is no pro effective prohibition. This is strictly about profit. Follow the money.

Thank you. Thank you. I urge you to vote no and protect our incredibly beautiful historic city from corporate takeover. Okay. Thank you. If you could refrain from talking about the health has aspects. We're that's really not in play here. So if you could hold that back. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. You should ask permission.

Thank you. Council members,

go ahead. Hello. Sorry about that. Uh, council member uh Buter had had talked about that one uh map and and one of the things that was striking on that map to me a I there was a lot of coverage, but the other thing is the the gap they were showing was directly west and I question is that related to the tree and if not can it can it be altered with changing the position of where the antennas are? I feel that every time we make as a a proposal or something that could be improve things, they come up with another excuse why we can't and it's on the fly and we're not getting enough time to make this analysis. I don't think they've proven that this is the only alternative to our situation here. I believe there's other ways of doing this. I believe we need to have this assessed not at a at a meeting in three or four hours, but get a proposal and actually be able to analyze it in detail. Um, but once again to me that the the the trees are something that that I like to to to ask. Why do we have a gap right there? I don't when I looked at the different cell towers that were around that area, that same west area that they're talking that they're going to have a big uh gap, there's no interference from those those other towers. It's away from those other towers. So when I even in my simple mind, I look and say, why is that area such a problem, this gap with the golden bow? And I think that could be mitigated by working with the antennas, working with the trees, and working with the the different areas. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening. Nancy Tumi here. Thanks for all of what you do. Um on behalf of the CRA board of directors and the residential community throughout our village, we respectfully urge denial of Verizon's appeal for the 10th and Carmelo equipment placement. We also endorse the alternative equipment location proposed for Golden Bell Theater. This position is supported by, as you know, by Steven Moore, the stop cell towers team, which has done remarkable work. The city planning commissioners on February 10th, and our city staff. Verizon arguments against the Golden Bow placement do not withstand scrutiny as Dylan had reinforced uh just now. In support of the recent year's completion of our cellular ordinance, it is essential to preserve the village's re residential character as defined by our zoning laws and aesthetic requirements. Approving this Verizon permit would set a precedent that could lead to additional requests that undermine the goals and spirit of our ordinance that has been fully approved. Thank you for your consideration and good luck with all this buzzword compliant technology that you're putting your arms around this evening. Thank you.

Thank you, Nancy. Joe Denucci, president. Um, I think self- service is a minor miracle and I think what we've been living through for the last couple weeks is a minor nightmare. Uh, we have an ordinance. It's clear Verizon, for whatever reason, seems to u value a flood of tech jargon over straight shooting straight from the hip. This is why this makes sense or this is why it can't be done. But instead we get buried in in data. Um I think the uh letter that was written by um the owner of the historic house Ned Striker Spiker um in a pine cone on Friday was right on. But I would make one correction to it. It isn't I own a historic house and I own a notistoric house. I don't want that anything like that in front of either of my houses. I don't think any resident in this city would tolerate having such a thing in front of their house. Why would we? There are better alternatives. I have one question left. Well, first I want to commend Christy Hollandbeck and Andy Carr and others for their timeless work here to to make sure we don't suffer this uh indignity. But what I would like to know is does the council have to make a decision tonight? Thank you.

Thank you. Christy, when do you want to show the video? We can show it now. Okay, go ahead, Andy, and then we'll show the video.

Andy car resident. This area is a precious paradise, and we all need to do our part to preserve the things we have here, knowing that living or visiting in this area is truly a gift. The ordinance that was done in 2023 was a labor of love by a group of residents who spent a great deal of time and money and effort to protect our city. And I cannot believe that we're wasting so much time that Verizon keeps coming at us like a dog on a bone. They won't let us rest. I don't understand it. I I want to know from Verizon, have you listened to anything that we've said here? Any of the residents, have you listened to why

Andy, speak to us. Okay. Have you listened to our concerns? It's not like we don't like Verizon. It's not like we don't want service. We love our town. We're trying to protect our town. Um, it's almost like I feel you're trying to wear us down, but we're tough people around here and we care. We want you to be respectful. We want you to listen to us and I want to know why you can't do what AT&T does. Whatever they're doing, they don't come at us. Thank you. Thank you. No, no applause, please.

All right, we're we're going to show the video next. Get it out of the way. This is a short one. Short one. Okay. Shorter. Uh, mayor, my suggestion would be I didn't hear the source of this video. Did they identify who prepared it or Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Why don't you introduce it? I thought she was going to do it in her intro, but she didn't. Yeah. Keep it moving here. It's this is just a short we had a longer version of this. I'm Doug Holland back by the way. This is a short version of the uh some of the residents from Carmela Street uh had made. So here we go.

So it's the the the group the Carmel for safe technology responsible technology group made this video. Carmel by the Sea is worldrenowned for its extraordinary natural beauty. It is a carefully preserved village of storybook cottages, historic homes, and breathtaking coastal views protected by generations of thoughtful leadership. That responsibility now rests with you. Verizon's proposal to install a large intrusive structure in front of a small historic home is out of scale and incompatible with our residential streets. Residents have testified they are satisfied with existing service. Our wireless ordinance requires the least intrusive, most compatible locations to protect aesthetics and property values. Carmemell deserves protection. We urge you to be brave enough to defend it and preserve the unique character of the village we all hold dear. Thank you. Reasons to deny Verizon's proposed cell site in the least preferred zone. This is the first test of our wireless ordinance. Your decision sets the precedent. Verizon proposes a tall pole with a 6-foot equipment box and meter directly in front of a small historic home. It would face directly into a window, harming neighborhood character and lowering property values. Approval invites proliferation in residential areas.

The planning commission's denial of Verizon's application is supported by substantial evidence in the record and rests on multiple independent legal grounds. The applicant failed to meet required findings under the Carmel Municipal Code, failed to justify requested special exceptions, failed to eliminate a feasible, less intrusive alternative, and failed to provide complete and reliable data for evaluation. Under the totality of circumstances, denial does not materially inhibit Verizon's ability to provide service and does not constitute an effective prohibition under federal law. The wireless ordinance requires a showing that the facility will not result in adverse visual impacts or adverse impacts on property values. The record demonstrates multiple violations, not stealth. The facility would be readily identifiable as a wireless installation. Equipment volume exceeded. It exceeds the 17 cubic foot maximum when properly calculated, including standoff elements. Excessive height. It exceeds the existing pole by more than 10 ft without demonstrated necessity under GO95. Facade violation. It violates standards prohibiting placement directly in front of protected entry and window zones. Local real estate professionals submitted evidence that this installation would reduce adjacent property values in Carmel's uniquely scenic residential setting. The future risk. The replacement pole is engineered for additional loads and could later be expanded through eligible facilities requests without discretionary review, undermining local aesthetic protections. Applicants failure. Verizon failed to establish that such future expansion is

technically infeasible or unforeseeable. This independently prevents making the required finding that approval would not set a detrimental precedent. Biased drone photography. Verizon used the extreme western edge of the Golden Bow rooftop to exaggerate the proximity of trees in drone photos. Richard Conroy, the president of Piercon on February 10th, 2026 said, "This is the primary view into the area of the gap. This orientation shows mature vegetation extending directly into the antenna path. This is a realworld obstruction that predictive modeling does not always fully reflect and it will materially affect reliable signal performance to the right. So in practical engineering terms, there's no viable transmission direction from this rooftop capable of reliably remediating the identified deficiency. Residents drone photography. Resident imagery from February 9th, 2026 confirms clear unobstructed sight lines from the east ridge line. Robert Beagle, an RF expert on February 8th, 2026 said, "I do not agree that Piercon can reliably conclude that the tree interference will be so severe as to prevent delivering dominant mid-band coverage to the target areas." The tree double standard. Verizon claims trees block the golden bow yet ignored clutter loss at their preferred site. Many existing Verizon sites are surrounded by trees that were never cited as obstacles during approval. They accept clutter loss when it suits them, but use speculative interference to kill the alternative. The proposed and potential buildout creates adverse view impacts for all surrounding neighbors. The site could

drastically change over the 10-year permit cycle. No planning commission approval required. FCC certified coverage. Verizon certified to the FCC they have 4G LTE service in the exact areas they now claim have a gap. It is unlawful to submit materially inaccurate data to the FCC. They cannot have adequate coverage for federal regulators and a significant gap for local planners. Conclusion: Uphold the ordinance. Because a viable stealth alternative exists, denial is not an effective prohibition. It is the law. The planning commission correctly concluded that Verizon failed its burden. The Golden Bow Theater is a viable, less intrusive alternative in a preferred A1 zone. We respectfully ask this council to respect our ordinance and uphold the denial, defending the historic core of Carmel for generations to come.

Okay, let's cut the video. Near. That's Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for providing that. Go ahead, Tasha.

Good evening, city council members. Tonight, I want to emphasize the importance of our city's wireless ordinance, especially its ranked location and structure preferences. This framework is essential for managing wireless facility placements that respect and uphold our community values. The problem with the current proposal is that the applicant has selected the most intrusive location, disregarding more suitable alternatives. The city's CTC wireless engineer confirmed the Golden Bell rooftop a superior feasible location in 2021 and rec reconfirmed this fact in 2026. Wanted to point out earlier when Hans was uh Beuter was pointing out um the gap area and how much the Golden Bow would cover. Verizon has already admitted that the proposed location only covers 37% of the gap. Meanwhile, Verizon misrepresents data attempting to disqualify the Golden Bow as a feasible alternative. First, in their application, Verizon's Purecon engineer modeled the incorrect height at the Golden Bow and admitted the critical midband option and a manipulative effort to label it in feasible. After the application suddenly the after the application, it suddenly became tree interference. um at the first panning commission it wasn't and then they brought that up at the continuation meeting. Recently Verizon submitted Purecon's supplemental number four report and the city CTC engineer noted that that Verizon quietly redrew their own service gap boundary to now exclude the Golden Bell which blatantly ignores their own drive test data submitted as part of their original application indicating the weakest signals close to Golden Bow. Tonight they complain it's their own signals interfering and now Verizon and Piercon attempt to introduce a new technical narrative about Golden Bow late in the process. They've said it won't reach south but

they had two South Cornwall towers of Pur 5 years ago and let them lapse. This ongoing manipulation has eroded community trust has undermined the integrity of their application. While Verizon claims the Golden Vow is impractical, they have failed to demonstrate that other more compatible alternatives are infeasible. According to Carmel Municipal Code 174640, when applying for lease preferred tier 1 or two locations, they must provide verifiable evidence that no tier 3 options exist in our more compatible commercial, service, and cultural zones. Yet Verizon has only offered vague assertions about signal overlap without technical data or analysis of feasible collocation options from their sunset center nodes, the Dow rooftop facility or any other rooftops in our tier 3 zones. The Golden Bell rooftop and other tier 3 locations are significantly more compatible than the proposed site. I urge you to deny the proposed location. Doing so will allow us to pursue less intrusive options that priorit into responsible wireless infrastructure. Thank you. Did I get off?

Thank you. Do would you like to go with uh your attorney now? One more. Okay. All right. I think we had one more left on your 10. So before we go to the attorney, oh yeah, I didn't include that. All right. Go ahead. Okay. Thank try to keep it short if you could. Uh this is so hard because the uh testimony from Verizon has changed significantly from the first planning commission and it's really hard to comment. So I'm Rebecca Le. We're trying our best to go ahead.

