velopment until the drought is over and just have true city centered here in the downtown area housing built where the infrastructure already exists and the water is already available. So now is your opportunity to shine. You get to have these lower fees for contractors and developers but also help the public. Thank you. Thank you Mr. DeWitt. Yes sir. You've got a good point. Most of your sewage ends up in the Russian river, right? A lot of sewage ends up there. You guys might not be responsible attached to the Russian river. Make sure you speak right into the microphone there so folks can hear you on Zoom. A lot of raw sewage ends up in the Russian river. That's a fact, right? You look at your habitat there, there's no steelhead, there's no salmon, okay so he's got a point. If you lower the tax base on that stuff and you have companies coming or contractors coming in from other counties why not tax them up there and repair some of that damage? It's called grey water. If you're paying a fee to send it somewhere you guys could get a grey water plant here employ city employees, you could train people and you save money. You just save money.  This is a real simple thing to do. I'm going to cut fees. I would do it for low-income housing apartments and duplexes that help support mothers and kids that need help. Families that need help. I won't cut it for anybody else. There's a lot of income here and if you have contractors coming in and companies like that, tax them.  They don't care. They're going to pay the fee. They don't care about your ecosystem. It's all about money, right? Tax them is the best thing you can do. And save your ecosystem. Put it to play here. It'll help your families. Thank you. And did you want to identify yourself for the council minutes? My name is Mitchell Suza. Great. Thank you so much. Adam City Clerk, did we have any voicemail public comments? We received no voicemail public comments on item 16.1. Okay. Council Member Swethelm, I'll have you introduce the resolution for discussion. Okay. I would move the resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending the schedule of water demand fees for properties to be serviced by connection to the city water system and way further reading of the text. Second. So we have a motion from Council Member Swethelm and a second from Council Member Sawyer. Madam Director, if you're still with us, I did want to ask you, I hear pretty frequently from folks in the community asking questions about the Geysers contract. Could you just remind us, I think we need to promote Jennifer, if you could, could you remind us what the stipulations for that contract were and how long it's in effect for? Yes. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. I'm happy to answer the questions about the Geysers system. First, if I may, I'd just like to note that I think one of the commenters noted that our wastewater is discharged to the recycle to the Russian River and that is not true in most years. We recycle 100% of our recycle water with two thirds of that water going to the Geysers steam fields. It is used to produce green energy for our region, which is a great benefit and helps fight climate change and then that contract is in place through 2037 with the Geysers community invested a lot of money in that project as well as the Geysers to provide that recycle water through 2037. All right. Thank you so much, Director. Vice Mayor, go ahead. I just wanted to make a comment and thank everyone that has worked on this initially coming onto Council. I knew nothing about water and the one thing that I asked you guys was to make it so that the public could understand what you're talking about because I know that you guys are very passionate about this, but everyone else does not share that passion. So I would like to take the time to thank you for all the time and dedication that you put into it and I think I've seen this presentation maybe five times and I learned something new every time that I see it. So thank you guys so much for your time and dedication. All right, Council with that I will close the public hearing and I will go ahead and call the role on the motion. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Council Member Alvarez. Aye. That motion passes with 5 ayes with Council Members Fleming and Tibbetts absent. All right, Council Member Schwedhelm. And then I'd also like to introduce an ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending sections 15-16.030 and 15-16.050 of Title 15 of the Santa Rosa City Code adopting sewer demand fee and waive further even in the text. Second. Motion by Council Member Schwedhelm. Second by Sawyer. Let's go ahead and call the roll. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Council Member Alvarez. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with 5 ayes with Council Members Fleming and Tibbetts absent. Thank you so much, Director. Thank you, Bob and Kimberly. We really appreciate all of the work that you've put in on this and I know that we're not done here tonight. We'll be coming back for that item in just a little bit. Mr. City Manager, let's go on to Item 16.2. Mayor and Members of the Council, Item 16.2 is also a public hearing. The matter before the Council is an ordinance regulating wireless facilities in the public right of way and a resolution adopting design and development standards for such facilities. Gabe Osborn, our Deputy Director of Development Services and Gail Karish of Best Best and Krieger will be presenting this item to the Council this evening. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers and Members of the Council. As mentioned in the introduction, the main topic for tonight's conversation is associated with the placement of wireless facilities in the public right of way and the need for today's conversation has really spawned from the fact that we've seen fairly dramatic advancements in technology on the wireless front over the last 15 to 20 years. We have seen most new developments and new infrastructure that's built today has a tendency to want to rely on wireless communications. Most communication devices have evolved dramatically over time on the cell phone front. We have started with cell phones being purely for voice and we have seen that evolve to text messaging, and now cell phones are consuming massive amounts of data at a very high speed. So we've seen those general trends occur over the last 15 to 20 years and what we've seen from the telecommunications providers is a significant amount of capital investment to meet that demand. And as that capital investment moved forward it looked for different types of locations for traditional wireless antennas. Historically those were placed on private property. What we've seen over the last five years or so is there was more of a push to push to move those into the public right of way. And although that has advanced wireless communication in the network that provides that connectivity it has also created a series of community concerns that are not just specific to Santa Rosa but we are seeing more widespread throughout the nation in certain areas when these facilities get closer to where people live and work. So today's action really is attempting to balance that out to the best of our ability. So obviously we know there is a need to expand these facilities but we also have this desire to protect the aesthetics of our community and maintain our streetscapes. So joining me today is Gail Karisch and she is with Best Best and Krieger. So what we determined early on in this process because this is a very unique situation and it requires a very specialized expertise in telecommunications law to assist. And Dale's firm and her team have a significant amount of years experience developing policies for multiple municipalities and fairly instrumental in the development of this. I'm not sure we would have been able to get it to this point without her assistance. So Gail will be stepping in a little further along in the presentation and she will also be available for any questions you may have. Next slide please. So this slide will just provide a really rough agenda of what we're going to touch on today. There is quite a bit of content so some of these areas I'll try to move forward fairly rapidly. The first piece we'll touch on is really a review of the types of wireless facilities that are being installed. We've had quite a few study sessions on this topic and a lot of the slides in this area will be taken right out of that and they provide a background to understand the types of wireless facilities. We will talk specifically about small cells which those are the facilities going in the public right of way. At that point after that, excuse me, Gail will step in and give an overview of all the state and federal law affecting wireless facilities and that is an important piece because it really does limit local authority. It gives us various areas where we can protect aesthetics. I will then come back into the presentation and give an overview of the proposed code updates today and the development of our design and development standards. And I'll also talk a little bit about the next steps overall for telecommunications in the city of Santa Rosa. Next slide please. So when we look at the different types of telecommunications facilities macro sites are likely the most common. Macro sites we've had a long history with