Um she lives next door and uh has been there uh for 51 years. U this pole as it is is very quaint. It's nestled into that oak tree. There's doves on top of it. And uh when you put a 17 cubic foot brown box on the side of the pole, it quite changes the character to a significant negatively visually impactful eyesore. Um the preferred, you know, 6 cubic feet would not be unreasonable, would not be stealth, but I don't think this could be considered a stealth classification, and I urge you to reclassify it. um at the previous meeting that space that they talked about that increased the volume they said it was a PG requirement and now they're saying that it wasn't a PG& requirement um there um you know are there gaps every single slide that you saw every single everything is based on modeling modeling modeling not drive testing and and the FCC and well no resident has come forth and said I don't have service. Many have said that they do. Um I' I've got my mother's caregivers. I've got um uh people who live in the ADU behind Kathy Lane who's three doors down. They all have Verizon coverage and it's fine. The FCC website and the Verizon website both say that there's full coverage in this area. The city of Carmel is one square mile. Each of these small cell towers covers 8/10 of a mile. And then today we learned that they all interfere with each other. So um O2 and O5 should they be activated, we could actually do some drive testing and maybe get a little bit of sense out of this. Um but without any proven need, I'm not aware that these significant

gaps exist. They were asked why they didn't activate O2 and '05 and they said at first because uh the the the uh optic fiber wasn't available and then they said it was because you couldn't lay at peace meal and then they said well you can lay at peace meal but we really want to install it alto together and now they're saying at the last PC meeting it was because of encroachment permits not coming forth. So um as Tasha said it's really hard. Rich Conway Rich Conway's presentation tonight was so different than the planning commission meeting. At that meeting, he had one single tree saying that at the top of the Golden Bell roof, that tree that single tree was going to block the signal and then he said that the on the other side it would there was no blockage and so it would be so first the signal would be um useless. So um again completely different modeling scenario tonight.

Can you wrap up? Please um please I hope you can extend the top stop clock so we can have a robust discussion about where we want the city to go small or MAGA or whatever it's called because I think that really needs to happen so that we know how to deal with this. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So yeah, we've we've got one person on Zoom, but I'm going to assume all the other people have seated their time for you. Yes, go ahead. Zoom in.

Excellent. My name is Ariel Strauss. I'm an attorney in Berkeley and I represent a number of residents here. Could you make sure you're speaking in the mic? Yes. Thank you very much. Um I understand why I have 15 minutes, Mayor. Uh try to make it as quick as you can. Certainly. I just see the clock here, so I was worried a minute. Okay. Excellent. Well, he's taking five people. Sorry about that. Nova,

are the five sites? Okay, very well. Come back

five people. Five people. Yeah. four and me. I don't I don't know how you do the math. Okay, that's fine.

Thank you everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate your attention to this. I understand it's gotten pretty complicated. Um but let's focus first on the burden. So, uh as your attorney repres uh indicated, you have an ordinance. The Verizon is seeking to do something that is prohibited by the ordinance to build a location that is least preferred and highly incompatible, including other aspects that are not compliant. In order to do that, they have to establish that federal preeemption applies. Essentially, you have no choice but to approve it. In order to do that, they have the burden to demonstrate that this is the only feasible site in order to meet their coverage gap so that a denial would amount to an effective prohibition. They have that burden. Nobody else in here has to prove that other site would be feasible. They have to prove that that site, the Golden Bow site, is not feasible given that there's a plethor plethora of evidence that shows it is the most uh appropriate site and the best alternative for a facility. And once the city has already shown through modeling that it would appear to be a feasible site and your expert at CTC says that this is an appropriate site based on modeling, they have to establish that it is not feasible. When they choose to do that, they also have to bring their evidence in accordance with your wireless application checklist. Now 15.1 reads, it have to provide quote applicable supporting data, information, or studies necessary for the city to evaluate requests for an exception. They had to do that. You can't do engineering on one foot. They can't bring in new things tonight and expect somebody to make sense of it. They have spent years evaluating the site that they preferred. They spent maybe two, three weeks uh dealing with the golden bow. It is not self-evident doesn't work. They can't show a new for instance some of these maps tonight for instance the the C-band map that wasn't ever presented before. Nobody on the city side or and nobody else has evaluated that. So it is critical that

any evidence that doesn't have supporting backup data is essentially disregarded. Now here I have a very basic crude model but I think it will help us right. So there are several sites uh and we are trying to understand how to best cover a location that is among those sites. We have the founders site, we have Pebble Beach, we have two rooftop sites down near downtown. Now far to left, that other block there, that's 002. It's a site that Verizon filed an application for in the county, but they let it lapse. I submitted public record responses from the county showing that May 1st, 2025, that site had lapsed. So their assertion in 2025 Ryzen assertion that it is an approved but unbuilt site not correct. If they want to bring some information that changes that I'm here happy to hear it but the information I received from the county is because they didn't build on it and essentially Verizon told everyone I believe here but I know they told the planning commission that they have no timetable to build on that site. They're waiting for a various number of things to change based on a conversation. They're inclined to build a very specific type of network. In fact they call it according to Mr. Conroy, it violates Verizon's small cell criteria. Verizon's not entitled to have small cell criteria. They're entitled to meet a significant gap in coverage according to Congress. But they can't decide. They only want to build when they use the public right ofway when they get that virtually for free when it can be expanded to heights that would not be allowed in manage that would not be allowed on a rooftop. That is not something they're entitled to do. And one thing that's very critical they have not done is you see these little colorful blocks on top. There are five dimensions uh that dictate coverage. Now, I'm an attorney, but I guess I I sort of play an engineer up here and I channel some of the information we're receiving from our expert who submitted three reports to you, Mr. Rob Beagle. There are five parameters. There's height, there's power, there is tilt. So, that's to say, will the beam be tilted down or up based on topography or based on the coverage you want near ter

near field or far field? Uh there is azmouth. So does it direct left or right to cover a position that's to the east or north or south of the tower. And then there is also the beam width. So the beam can be narrow or wide. Those are principal parameters. When they modeled a comparison of the Carmelo site they want versus a golden bow. They did not change the parameters. I've repeated this at every single uh city council meeting in all my written submitts and it's shown on notice of incompleteness response number two. They modeled a gap specific to the site they want and they didn't adjust those beams. They didn't adjust them so that they could reduce overlap or improve uh coverage or address the way in which perhaps the golden bow is more effective in the center of the area on a at 8% tilt for instance and not the north or the south. The total difference that they have stated in the in the first peer con report was a difference of 37% coverage versus 31% coverage. There are other dimensions but on that dimension that is their number. They have since improved the golden bow facility option because initially it had the wrong height. It had the wrong type of equipment and they did not bother to fine-tune those dimensions of it. When you have a setup like this where you don't have any adjustment to the surrounding sites, of course you're going to have unreasonable overlap. Of course you're going to have poor upload because you are not optimizing to avoid interference and maximize overall coverage. and they have not presented the data that was requested by your expert of 5% or 4% or 6% some point in between the two sorry two degrees or eight degree down tilt which are extreme down tilts and if the expert here is simply saying well it's self-evident to everyone who knows that is not how the data works and that's not what your expert is telling you Mr. offbach is saying they should have tried a 5% or 4% to optimize that sort of goldilocks dynamic. There are a number of other issues that I think are critical to understand. The

first is that there is something called for historic properties a historic cultural use and so that means the use of the golden bow is historic but the tower does not interfere with the use of it. In comparison, the Stonewall cottage is a historic structure which architecturally is significant according to the city's resolution. And so you have to look visually how does that facility interact with the visual dynamics that were uh identified in the resolution approving that cottage as c as historically significant from an architectural standpoint. And that resolution identifies that it's placed set back from the street that it has a certain type of facade and that it's a certain scale. Those things are interfered with when you have this industrial facility right interposing opposite in that setback area of that large hard pack uh side sidewalk or parking area. Now more importantly than what how it looks today though is the potential for expansion. I strongly disagree with the notion that the council has to only look at this site and not speculate. It is a responsibility to ensure that this site is compliant for the 10-year duration of the term according to the government code which is default 10 years. This has to be compliant with the general plan. It's provided with the zoning ordinance. I think it is not in any way comparable to situation where somebody applies for a remodel and then it's denied because there's a potential that they could do another remodel with uh greater floor area ratio as referred to by staff. That is not a situation here. Congress has said that you cannot deny and shall approve a modification. You don't have a choice. It doesn't matter what reason they have for it necessarily. It doesn't have to be a coverage gap. They can exceed the volume. They can exceed the height. And there's not anything that the council can do about it because that is how federal law is structured. As soon as you approve a facility that is not stealth, uh you have waved your right to further aesthetic evaluation of it. And here it's highly likely that will happen because it's so difficult to build new facilities and there's a preference

against it. And we're canly told at least in the prior uh presentations by Verizon that there's growing demand for data. So in all likelihood they will come there. They're extended, they're expanded, they do things that under SQA require be considered as part of the project because you have no further discretionary review for a tier type five application. So I think it's critical to understand that that is a big part of the trade-off that I believe that the council understood when they designate these types of sites as highly incompatible or least preferred because you lose control. It's not just what you're seeing now. It's a whole host of things that you cannot alter. Uh speaking of some of the design elements, for instance, the wings, um the wings cannot just be taken off. That's the reason why they are there is because the guidelines section 2C2 uh requires that uh they be there. Uh sorry, that is C3. They required that you have coverage of any gaps. So visually speaking, there's a requirement that when you attach something to the side of a pole, if you're an applicant, that those gaps that are required by GU95 be hidden so you don't have light and other things streaming through. And it it seems to be a more seamless design. That is why they are there. Visually, it looks like one object. And moreover, there's a requirement that the cumulative volume be all accessory equipment. So if it does, if you don't believe that the wings are counted or the area enclosed by it, you still would have to consider that that bracket is part of all accessory equipment. is clearly exceeding the 17 cubic feet. And because of the exceedence of the correct uh volume area, the maximum height and its location in a uh root protection zone of the tree, it is not compliant. And any impact on property values, which you've heard of from uh one real estate agent here and many other people who wrote in, that would be a basis to deny the project because that is one of the findings. I want to just for a second go back to the issue of uh expansion. The pre-approval of expansion does create a precedent. It means legally create a

precedent that allows an applicant to file a tier 5 application and expand the site and for a use permit you have to determine like a finding that the facility will not lead to detrimental uh additional impacts uh based on the precedent for this site. And that is a type of precedent that I believe is at issue here. Um let's see. I think that covers the key items. There's several others though and that is that it is essential for the city to stand up for its ordinance. It's entitled to do it. And I think if you don't do it in a case like this where you have another site where the site is understood by the owner to be reflected to be feasible and instead you allow essentially to be snowed at the last minute by uh just a plethora of new material that wasn't ever reviewed by Mr. Offerbach or others and when you you request information she doesn't receive it. That's a situation where you have everything you need to uphold this dial on appeal uh if it goes to court. We know that in December 2021 the city denied an application. Verizon threatened to sue. They sued on a plain technicality, not when they were told that they should look at the Golden Bow. They've had years look at it. It's totally inappropriate to show up only after the appeal and bring in new information like a problem with UPLink that was never discussed before or tree issues that was only brought up after two continuences. This is not professionalism and you have all the authority you need to deny this application. I have 3 minutes 55 seconds. Um, but I'm going to give it back to you. I hope if you have any questions for me, I'd be able to answer them, give you an opportunity to do so. But um that is what I essentially wanted to let you know.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Since we have that three minutes left, let's go ahead and let the uh Zoom person make a comment. Um hold on a second.

Phone number that ends in 705. Do you want to make a comment still? Hang on. I got to Are they still there? No, I lost my Um, Daniel, can you unmute that person that has their hand raised for me? I can't find it. Okay. Phone number ending in 7:05. Go ahead.

Phone number ending in 705. You can unmute yourself. Go ahead. Can you hear Can you hear me? Hello. Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you.

Oh, great. Okay. Yes. Born off Moffett. And these cell towers are incredibly dangerous. And that's what it's all about. And yet under the Constitution, we are allowed to protect our health and our well-being and our happiness. And that is not allowed in this country. And Verizon is not allowing it. It's not respecting it. And I urge everyone not to buy from Horizon because we are in such a crisis of corruption that they don't care. The corporations are blinded by money and so are we. So I can sympathize, but it's just gone beyond the pale. We have to protect ourselves now. And having this cell tower here, I ask Verizon, you have a cell tower in front of your house with your kids and see how you feel. We'll fight it tooth and nail. And the science is out there by the thousands of respected scientists all over the world. Their testimony and it's being ignored. So shame on you if any of you do not vote to stop this atrocity to us all. We have lost our souls if we don't protect each other. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Um Mike McWalters, I think you you got in there late. Can you can you take it on? Can you do your comment in a minute? No, I need three minutes. Mayor Burn.

All right. Go ahead. Um, first of all, our ordinance 174640 explains the city's ranked location and specifically states that applicants must propose placement in locations with the least intrusive land use designation. Zoning technically feasible and potentially available. Applications proposing placement in tier 1 or tier 2 must include a written justification as part of the application submitt submittal supported by factual and verifiable evidence that shows no location in a tier three land use tier is technically feasible and available. and Verizon did not provide any tier three alternative studies and they submitted no data as factual and verifiable evidence failing to prove that tier three locations are not technically feasible and available in the city's more compatible commercial service and cultural zones. I have a question for Mr. the gentleman from CTC in in December of 21 in the in the reasons for the city council to deny the LIA uh is the following. The project is in conflict with 1746040 because the record that shows that there are technically feasible and potentially available alternatives located in more preferred locations. Analysis by the city's independent expert shows that Verizon could achieve virtually all its objectives for the proposed location if it used an alternative site at the Golden Bow Playhouse that did not violate the discourage locations provisions in the code. Verizon's disclosures show that it intends to provide service on low band and mid-band frequencies to the area southwest from the proposed location. As the analysis prepared by CTC shows, an alternative location at the Golden Bell

Playhouse would provide nearly identical service improvements within the low band frequencies. At least 85% of the same service improvements to inbuilding services, nearly 100% of the same service improvements to invehicle services, and more than 100% of the intended improvements to outdoor services because the alternative site would reach a larger area and nearly 100% of the same improvements in outdoor and invehicle service within the mid-band frequencies. Here's the question. How in the world is this report how how in the world does he provide a report now that's diametically opposed to this report that he submitted in December of 21? I don't get it. Something's the matter. And lastly, I just want to say we have the right to apply our zoning laws and deny facilities that threaten our aesthetics or our safety while less intrusive options remain for them to provide service. And this notion that a 50 foot nearly 50 foot tall cell tower in front of Mr. Speaker's home, it's 20 ft from the house. And you're going to tell me that if that thing falls down, it's not a fall risk. So, please please deny this application. Um, as as uh Rebecca Lee said, we're getting complete completely new information from the planning commission. They're throwing us curve balls and change ups. It's not acceptable. It's very disrespectful. Please deny this application. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. And thank you everybody from the public that participated tonight. We appreciate you being here. And we're going to take a break now for our dinner. And we're going to be back at 7:15. Is that enough time for everybody? 7:20. 7:20. 7:20. We'll see you back at 7:20. Thank you everybody.

You better not be the person that votes to continue this meeting after 9:30 or whatever.

All right, we're back in session. Thank you everybody for letting us have dinner. Hopefully you got to do something interesting. Um, okay. Now, what we're going to do is the application rebuttal. So, you guys need to get up. I'm going to give you 10 minutes. I've got a couple questions I want to ask you too at the end, but go ahead.

Okay. Uh, that was my question for you. Did you want to take questions before we gave rebuttal? Um, does anybody else have any questions? Maybe. Why don't you go ahead and do it? Yeah, let go ahead and give your rebuttal. That'll be fast. I have uh just some technical points that were mentioned. We'll do that and Mr. Albertton will do the do the rest. You really going to give him some time this time? I'm going to try.

Okay. Okay. That was that'll be for him. Okay. uh the zone the drone photos that were in the video that were from the east end of the roof that is fully addressed in the written response for the Golden Bow that we submitted. Uh we were asked to be on the west end which is the back of the building from the Golden Bow. It's not over the free span over the central part of the roof of the Golden Bow. Uh the Golden Bow has future solar expansion uh goals for their roof. Uh they wanted us to not interfere with those. There's also a technical reason for not shooting over the roof, which is the solar panels and pin, which is a interference issue that arises when you shoot over electronic devices that low. And the roof is very large. We couldn't down to it would block the view. That's all in the written record. Um, and this was all something that I when I met with Mr. more. He was acting in good faith uh from what I could tell in discussion with it because it was in his words a request that came from you which is why he was talking to us and looking into that and those were all the issues we came up which is why we have all that data uh on the building the 002 and 005 why are the permits expired and why are they not built? Um the delay has been because of fiber delivery. Uh we understand that the fiber company has been trying to get encroachment permits to route fiber along existing power lines and has been working with the city for well over a year. That is waved. They currently go by the name of sound and this body has denied their encroachment permits. They're currently working through some changes, some agreements with the city to get those encroachment permits issued, which is why fiber has not been delivered to those sites, which is why they have not been built. Um, we have

paid and P Genie has replaced the poles, but we have not attached the equipment to them because there's nothing we could do to turn them up. with regard to looking at expansion now and there were some uh pictures shown showing full arrays and midmounts um that disregards P Gen rules in GO95 of what could be attached to the pole uh that's not possible um nor can the pole height be increased for additional antennas up top without being replaced which wouldn't be a 6409 case um this is something that we've said multiple times and regardless what was done there it would have to come before the city for permits and it would not be within the stealthing parameters. There's also no equipment room left on those poles. We also did not provide tier three data alternatives because if you look in the report, what we showed is in those locations, there are existing sites. That's the site on ocean. That's the site on the sunset center. So, what happens is we're already there. They're already too close in interfering, which is why we did not propose any sites in the commercial zones. I'll defer the rest to these draw. Are there any questions?

Oh, I've got a question. Let's let's let them finish completely, then we'll do questions. I will I will be and we and we do really appreciate your time. Um I just want to clean up a couple quick things. It is a category one. Golden bow is a category one location under your code. So we would be going through your historic board and through our NEPA process we would also have to go through the state historic preservation office as and we did a NEPA through full NEPA analysis of this poll as well. Um there uh if you could speak up a little bit.

Oh yes of course. Shipo NEPA is what I just said. Yes. Um and then there was a discussion uh with your council who I very much respect saying that we had to go through a significant gap and least intrusive needs analysis which we did uh in order to show that denial of the site would violate federal law. But in this case it's a small cell and the ninth circuit has made it very clear that it's the material materially inhibit standard which is that we get to densify our network add 5G services or introduce or improve our current network and the densify concept was brought about by the FCC and approved by the ninth circuit because small cells just don't lend themselves to a the kind of coverage map analysis that Mr. Affleck was doing. That's why we did all that analysis about interference and signal strength and so forth. So just to clarify it's it's the material inhibit. Do we have the right to densify our network and uh that's the one that's um preponderance of the circumstances which is are there circumst accumulated obstacles that essentially frustrate the carrier from providing service. That's the general the only real case that talks about the least intrusive standard. Moving along to my final thoughts. The question is whether the golden bow is uh technically feasible, not technically viable. And you heard Mr. Affleck say it doesn't cover their coverage area. It provides a lot of signal, but it doesn't cover their coverage area. He said that he would put in two small cells, one slightly north and one slightly south. And and so would we. And that's the kind of uh improvement to this network that we need. We're not trying to blast more signal from a distant location. We're trying to p provide p pockets of dominant signal that the phones will be

able to talk to without the interference from the macro sites which will actually loge and founders will actually be downtilted more once the uh once the small cell is put into place. I don't know if it's a I don't think it's intentional, but there's a clear confusion about this area in front of the Golden Bow. As we said, the Golden Bow, those black dots represent overlap between our Sunset Center site and our downtown Carmel site and Founders Ridge. It's that's that's a problem area because of too much signal. Dropping signal in there is makes it worse. you have the small cell and we're able to downtilt some of the some of the antennas to reduce that problem. That's how the network is dynamic. And so putting a something there is it's just a complete misunderstanding of what of what um how we fix the network. Uh there was a comment that it only covers our small cell only covers 37% of the gap. That's right. And we showed that O2 covers 39% of it of the gap. And then we've got O5 And that's how you bring together the full, you know, near 100% coverage is with the three polls. And that's that's the the the entire intent. Um why so much data? Uh first of all, the golden bow with macro antennas was a curveball thrown at us two weeks ago. We never would have done that, but we tried to explain it. We worked really hard to try and explain it. And it is a lot of lastminute data, I'll admit, but we didn't think that. didn't even want to do that. Why do we have so much information? Your ordinance required us to do a drive test with 3B dB increments and the Excel spreadsheets for each of the frequencies that we're we're going to cover. As Mr. Affroach said, we had 7,000 points of testing data to get to the point where we could identify the gap and come up with the appropriate

solution. That's why your ordinance is is very very it's the most diligent ordinance that we've had to deal with. We looked at 28 poles because we did look at all the other neighborhoods where we could potentially put something. We couldn't put a macro tower in a in a residential home site because uh there aren't sufficient setbacks. The setbacks didn't allow us to put in the height that we would require. You couldn't you just couldn't build it given the zone height. So we had to look to the rightway. Of our 28 polls, six of them we said are viable and we selected one. It's an error as Mr. Sha said to say that we have to show the only alternative. That's not the law in California under the Ninth Circuit. We have to show that no other site is less intrusive than the one we've proposed. And so there are six polls. If you don't like this poll, pick two of the six like Mr. Afflebach is proposing. he isn't proposing putting something on the golden bell which is not technically feasible. So um there was a lot of other chaff that I could respond to about property values and the Verizon maps and all that sort of thing. 7901 I was commenting uh we don't get to the analysis uh that my legal colleague was or friend was talking about because there is no other less intrusive alternative. Um, and so it really gets down to uh what's next? And uh all I can say is uh we'd rather work with you. Been trying to work with you for years. Uh we think we've fully identified the problem and what the solution is. You're saying that there's a precedency if you approve this site. That makes me hear that you will not allow a site in the rightway. You will not allow a site in that whole residential rideway. Your old code prohibited it. your new code makes it

absolutely impossible to reach that. It's a accumulation of obstacles that confound the carrier. So, I leave with I leave you with that. Uh a denial tonight. I think you know we're already in litigation. That's not necessarily a good route. Um and that we're we're open for discussion. I'd encourage you to approve the site, but I know you won't. That's my that's my concluding thoughts. and we're here for any more questions. And again, I appreciate all the time and effort and all the material you've read and all the maps. I missed your last comment. What did you say? I said I appreciate your time. No, before that,

you said before that I if you have ideas of how we we untie this knot, we we will listen. But we we believe that your consultant has confirmed that the golden bow doesn't solve the problem. He would put in two small cells. we would put in two small sales. And the final comment was, you have said this would set precedents to approve this wireless facility, this 2 and a half foot antenna on a telephone pole in your residential rideway. All right. What I hear from that is that it's a it's a you're barring sites in the residential rideway, which we also think violates the law. I'm sorry if I forgot what I said. That's okay. I appreciate Did you have a question?

No, I just I just wanted to clarify. You said that if um if we deny this tonight, we're in litigation. Is that what you said? I said we're in litigation already. We have an ongoing case um already. And uh I didn't but I'm not threatening that I'm going to sue you for for denying this. Um um there's some good language in the in the findings that provides another opportunity, but I would we'd rather work out something that is going to be acceptable, but not if we just go around in circles and circles for another eight years and and going around eight years saying you can't put anything in our residential right away. Then we got the message. All right, I have some questions. Sure.

Excuse me. What happens if tomorrow morning the neighbors on Carmelo put an application with PG& to put all those power lines underground? Well, that's an that's not uncommon. I regret to say I've been doing this for 40 years. You think I'd have more imagination, but that's why I'm asking you.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a very and what happens is in most cases, Carmemell may be completely unique. Um, in most cases, uh, jurisdiction will t put up some some light standards and we go on light standards. So, we're on 600 light standards in San Francisco. I was talking to the planning commissioner about that. Uh, some of them are just are very beautiful designs. Uh, and and we can have some that just have a little twoft skinny antenna on top of a light standard.

So, it's okay. They put the power lines underground and you work out some other way with a metal pole or something. The alternative is is for us to put a standalone pole and we do that also which can be any any number of designs but it's a standalone all by itself pole. It doesn't have to be 50 ft tall. Uh and it uh but and there's all kinds of decorative designs and st and street light designs. You're saying there are options. There are options

if if you underground. Yes, absolutely. We don't stand in the way of undergrounding. Well, I think I think it's pretty common opinion in our town that we'd like to underground everything and and we're working on some we're working on a project on San Antonio right now to put all six of those underground and then we're just going to keep going. So, uh that's something we should talk about at some point after tonight. Certainly, when when I was a mayor, we went through three undergrounding districts over a period of 12 years and none of them passed the final vote where the property owners have to tax themselves to to put it underground. And so I applaud I applaud you. Uh I wish PG&E would do it. I wish they'd give more 28 funds so that you had the money to do it,

but it's it's definitely an issue for California. Okay. So this has been going on a long time, like six years, right? Five or six years.

So you originally thought when it was going to take five small cell configurations to solve the problem, but somehow we're still here talking about one solving the problem. So it's pretty clear that this is just one out of more that you will need eventually. So no, we we designed the network. Uh our our engineers compromised and I said we moved two of them to to the uh Sunset Center which is only working so well. Um and then we moved two of them out just outside the county and then this this one would fill in the remaining gap but it's it's not perfect but it's 80% I think. So we're already compromising. There's still a gap. Yeah.

And and uh would uh would there be a future application for another small cell? I don't know. I mean I don't know how much they would want to invest into this but the the technology changes and uh as you all as you all know uh but the the small cells have been a robust solution for ongoing increases in demand from all kinds of sources

or just a challenging environment for those towers. We have, I said, there's over 600 in San Francisco. They're all over the East Bay just like this on utility polls. And we had, I hate to say it, just the same kind of discussions with them about the aesthetics. They're there now and nobody sees them. Does anybody else have a question? Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. Uh, this was for Mr. Schubin. Um, Jepp and I were both on the council when the wave a sound broadband item came before us. And as far as I remember it, it was not in southern car, the southern part of Carmel. It was in the northern part of town in downtown. And the farthest south it went was a Casanova, I'd say. So, I don't understand how that would tie in with uh 002 uh which is down in Carmel Point, which is in the county, or 005 up at Hatton Road, which is also in the county. the that application has a section that comes through town. We I had that same question when that came up. Um do we we have a map?

Um we'll see if we have that map. I didn't came in and then went up eighth and then Yeah, it was down. So there was a section that comes down and then comes into town and then heads back out of town. And it's that that gap in that fiber run that they're still working on with you cuz I don't remember anything in the southern part of town. on this whole area. It was actually actually on the I wouldn't put it in the I'd put it in the uh the the the east side of town somewhere in that area where it came in and then went back out. Well, it stopped around Sunset Center, but I don't think it went any further.

That was the the information they gave us when we asked them, you know, where's our fiber? And we actually went with Mr. Olander and visited those two sites, two and five, uh on February 4th when we met with PG& we went down to those. So to show him the Mr. Mayor, you asked about the size of the poles. I was expecting that question. Yeah. We went down to look at those pole replacements and you know I I then did the okay this is what a utility pole is and this is how the stuff works on it.

Looked at the date nails they were replaced in 21 and 22 and it's that like I said it's not all the way through town. It's a section of the run that comes into town then leaves town again. That that is the that's the gap and they can't connect to it. uh those two sites. I I just don't remember that location. I don't know Jeff if you do. I've met with a town and and it was how you describe and it it it comes in on Kasanova I think goes up eighth and then heads out of town on Carpenter. The whole point was to hook to Visor was paying for it to connect in the Dow antenna. There there was there was some some other locations that some some use that the city I mean a when a a fiber cable's installed it's not installed for one customer.

Uh it's installed for many. And there was the way it was explained to us is there was benefits and other customers that they were looking to serve with the city being one that it would connect to it and meaning you run a line and and everybody gets to use it and win.

Um but that's that's been the delay for turning those up. Uh the county is uh an interesting conversation we also had uh Mr. Orlando was the county requires an encroachment permit for that. That's been their policy for several years. Uh that was more of a it's not just oh we could do anything. There was a negotiated scope of work and design criteria that we would satisfy. And if we did that, they would issue an encroachment permit. And because we renewed those permits and they expired, we renewed those permits and they expired waiting for fiber. Working with the county, we let them expire knowing they have that policy that we could go in as long as we still met that criteria and those sites do.

Okay. So, we'll we'll uh check up on why the encroachment permit hasn't happened for that because it's been a long time now. Yes. Okay. Brandon, can you make note of that? Thank you. Um, okay. Anybody else have a question? Jeff HS.

Um, yeah, I had a I had a quick question. Um, you know, you mentioned that it was sort of one of the most um thoughtful, detailed wireless ordinances that you've come across. Um, one of the things that it does is it tries to create this preference. It doesn't ban putting something in the right of way, but it does create a hierarchy of preferences. And it says that placement on public and private parcels is quote strongly preferred over placements in the public rightway. And then it also says that um placement in the public rightway within the single family zoning district is a quote unquote highly incompatible location. So, um, you made sort of a what I would say like a pretty sweeping claim that there are no private parcels that, um, that could accommodate uh, a facility. And one question I had for you is, did you consider the the Carmel Beach Hotel?

Do you know where that is? No, I don't know where that is. Where is the Carmel Beach Hotel? 13th in San Antonio. Say it again. 13th in San Antonio. It's on the norththeast corner. So it's definitely it's farther it's farther south. Much farther south. Yes. That's that that's actually a point when you had talked about what happens if things get undergrounded. Um that area was originally uh the original location at number two in 2017. So when we started with the city, I believe uh Mr. W uh Winer was the was the director at that time.

Yes. We went and walked uh the neighborhoods, all the sites, say what would work, what would work, and we walked that street. Uh we actually proposed the site on that street. Uh did the tour with the commission and the council. I think it was part of the 2019 applications. Um and that was a no-go. So we moved from there. That one was well, can you get it out of town? That was number two. That moved south just out of town, the one we talked earlier. And I went and looked that we were just a block away and where we walked to where we found a pole that works. And so yes, that area was looked at for 002. I remember that because it brought up to mind because when you said, "What happens if you underground?" Remember speaking with a resident on the tour for that where he said, "Well, I live up there. What if you I don't want this in front of my house. I'm going to pay to underground the the the pole." And I told him what Mr. Strawber told you which is well if you underground the pole it's not there for us to attach to

I guess let me just finish for a second. So I guess my question is if I mean that is um it's in the R1 it's sort of grandfathered into that's now number two.

Let me finish please. It's it's in the R1 and so it's kind of a grandfathered commercial location. I mean, as far as I can tell, it took me about three seconds to look at this map over the past couple days and say, you've got the Golden Bow, you've got the Sunset Center, you've got Mission Trail Nature Preserve, and you have the Carmel Beach Hotel. Um, so if you're telling me that from what we just saw, the two of you looked at each other and didn't know what I was talking about, how can you tell me that you've done an exhaustive search for locations that are not in the public right away? because I did not remember the name of the hotel I stood in front of 10 years ago. But now he does.

But now I do from hearing a description. It was a different ring and it's a different area of coverage and uh it's a residential zone you just said. So I'm not sure what's our height limit. So if you look if you look

it's a large it's a very large parcel actually. If you look at if you look at that one, the Carmel Beach Hotel from where it is, you have 13th, then you have City Boundary at Santa Lucia, and they have San Antonio and 13th uh between, excuse me, 14th and 15th, which is the area where 002 is. I think it's that block. It's a little further down. So, what happened to 002 is it moved a couple blocks south. And that portion of the town is now going to be covered by the site that we replaced the pole in that we will build when fiber is available in the county. In other words, it's too it's too far south. So we move a new site there. It now overlaps with

But you haven't built that site and that site permit has lapsed. Correct. Because we can't get fiber. Yeah. So you're supposed to be looking for a site that can help fill this gap. And there's a site within Carmel by the Sea that's not in the public right away. And it doesn't look like you guys evaluated it. It's too far from our coverage area. Not sure how best to explain that. It's also residential zone. You just told me. I'm not sure what our Well, there's a hierarchy here for sites that are on private property. The uh when it's how does it fall within your

and then it says it says that you're supposed to provide data. I'm not sure it's allowed under wireless code is what I'm trying to say without 100% setback and uh any number of uh too close to

requirements but again it's it's it's not in the right place. Best thing I can tell you and uh it's hard to explain but these small cells they don't have that large of a radius obviously it's about 1500 ft so it's got to be you need to put them that's why we looked at the 28 poles we did in the area that's our search area and anything outside of that search area is too far away from the coverage that we're trying to that we're trying to provide with this small zone uh and I also said that any any residence doesn't have they'd have to have a 70 foot backyard in order for us to put a pole in and meet the setbacks of the residential and the 100% setback for the height of the pole if we had a 50ft pole. So, I hope that answers your question.

I think it does actually. Well, I think the problem is All right, anybody else? I think we're done asking questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Mayor, could I ask can I ask just one question or not of you? It would be okay. Absolutely. I'd like to ask um I'd like to ask Lee who I think is on to clarify something that I heard cuz I I heard something different when Lee was talking to Mr. Albrittain mentioned that our consultant had said that um the Golden Bell wouldn't cover the gap. What I think Mr. Alberbach said was it wouldn't cover the entire gap zone, which is what the maps showed. So I just Lee, could you confirm that when you when you were talking earlier, you said that Golden Bell wouldn't cover the gap. You just meant it wouldn't cover the entire gap zone. Is that what you meant?

That's right. That's right. And what what I I don't think we finished that conversation. What I was saying that it would certainly provide signal up in that area that has all the uh the black dots on there. So in other words, it would be further up from that location. All right. Thank you, Lee. I was just curious if our attorney could have time for a rebuttal or not. Um, he only be five minutes. I don't think so. No. Okay. No. Thank you.

All right. Comes back to us for discussion. Anybody wants to kick it off? 24. Is that is that even an honest question? Yeah. Okay. Sure. Just authorize you for more time, Jeff.

Um, so I I'll go first. I'll take one for the team. Um, I have probably 45 minutes of comments. No, just kidding. Um, thank thank you everyone for coming. Um, it's been a lot of work on on everyone's part, on Verizon's part, on certainly on the resident's part. Thank you for all the work that you've done. Um, what I would like to do is I'd like to go through uh the grounds for the appeal, claim by claim, what I think of them, and then make some comments at the end at the end of my remarks about the staff report. Um, I'll save everybody before I'll save everybody some uh drama. Before I get to the end though, I'll state it upfront that I do believe that we should uphold the planning commission's denial, perhaps for slightly different reasons than put forth in by the planning commission because I'm not prepared at this point to declare that the Golden Bow Theater is not feasible. Um, going down my list of grounds for appeal. Um, claim one, Verizon says the denial of the product is in violation of federal law because the decision is not supported by financial by substantial evidence. Um, and I'll read from the staff report. Verizon argues that they have met their burden for granting the requested special exceptions by providing ample evidence that the theater is not a feasible alternative to fill their coverage gap in the city coverage gap in service. And the city has not provided substantial evidence to rebut Verizon's evidence and testimony. And I'll state here that I agree with the data and analysis presented that the Golden B is a feasible alternative. So claim one's not substantiated. Um, claim two, the denial of the product is in violation of federal law contained in the US code section 332, dictation of technology. Um, these are my comments. The city's presented case law and analysis that supports the city's position that the city is not dictating technology in the analysis that uses a micro site, a macro site rather than a

small step, small cell site. Um, you know, I I think about this, you know, when I step back, you know, as comment and I prevent an sort of an alternative example. The state has laws that the city must follow when we pave roads and set speed limits. And, you know, we've been through this on the council. You know, we've talked about what it takes to lower our speed limit to 15 miles an hour rather than 25. And the state requires that we as a city present substantial evidence of a different sore when we elish to lower those speed limits. And for most intents and purposes, it makes it very difficult for a small city for our as ours to do. So we can't lower the speed limit. But the state doesn't say we need to accommodate 40 mph vehicles because a vehicle owner or a vehicle manufacturer or speedy delivery services wishes to drive more quickly. So, the state prevents us from lowering our speed limit, but they don't say we have to accommodate everybody. Like, that's not how roads work. And I don't believe that that's how the that's how the how federal law works. So, claim two is not substantiated either. Claim three, the denial of the project is in violation of federal law contained in US code section 332, prohibition of service and materially inhibits Verizon. And there are two parts to this claim. Uh first is the two parts that are specified in the in the appeal in the appeal the effective prohibition claim and I'm of the opinion and it seems like the technical opinion is that there is a gap in service. Um I haven't heard a lot of discussion tonight that there isn't a gap in service and so this is really a discussion for me this is really a discussion about how to satisfy the gap in service. I'm also of the opinion that the power pole alternatives Verizon has picked the one that most complies with the city's municipal code. So, Mr. Albertton talked about um 20 power poles and and the work that they did and and I

think that Verizon has made a good faith effort to go down the list of requirements that are specified in our municipal code and our installation worksheet and all that stuff that's part of our local coastal program, which is part of our general plan. and to the best of their ability pick the poll that they think satisfied the requirements that we put out in our municipal code. So, I'm satisfied that Verizon has done that. And I think that if the Golden Battle Theater was not a viable alternative, I'd have a different opinion of this matter because of this section of federal law. But our municipal code provides these special exceptions so that the municipal code itself is in compliance with federal law. Like this is the Carmel escape hatch. If nothing is to code, if nothing is 100% to code, then in order to provide in order to in order to allow in order to not prevent a service provider from um having a gap in service, this is how you rank the sites. like it's all there in the municipal code and that is what Verizon has done. But as of this moment the golden bow is a viable alternative and it's a viable alternative that requires fewer special exceptions. Um the second part is uh that the prohibition and service materially inh inhibits standard their standard and it says according to the FCC the material the materially inhibit standard provides that quote a state or local legal requirement constitutes an effective prohibition if it materially limits or inhibits the ability of any competitor or provincial competitor to compete in a fair and balanced legal and regulatory requirement and these are quotes from our staff report. The FCC states that this test applies quote not only when filling a coverage gap but also when densifying a wireless network, introducing new services or otherwise

improving service capabilities. And what flumxes me about this part of the Verizon claim is that the verbiage that I just read talks about, and I quote it again, inhibiting the ability of any competitor to compete in a fair and balanced legal and regulatory requirement. It doesn't state that municipalities have to facilitate or make allowances for wireless companies to densify their network or introduce new services. It literally does not say that. It only states that municipalities may not discriminate from one provider to another. That we have to provide a fair a fair means for service providers to compete against one another. So I I don't I don't agree with the Verizon claim that we have a legal oblig to to allow them. we have a legal requirement to allow them or to allow them to densify their services because that's what they want. Um I I don't believe that that's what the law says. So I find that both sections of claim three are mood. Claim four is the denial of the project project is in violation of Verizon's statewide franchise right statewise franchise right which is CPU section 7901 and the city has I'll save you most of this verbiage the city has repeatedly disagreed that this provision is is facially preempted by state law and I think that you know when when I take a step back from this one the Verizon claim that Verizon has unfettered access to the city's right of way to do with what they please to install whatever equipment they care to install is breathtaking and and it's one in which I share the analysis of this staff report. Um so claim four is moot. Claim five the proposed project is consistent with the required findings for approval. Um the proposed the staff report states that the proposed use does not meet the required findings for special exceptions

because the applicant has failed to prove that the denial of the application would violate their rights under federal federal law and because the deviations are not minor deviations that would make the site achieve design objectives of well or better than would be achieved through strict adherence to CMC section 17446. And I'll state here as I've stated before that I believe Verizon has not exhausted the less intrusive alternatives which are the golden ball theater and I agree that claim five is not substantiated. Um so those are my those are my comments on the on the five on the five claims in the appeal. I have some additional comments about um some other things. Um first I'd like to talk about the 17 uh the 17 cubic foot 17 cubic foot limitation. Um, I don't agree. You know, the city the city made the city told Verizon that they wanted the equipment they wanted the equipment encased in something more than a metal case and that they wanted this short shroud or whatever the the shroud, what is it, the flaps between the between the between the metal the metal device and the pole. Um, but I'll what I would do is I would point out that I would point out that section 11 section 2.C.2 of the administrative guidelines and this is the worksheet that the city provides um to wireless companies when they install when they come to the city with a project calls out what is to be included in the 17t allowance. It says um if it had meant to include the gap in the allowance, it would have called it out. And it says um section section C.2 of the administrative guidelines limits the cumulative size of accessory equipment. And in parenthesis, it says including shrouds, cabinets, or other

stealth or concealment devices to 17 cubic feet. It doesn't say that 17 cubic feet does not include the air that exists between that exists between the cabinet and the pole. If it meant to include the air that existed between the cabinet and the pole or if it meant to include the brackets that tie the cabinet to the pole, it could have specified that in the in the worksheet, but it didn't. And and I you know when I was quizzing Jacob before about um things that the planning commission did that staff couldn't support and things that the planning commission did that staff could support. I appreciate that that staff felt that they could support this by including the verbiage from the planning commission about the space this air between the cabinet and the poll. I appreciate that that staff has sort of bent over backwards to um to to agree with the planning commission on this issue that it's that 17 and a it's 17 1/2 ft not 16 1/2 ft which is on the other side of the 17 cubic foot line. But I don't agree with that. I think that the I think that the municipal code could have clearly called out you know could have clearly called out um 17 ft which also includes the air gap between the the things future app between the box and the pole. Um, fall zone and tree impact and historic resources. I agree with these sections of the staff analysis that the application is satisfactory. Um, no visual impact and intrusion. I agree with the wording of this section which finds that the finds that without the special exceptions escape clause the city cannot make the findings regarding visual or property value impacts. I agree with the staff report that had the applicant been able to effectively use the special exceptions clause in the case of this poll which it cannot also

because the golden bout theater that these impacts would be moot. And finally, the sections on required findings, use permits, design review, and coastal development permit, wireless type 1 to4, and special exception findings. I agree with the staff report, which says or implies that without the two special exceptions, the application cannot be accepted. Um, I do believe that if the Golden Bell Theater were not a good choice, the application might have a different fate. Um, one thing I'd like to say is, and I I had a I had a conversation with uh with our attorney about this. Um, I I have a somewhat significant problem with the logic that's hinted at in this in section and and implied by some of the appellants that the application doesn't otherwise comport with the use permits and design review documents of the city and with the local coastal program, which governs coastal development permits and other various regulations. And here's why. And and I'd like to digress for a minute um one minute and uh talk about the design guidelines document that that we're working on to give a clear example. And let's suppose for a second that the new design guidelines take a stance that doors on houses have to be between 12 and 24 ft. And I'm just making up these numbers. Um now an applicant comes before the planning commission with a 3ft by 8 foot 24 ft door. and the planning commission turns to the applicant and says that 24 square foot door isn't human scale that's required to be in the general plan and we won't allow it. So in my hypothetical case when the new design guidelines were adopted the guideline specifically defined what was and was not allowed and that hypothetical document defined the range of acceptable alternatives that fit into the universe that's defined by the general plan. The

design guidelines, my design guidelines don't say 12 to 24 ft is allowed if the planning commission feels that 24 square ft is human scale. It said 12 to 24 ft is allowed. It said these are allowed sizes of this door. And that is what um that is what our wireless ordinance does. Our wireless ordinance breathes life into the into the general plan and the local coastal plan and everything else, the design guidelines and everything else that was in effect when the when the wireless ordinance was passed. It defines it sets out to define the meaning of terms that are sort of sketchy otherwise. It says an acceptable bulkiness of the thing on the pole on the on the power pole is 17 ft. It says you're going to get a demerit if you if you put if you put this thing on a pole that's within 5 ft of the window of the house. These are all decisions that were made during the drafting of this ordinance in the context of the general plan and in the context of the other guidelines. So we can talk we can talk about amending the ordinance and we can talk about doing other things and whatnot. But when we talk about whether a design comports with the general plan, if the design comports if the design comports with the outline with the outlines and the requirements of our our our chapter 46. Is that right? Chapter 46. If it comports with our chapter 17.46 of our municipal code which defines what's okay then it's okay by definition it's okay. And I hope that I hope that we don't have further situations where someone doesn't like

something and they say it violates this thing over here even though we have explicitly said that we don't like it but we're going to rank it this way and that way and some other way. um so that we can so that we can not be guilty of violating federal law. Um and finally um I'd like to be clear that um you know there have been some comments that uh uphold what our wireless ordinance does and I think that that's what all five that's what I'm trying to do and I think that that's what all five of us are trying to do here. Um but our wireless ordinance does not prohibit wireless installations in the R1 district. That's not what it does. It says we don't like them. It says we're at the bottom of the list. Um these these installations are at the bottom of the list and and for reasons that the community went through and I'm completely okay with that. Um but if there's a problem, if there's a gap in service, it ranks these things according to the schedule that's in this worksheet. If there's a significant gap and there are no sites that fit into the zoning, it ranks them using the special exceptions that are specific in the ordinance and they're found in 17.46.40 and 17.46. So, for example, 17.46.40 E1B talks about historic properties and this application does not trigger this clause. I appreciate that this I appreciate that this poll is in front of a historic property, but 17.46 17.46.40 talks about historic properties in the context of national regulations, not in terms of local regulations. It talks about whether it requires the secretary of requires some federal process to approve it. not whether it requires an HRB, not whether it requires an HRB hearing or whatnot to approve it.

They're completely different things. And so just because we don't like that it's in front of a historic property, um, and I agree that it's it's not the greatest thing in the world to have this thing in front of a historic property, our ordinance puts a value on that and it's called an exception. And we have heard tonight that this this project this, you know, this application requires two except two special exceptions. Sorry, not for the historic property, but for the window. It requires two special exceptions. One because it's located on a power pole in the R1 district, and one because it's within 5T of the center line of a window. So it requires two special exceptions which is more than the one special exception that's required on the Golden B Golden B. So that's why the go the Golden B requires one exception and so it's a better case and that's why we are here denying this application because the Golden B is one and the Power Pole in the in the R1 district is two. So um you know Mr. Albrighten made the comment that circle, you know, they don't want to be here for circles and they don't want to be here doing circles um what do you say circles and circles for another eight years and you know to some extent um I share his frustration not because I have bad cell service which is somewhat true but because I don't think that that's how I don't think that that's how the city should treat people like we shouldn't like we shouldn't as a city you know and I talk about this a lot you know for Those of you that have heard me, we shouldn't be yanking people around. And it feels to me like, even though I'm going to vote against this application, it feels to me a little bit like we're just yanking them around. Um, and I don't I don't really want I don't really I don't think that's appropriate for the city to do. Um, so I'm prepared to work

with Verizon, but this is not uh this is not a ripe application yet. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Jeff. I'm gonna go to you, Hans.

Okay. Um, it's always interesting to try to think about how you're going to organize your comments on these things because, um, there's any number of issues that have been brought up. So, I will do my best to be expeditious. Um so um I will lead with my conclusion as well which is that I think we should um uphold the planning commission's denial. Um and I'm going to go through some of the claims as well. So claim one is this claim that um denial violates federal law because the planning commission's findings were not supported by substantial evidence. Um, you know, I believe we have a report from the city's consultant, um, uh, on pages 84 through 85 of that's attachment 5 in our PDF. Um, we heard from him tonight. Um, you know, it doesn't cover the entire gap. Neither does Verizon's proposed Carmelo location. Um, but it, uh, it is a technically feasible alternative. Um certainly in that down link modeling um the green and then even with the new uplink maps um which the city has not had a chance to review and which were sort of trotted out here um this evening the remaining gap um with the proposed Carmelo pole um in the far northwest of that red outlined area again as I'll just repeat kind one of my comments from earlier is the same size as the remaining gap in the Golden Bow scenario. Um where that gap is just to the west of the golden bow. And um it's unclear to me um my only

assumption is that that gap to the west is somehow related to the trees. Um and I'm not sure that that takes into consideration the city's willingness to trim those trees. Um so I'd be very interested in modeling that incorporated that suggestion. Um similarly Verizon has this other set of maps um at 3,700 megahertz which is Cband. Um, and as we saw tonight, um, what's interesting is if you look at those maps, and we weren't given this data, but it strikes me that about the same amount of shaded area um, in that identified gap area is covered by either option, the golden bow or the Carmelo pole. So, in some I consider the um I consider the Golden Bow technically feasible based on what I've heard tonight. The second claim is that denial violates federal law because the city can't dictate technology. And you know, I had a conversation earlier today with the city's wireless attorney. She sort of reiterated the same points tonight. you know, Clarkstown was a um second circuit case, so it's not binding here in the Ninth Circuit. Um second, even if it was binding precedent, Clarkstown is a different scenario. It was a facial challenge to the town's wireless ordinance. And here we're engaged in a sightspecific alternatives analysis under this effective prohibition framework. Um and the reality is we're not dictating technology. The city's not requiring Verizon to use a specific antenna type, band, or engineering configuration.

We're assessing whether an alternative site, the Golden Bow, is technically capable of addressing their service objective. Um, and I think, you know, courts distinguish between mandating technology and evaluating alternatives, and I think it's pretty clear that we're doing the latter. Um third, when doing an alternatives analysis, um my understanding is very common for wireless providers to look at alternative technologies. Um wireless providers themselves often evaluate macro sites, small cells, distributed antenna systems, whole host of options um when determining how to address a coverage objective. Um, so just considering those alternatives doesn't equate to a dictation of technology. This third claim, the denial of the project would be an effective prohibition on the pro provision of wireless service and would materially inhibit Verizon's um ability to introduce new 5G services, improve existing service, and densify the network. Um, again, as everyone's talked about tonight, there's two tests for that. The first one is this significant gap least intrusive means test. Um I tend to agree that there is a significant gap. Um the city's consultant agreed uh with Verizon on that. So I'll accept that. The more interesting question is whether Verizon has shown that the proposed facility is the least intrusive means to address that coverage gap having considered the alternatives. So, you know, is there a less intrusive alternative that's technically feasible and potentially available? Yes. Right. The golden bet, it's technically feasible as we just discussed. Um, is it available? Yes, it's available just within the past few days. That's been confirmed by um

the executive director of the of the theater. So, why why is the Golden Bow less intrusive? Um, you know, first it took me some time to kind of figure out exactly what is meant by least intrusive means. Um, and so probably the best definition I found was actually in um Verizon's own legal brief, it said that the proposed facility must be the least intrusive means to address the coverage gap quote in relation to the land use values embodied in local regulations. Having considered alter alternatives. So in relation to the land use values embodied in local re regulations. So let's take a look at our wireless ordinance. Just look at the zoning compatibility section. The city's wireless ordinance in section 17.46.040B states that applicants must propose placement in locations with the least intrusive land use designation i.e. zoning. Then we've got tier one, two, three. Um the proposed location is in the R1 district, right, which is um one of those least compatible locations, while the Golden Bow is in the A1 district, which is a tier 2 location, which um indicates it's more compatible. The city's wireless ordinance also states in 17.46.040C 040C that quote placement on public and private parcels is strongly preferred over placements in the public rideway. Um, and then if you're in the public rideway, the following is called out as highly incompatible locations and that's 17.46.080E. any location in the public rideway within the single family residential

zoning district, which is what this proposed location is. Any location in the public rideway that would trigger a review of consistency with the Secretary of Interior standards. Um, so you know, Jeff's point is fair. That's the staff point which is that there's nothing proposed to the actual home but the spirit of uh the law here is is I think clear. Um and then secondly um we have Carmel Municipal Code 17.46.080E2 um which lists additional location selection standards in the public rightway. It states that applicants shall not select existing structures directly in front of areas which are 5 ft in either direction from the center line of a door or window on the front facade. So I guess to to sum up, you know, the notion that the proposed location is the least intrusive means to address the coverage gap to me, especially in relation to the land use values embodied in local regulations, you know, to me is just kind of laughable. Um it is it's almost exactly the opposite of what these what this ordinance is trying to set as a preference. Um and you know in fact the the location that Verizon has selected really kind of checks the box for essentially every discouraged category. Um so it sort of it honestly feels to me like a bit of a um a bit of a test case. Um, and I guess I would go further than that. You know, when I'm sitting here asking, have you considered, again, the southern part of town, to your point, doesn't have a lot of

uh commercial properties, right? It really doesn't have hardly any. And so it doesn't take more than about two seconds about looking at a map of Carmel to understand that you've got Laia, the Golden Bow, the Sunset Center, Mission Trail Nature Preserve, and the Carmel Beach Hotel. And so the notion that you got up here and I ask you, have you have you thought about the Carmel Beach Hotel? And you look at each other like, what's he talking about? to me is is pretty clear that there was not a genuine effort to look at the areas that that are preferred in this ordinance that what's the language the land use values embodied in local regulations. your words. Um, you know, the the thing that we're trying to achieve is a preference for these other locations. And if you didn't even look, there's not there's it's not like it has to be an exhaustive list. There's just not that many locations that it could be. And if you haven't looked at that one, then I have to conclude it wasn't a genuine good faith effort. Um, would denial run a foul of the FCC's material inhibit standard? you know, I agree with the staff analysis on that and Jeff adequately went over that. Um, so so in some on this claim three, would it be an effective prohibition? Um, no. And then claim four, uh, denial would violate Verizon statewide franchise right under state law. I also agree with um with the staff's analysis on that that this is um not an absolute right, but it's a limited right um only to the extent necessary for the furnishing of services to the public. It's not necessary here because there's an

alternative um location that's not in the public right away. Um, and then, you know, in terms of claim five, you know, it gets pretty granular and, um, you know, I'm happy to, uh, I'm happy to dig into some of those details about some of these specific findings as helpful. Um, I will I will say to try to move the conversation along,

um, I don't I don't think that the safety concerns are particularly wellounded. It's going to be a sturdier pole. It's going to go deeper into the ground. on this poll lasted 70 years. Um, and yeah, I guess I'll I'll dig in on the others as as time comes up. So, I would recommend uh upholding the planning commission's denial. Thank you, Hans. Alessandre, you want to go next?

Thank you, Mayor. Um, I agree with the findings in the staff report and what my fellow council members have said. Um, as many have noticed, there seems to be a lack of consistency and changing of the story in what Verizon says. Uh, for example, regarding nodes 002 and 005 in Carmel Point, uh, they've had 5 years, um, to activate them. They've let the permits lapse. They blamed the fiber optics and then they said it was a city permit even though it was in the county. uh and I I doubt they would have agreed to that location of 002 uh on the original uh settlement agreement if it had had that Comcast equipment on it. So there's just inconsistencies uh regarding the viability of the Golden Theater as an alternative since 2021. Testing has shown it is viable. Um but now they're using the trees in as an excuse, but the branches can be trimmed and other sites that have been approved also have surrounding trees. Um, and regarding the alleged service gap in general, their website shows coverage for the entire area for customers. Um, and I just question if they had so much of a service gap, why didn't they try to activate those two other facilities? Um, in order to help. So, I support the planning commission resolution to uphold the denial and reject Verizon's appeal. I think the key here is that the golden bow is a less intrusive site. It is technically feasible and an available alternative. It's in a more preferred zone, the A1 theater district, and according to our wireless ordinance, it would only need one exception regarding the height. And the owner uh is willing to enter the lease agreement. And we heard tonight the CTC city engineer said that the Golden Ball quote looks like a viable candidate and is better than the proposed site. Uh the city approved Verizon's facility at the Sunset Center roof which is a far more important historic building and there was actually

no public opposition to the installation in 2021 and it is a stealth facility. This site on Carmelo is in the least preferred zone, an R1 residential and it requires two exceptions which cannot be granted and also does not meet design guidelines as part of the general plan because of the cabinet size and also visual impacts on the neighborhood. So, I support adopting the resolution and denying the appeal. Thank you, Bob. Go ahead.

Yeah. So, um again, punch line is I too um support the denial and the resolution that's prepared by staff uh stating as much. I'll try to be brief. Um I my colleagues often hear and and the public often hears me say that I think um our government um has an obligation of helping applicants of all wants you know whatever they're applying for a clear path to a yes it doesn't have to be an easy path but it has to be a clear path and once you start on it you there's no surprises there's no hiccups along the way um I I think we have a lot to work on in that regard across the city. But um when I was on the planning commission um I worked quite a bit on our wireless ordinance and um I was motivated um very much you know um from having served on the planning commission. You basically you are protecting the aesthetic character of the town. That's what you do uh with 90% of your time. So, I was certainly motivated by making sure that whatever ordinance we put in place um had the aesthetic protection of our community and especially the residential neighborhoods as a clear priority. But I was also motivated by this idea of creating a clear path to get to yes and I I feel that the wireless ordinance is actually a good example of that and that it gives you breadcrumbs and if you follow the breadcrumbs you can get to yes and you know there's tier one tier 2 tier three and you know if you pick um options in the easier tiers you are more likely to get to yes um and um unfortunately what in this case Verizon has come back. Um, and my colleagues have said this already, you know, with an application that is

the least desirable um, location as ranked by that ordinance. Um, and that's where you started. Um, because the other thing the ordinance asked you to do, and it's not just you, it's all this would be AT&T or anybody else that was wanting to um, do the same thing. you know, we're we're not restraining competition here in any way. These are the rules that everybody has to follow. Um it's um the I guess I'll say we we we asked you to show your work. Um and we asked that in a couple of ways. One is first off, you have to prove that you have a problem. And you know, we've had dueling um technical experts uh this evening uh bouncing back and forth saying, you know, what's acceptable and what's not and what works and what doesn't. Um we do have two technical experts. The one thing they seem to agree on is that there's a gap. Um and that you did show your work for that. Um I'm, you know, I I walk through that gap with my my Ver Verizon cell phone at least once, if not twice a day, and I have no problems. But that's anecdotal, you know, that's not a result of um the tools that you guys have available to you. But the other thing in showing your work was if you come in w with an application that is, you know, so far down the desiraability path, we asked you to show your work um that you had considered and eliminated things that were higher up the desiraability path. And you didn't do that. You came to the planning commission. you came to the planning commission with this application when when and you go back and watch the planning commission, you know, if if we were here just really debating only what had happened at the planning commission. I mean, this is a denovo hearing, so we've had to um not only

consider what the planning commission considered, we've had to consider a whole bunch more of stuff that just got rammed in, you know, at the last minute. It makes it very difficult. Um um but at the planning commission what they listened to was the single application for the one cell uh for the one small cell um and they denied it I think in a and were justified in doing so um and that's really where the golden bow was reintroduced um and since their denial until today you know and a lot of this stuff came in at noon today um Verizon came back with a whole bunch more information about looking at the golden bow. And I'm not saying that was wrong, guys. It just um um when you were you didn't originally show your work uh that you had actually considered um the golden bow uh to the extent that you seem to now have considered it. Um uh I agree with my colleagues that it would seem the golden bow is feasible. Um Mr. Conroy um and you know he started he started his explanation essentially saying the golden bow is constructible but I believe this is a direct quote it's not it is not technically feasible it won't work um I was actually intrigued and waiting uh for the proof of that and then he proceeded to demonstrate with maps that it does work is it perfect you know I I can only judge by looking at the amount of green and yellow and black space on a map. Um but based on that and Hans did the did the same analysis um it would seem to work as well as the you know as other options. So I believe it is technically um feasible um

when Mr. Schubin started talking earlier today this evening he just said you know I believe it was um you Mr. Schubin that that you know the current sort of network and infrastructure configuration that Verizon deploys to um serve um the city of Carmel by the sea is a compromise and it's the results of compromise um and I think the future has to also be a result of compromise compromise um re it does involve imperfection um um but I I think the wireless ordinance is pretty clear um of what priority we would like you or anyone else um to pursue. Only the other thing I will say you know the the idea that this is that we are somehow legislating technology. I assure you we are not capable of uh legislating um technology. Um you know that's your job is to figure out how to use it. I just think I I get the sense that Verizon is very committed to the small cell. um technology and I'm sure for the reasons that satisfy you know your you and your shareholders um but I know there's a lot more options and you know that it's it it it can be a game of mix and match uh to achieve an acceptable if not perfect outcome and that's all

that's all that's all

okay thank you well said um I've got a I went through a lot of the same points as as my fellow council people went through, but I'm going to skip those. I'm just going to start off with with uh down the list of ways. Um Verizon's own supplemental reports previously acknowledged that a facility may be technically constructed at the Golden Bow. Our consultant analyzed a macro facility designed at that location and concluded it could potentially cover almost the entire gap area with reliable inbuilding coverage. We received information today at noon which we were at lunch and the meeting started at 3 so they didn't give us much time to even evaluate it but uh we heard about it tonight. Um it's it's as has been said it's just represents a moving target and to dwell on that point it's not like the golden bow just showed up all of the sudden out of nowhere. I mean, it's been obvious for a number of years, I believe, that that was a potential site. So, I think it would have been wise to do that analysis, you know, months ago be and not just wait till now when we when it became the last alternative. But the city has indicated a willingness to work with the Golden Bow on tree trimming. That could further improve the site's viability. And critically, as recently as se February 25th, just days before today's hearing, the Golden Bow confirmed in writing that it is willing to negotiate a lease. So, it is available. Verizon has argued that the Golden Bell would cost more, that historic review adds complications, and that it doesn't fit their preferred small wireless deployment architecture. Staff found those arguments unconvincing, and so do I. Verizon has placed facilities on private rooftops elsewhere in Carmel and beyond. Doing so here would not be unusual or extraordinary. The California Supreme Court has clearly held that the telephone franchise right to use public rights away is not absolute and that's been claimed by some of my fellow council people tonight as well. It is in

the court's own words a limited right to use the highways only to the extent necessary for furnishing services to the public. Where a viable off rightway alternative exists, that limited right does not compel the city to approve this location. And that's the case here. Staff and expert witnesses have noted that Verizon's own gap maps shifted in unexplained ways between their early reports and their most recent submission with the Golden Bow moving from inside the gap area to outside it. We saw tonight some interesting analysis that showed even with your preferred location, we're still going to have gaps and that was covered sufficiently by by fellow council people. Um for all of these reasons, the effective prohibition argument fails. A viable less intrusive alternative exists. the applicant has not exhausted it and therefore the special exceptions required to approve this application cannot be granted. Fourth on the state law argument argument Verizon claims that denying this application violates their franchise rights under public utilities code section 7901. Court cases document that the right to construct facilities and public rights away is not absolute and is limited to what is necessary for furnishing service to the public. As I said before, the court also recognized that cities retain broad authority to consider aesthetics under section 7901. Carmemell's preference for placements outside public rights aways and residential areas is grounded in valid right-of-way management concerns tied to the city's unique character or narrow streets or forest or extraordinary coastal environment. The state law argument fails on the same basis as a federal argument. a viable alternative exists outside the rightway. Because every required finding must be met in order to approve the project and because multiple critical findings across the use permit, design review, coastal development permit, and wireless facility categories cannot be made. I will support the resolution before us to deny the appeal and deny approval of the underlying permits. Finally, I want to briefly note for the record the findings that the council does find to be met

because fairness requires acknowledging them. The proposed facility would comply with all applicable FCC regulations for RF RF emissions and human exposure. Although there are concerns about the fall zone, staff believe this application meets fire safety and public safety standards, as do I. All required public notices were probably given through this process. On those points, the applicant did what was asked of them, and the record should reflect that. I'd also like to be clear about what this decision is not. This is not a decision that wireless service doesn't matter in Carmel. It does and we acknowledge that. This is not a decision that Verizon's coverage gap isn't real and that and this is not a prohibition on Verizon providing improved wireless service in Carmel. We are not closing that door. What we are doing is directing Verizon to a more appropriate location, one that our own independent analysis suggests can solve the same coverage problem with less impact on a residential neighborhood. To that end, the resolution before us authorizes a city administrator to enter into a tolling agreement with Verizon. That agreement would pause the clock on any litigation deadline, giving Verizon the time to submit and process an application for the Golden Bell location without feeling compelled to rush to court. We are offering that in good faith. We genu genuinely hope Verizon will take us up on it. Are there any other comments from council before we move to vote?

Yes.

Go ahead. Um, a couple of a couple more comments. Um, one, I I will almost support the resolution in the packet. Um, but I would like to ask uh on the on the question of the resolution, I would like to ask that uh the finding that has to do with 17 cubic feet be removed. Um, I think that leaving uh section I'm talking about the attachment to the resolution. Section two, findings, evidence, blah blah blah for design review. Three, finding determinance and evidence. Um the stuff about 17 cubic feet. I believe that that leaves the city open to um some litigation. I think that that's a pretty I think that the city would have a pretty strong case that we have um turned the application back um without that section in there. And I think that that exists as uh I think that leaving that section about the 17 cubic feet in the resolution uh exposes the city to some vulnerability. So I would like to see it taken out. Um I would strongly recommend that we take it out um to not to not to not provide that path to the courtroom. And second, um I think that the I think that the the tolling agreement that's in the resolution, the 30 days is a good idea. Um the problem I have the problem I have with the with that method of expressing congeniality on this on this notion, as Bob would say, getting the yes, is that rendering an immediate verdict um on this. Um, so if something were to happen with the Golden Bow Theater, um, that leaves no option for Verizon other than to sue us. So I think um a good example of that is you know Hans was talking about

alternative locations and the alternative location of Llaya came up um during everything that was going on a couple of years ago with the cell phone tower in front of Llaya uh in front of the Lia parking lot and Llaya basically told Verizon no we don't want your cell phone tower on our premises and I think there is some risk Um that's that uh Steven Moore or the pack rep organization could turn around and tell Verizon no we don't want we don't want it. Um and then the question would be what is the city going to do? Um is the city going to you know if we enter into you know this would this would of course require I'm looking at Mr. Al Britain. This would of course require Verizon's consent um to do this, but I would hate for the city to take an action now that's not reversible when we could just as easily, you know, if PACREP if Packrep says no um in the future and we decide we still don't like the we still don't like the facility on Camello, we could just easily turn it down 6 months from now. like we could just as easily say yes or no, you know, six months from now after Verizon has gone through all the minations of working with PACR rep, working with the owners of the whoever it is, the owner that owned the Golden Bal Theater and we could so with Verizon's cassette, we could sort of postpone the day of reckoning. So So this we could postpone the day of reckoning to 6 months from now. So, this um this app this uh um resolution in the packet says today is the day of reckoning and don't sue us until you do this other work. And I think it would be more prudent of the city to say let's postpone the day if Verizon if we're going to ask Verizon to pursue the Golden Bell Theater and they agree to do

that. Now, if they're not going to do that, then we're kind of done. But if they agree that they will make some moves and to do that, then we should afford I believe that we should afford them the courtesy of not saying no yet. Um and insulating us insulating us from the imminent lawsuit.

Go ahead, Mayor. Um yeah, I wrote this section six on the tolling of the statute of limitations and the purpose of it is to um um provide as it says the opportunity for the applicant if they choose uh to do so um to submit and process with the city an application to install a a cell equipment at the Golden Valve. Um uh what I did here um uh uh on this point was that maybe we might want to add the words at the end of this sentence um the Golden Bell or other locations and um I know we heard about the Carmel Beach and you know perhaps there's other some other locations but that way you wouldn't pin it to the Golden Bow and it would give um Verizon an opportunity to look at some other locations rather than just the Golden Bow. Any thoughts on that?

What about the 17 cubic feet? Where is that in the resolution? I I wasn't able to find it. The packet. Sorry. If you are looking at the packet, um it's on page uh 21 of 384. So, if you print it, if you've started printing out the packet, I just have the resolution printed out. Yeah. section two. It doesn't actually say it doesn't actually specifically reference the 17 ft though, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It does reference the 17 ft. Or maybe it references by Oh, wait. I just saw it. It's right there

by illusion to another section. Okay. It's at the top of page five of 13 of the resolution. Right there. 3A. Thanks. at the bottom of page. Well, I have a I have it. I have a different I think I have it. Just have a different It's at the bottom of page four and the top of page five. It's both. It's bottom of page four of 13. Fair. Yeah.

Hans, what do you think about the 17? Um, you know, I I tend to agree that it does feel a little bit um it it does feel a little bit like we're not uh shooting exactly straight on that one. I mean, I would be interested to see what the um I have not gone back to the actual language from the um the detailed wireless design guidelines to see what it says. Says 17 ft. It just says 17.

I read those words that I read, those things that I read about what comprises 17 ft. That was a quote. Uh so Brandon helpfully has Anna. Thank you, Hannah. It says volume, the cumulative limit for all accessory equipment, including their shrouds, cabinets, or other stealth or concealment devices for a single wireless facility shall not exceed 17 cubic feet. So my my respon may I may I

Yeah. My response would be, you know, to sort of quote what Pete Hubin said, which was I think the very first Verizon I think Verizon would be happy to submit the application without any concealment devices at all and have it be a box on a pole. So Verizon could satisfy Verizon could satisfy the 17 cubic feet by making it uglier. Well, that's another that's a question I have for staff. Is is uh are those is anything any of those stealth concealment elements required? Under the next section, if you just keep going for pull-mounted accessory equipment, concealment applicants should propose to place any polemounted accessory equipment using concealment elements, paint, film, shielding, um, and in the least conspicuous position possible. So, hypothetically, you could still determine it to be concealed with just paint. It does go on at the end of the section in part C of that section, horizontal extensions. there is the speak the language that was added to the design guidelines specifically to address that gap space be covered with flaps. So if they do add the um

horizontal so if they are going to be going with shrouding they are um required per the design guidelines to have that flap that covers the space. Um, it really then just goes to for volume. Do we count the gap itself as volume? So, I'm going to read this cuz I think it's a little clear. It says Yeah. Um, this is um section 3C. Is that right?

Yes. Uh it says the separation gap between the pole and the accessory equipment shall be no greater than required for compliance with such laws and concealed by opaque material such as cabinet flaps or wings. So after I mean I guess after reading that maybe my opinion is different. My opinion is it does seem like it calls for those things and then it seems like it the volume section says the cumulative limit for all accessory equipment including their shrouds, cabinets or other stealth or concealment devices for a single wireless facility shall not exceed 17 cubic feet. So when I interpolate between those sections, I actually I actually think that um I actually think that what the staff has in here is right and that um it probably does run a foul of the wireless design guidelines.

What do you think? Thank you for both of you for bringing that up. I tend to agree with Hans now that now that he's read it. Alisandra, I I would agree now that I have more information.

So would I. Although it was a good it was a good thought, Jeff. Sounds like four out of the five of us do not want to make that change. Uh what about the alternate locations? I mean, Jeff brought up a really good point. I think that, you know, we're trying to partner with Verizon to solve some problems. So, it's not like we don't want to do it. So, we also don't want to create a situation where where, you know, I don't know what kind of pressure we put on them to make sure they're doing a good job other than our consultants have to work with their consultants to make sure the data they're giving us is accurate because it has been a moving target for some time and it probably will continue to be a moving target. So, how do we know they're working in good faith and how do they not just come back and say it's not going to work and then where are we? And that's why Jeff's point is a very good one. Can somebody I was wondering if somebody could It didn't fully penetrate for me. So I was wondering if maybe Brian or Brandon could sort of circle and look cute on those two options. The one option seemed to be what Jeff was proposing and then the other option was Brian's thought about adding or other locations. But maybe specifically on what Jeffoff was saying, maybe just give it another shot for me so I can

Yeah, I I'll start Brian and then if I miss something, you can come in. So they actually what Brian and um Council Member Baron said go together. So Council Member Baron's suggestion was uh doing asking Verizon if they'd be open to a six-month tolling agreement on this application

on this application specifically. So that you were not making a final decision tonight. That would give six months to continue to explore. uh so that uh if it ended up that you know Golden Bow was not feasible that we weren't stuck with a potential lawsuit that there wasn't a final decision tonight and Brian's ad to that was let's not limit it only to the Golden Bow because you brought up a place one of the places like the Karma Beach Hotel and Spa let's limit the language six month tolling to explore the Golden Bow or other viable locations okay in the area the problem is the shot clock expires on March 6th Okay. Fifth. So, a decision needs to be made. A decision needs to be made tonight unless we can get unless

unless they want to agree to that, unless they want to extend the shot clock, which well would would make would approving that resolution with that added on point. There's two solve the shot clock.

Yeah, there's two um issues going on. one is the shot clock and if the shot clock's not extended um and the council doesn't make a decision tonight um then it's going to be deemed approved. So that's one you there could be an extension of the shot clock. It's got to be done in writing um and it could be extended for as long as the parties agree to extend it and that would allow um Verizon to consider the Golden Bell or other locations. So the second I guess alternative to the extension of the shot clock would be this section six on the tolling of the statute of limitations. What that would mean is that if the resolution is is adopted tonight then you will have made your decision there's no need to worry about the shot clock anymore and if Verizon would come back and say okay let's extend the statute of limitations. you agree on some period of time, which is why it's been delegated to the city administrator so he can use his best judgment rather than have to return to the council um on that decision, which is kind of an administrative decision, if you will, in terms of the length and then let Verizon have that discussion with staff. Um, but if they come up with a an extension for usually what I see on these tolling agreements, it'll be in effect for 6 months or some other period of time unless terminated earlier or extended. So that's how tolling agreements work. And the final thing I'll say is that I think that if you're interested in that option that as it's already been mentioned, add to the end of that sentence or other locations. So if we if we pass the resolution as you just stated it, does that stop this the shot clock is over?

No. No. What what the shock clock becomes irrelevant once you make your decision? So if you make your decision tonight, we don't have to talk about the shot clock anymore because you'll have made your decision within the time period of the shot clock. So does adding or other locations change that? No. No. The shot clock is then not an issue because it sounds like we're ready to make a decision to just say golden bow without those words. So the shot clock doesn't change.

Excuse me. Shot clock becomes mood if you once you make your decision. So if you make a decision tonight, we don't even talk about shock clock anymore. Um then if um and if you make your decision tonight and you include this section six in it with the language that I've suggested you add, there is an option to avoid litigation, which would be a discussion between Verizon and and and the um acting city administrator as to whether or not they do or don't want to explore other options. If they say yes, we'll explore other options, then a tolling agreement would be entered into for some period of time. Um, if they say no, we don't want to do a tolling agreement, then they'll do whatever they're going to do.

Wouldn't they always have the option to come back and apply for another location?

Well, they they would, but here they they're if they if they don't want to apply for another location and they want to pursue this location once you've adopted this resolution, the only way that they're going to be able to pursue this location is to go to court. So let's but my suggestion is um to keep the resolution as is other than to add or other location um in section 6.1 um and part of the reason is I I when it comes to the shot clock and all of the legal mechanizations I'm sorry you know Verizon is really good at this um you know they deal with these all over the place and we don't um so I don't I I'm afraid of unintended consequences of doing anything other um than what's put put before us because it's just the unknown that we're not expert at.

I I agree with Bob and also I think it's fair to give the residents some resolution to make our decision tonight and and not drag it out through another six months. Council, you can you can obviously do that. You you do also have me representatives of Verizon here. You could ask about the tolling agreement as well if they're interested, you know, adopt this resolution like you'd like to do. Um, but then to ask them the question here, you could do that as well. Personally, I I really didn't come here to negotiate that, you know, the our mission was clear was to make a decision. I'm a little concerned about adding or other location because I just don't know how that's going to work. I mean, they have to start a new web. If they pick another location, aren't we going to have to go through this whole thing again?

Well, yes. I mean, they would for Golden Bow as well, but but they could do it anyway.

Well, they could do it anyway, but the point is they've applied for a site. This is a site. This is apparently their preferred site. I don't know whether they're they would be willing to consider another site or not. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. If they don't want to consider another site and they want to push this site, then we go to court, I assume, unless they decide not to do that. Um, which should be nice. Um, but if they choose that to consider another site, this section allows the extension uh on the statute of limitations. So, they don't have to go go off to court and file a lawsuit against the city. and it gives time for them to pursue either the Golden Bell or some other location of their choice.

Okay, I think it's okay. Mr. May I say something about this issue because I've seen it quite a lot. You think you have some No, I don't know that that's appropriate. Then we're going to have have statements from Mr. Albert. I think we're at the point now where it's up to the council to decide. Can I make Can I make a motion?

You you can. Um I think I would no I'm sure uh that I move to approve the approve the resolution um as written with um one exception and that is on section 6.1 under tolling of statute of limitations um the final sentence say with the city an application to install cell equipment at the golden bow or other location the diff the the other location being the addition Jeff What is Are you okay with that? We haven't got a second yet. We got a second. Does anybody want to second that before we discuss it? I'll second it.

Okay, Hans, I think Go ahead.

I think I would be as I sit here and my head is spinning. Um, you know, I feel like I raised I feel like I'm trying to work with the company and I raised two what I think are you know middle level substantial middle level substantial important distinctions I think that illustrate that we the city are willing to are willing to work with them. I hear Bob, you know, I Bob, I heard you about not wanting to negotiate, but I think the alternative to not negotiating is declaring war. And and to me, you know, the 17 cubic feet is a little bit like a stick in the eye. Like that's really what I think it is. I think it's just a stick in the eye. You know, you may be right and we may not. I think that the I think that the the message it sends is a poor message and I think that the the the decision to take the final action, you know, which I agree with Bob is an easier thing and requires less requires less um less like you know Mr. Albert Britain is sitting right back there and you know I think that taking this action you know is going to really poke him and I'm I'm not I don't I just don't think that I don't think that the city is really ready. You know, this is our first wireless application under the new law and I don't think that we're really

ready to poke the bear yet. And so my uh you know, as much as I as much as I'm clear that um you know, I'm ready to deny the application um that resolution is not one that I'm prepared to vote for. So that's my uh that's my that's how I feel. It's because of the 17 cubic feet. What I what I know, you know, if we're going to if you're going to put me on the spot.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm going to answer the question of whether it's 17 cubic feet, you know, I don't really I really don't want to do that unless I'm confident that, you know, what I'm going to say matters. And there's honestly listening to the four of you and this is all completely fine. Like I don't I don't harbor any ill will but you the four of you have decided that you know 17 cubic feet that like that stick in the eye is a thing that you're willing to do. And so I'm not I don't feel like I don't feel like uh you know I have two things wrong with the resolution. You know if there's some negotiating to do I'm willing to negotiate. But if there's not um if there's not negotiating to do, then I would say, you know, I'm I'm open, but I would say if there's not negotiating to do, then uh let's just vote.

Yeah, I'm I'm not trying to poke a bear. I'm trying to get a decision, frankly, um and uphold our codes. And I think that's where the 17 foot that's what Hans just demonstrated to me is that that this isn't arbitrary. It's it's in the code. So, um, and I think section 6.1 allows us to move forward. And, you know, if if if Verizon wants to take advantage of this, then we can continue to have a conversation. I hope that's the case. Um, not that I'm against negotiation at all. I'm all about negotiation. I just don't want to do it here. And now, that's my my point. I don't think 9:00 at night is the time to okay, negotiate with anybody.

So, we have a motion. We have a second. We've discussed it. Let's do roll call. Okay. Seconded. Council member Baron. No. Second. Council member Bter. Yes. Mayor Promell. Yes. Council member Dram. Yes. Mayor Burn. Yes. Motion passes 41.

All right. Thank you everybody for your time and all the research and and uh good work that you did tonight. And uh with that, I'm going to conclude tonight's special council meeting and move to adjourn. What do you do?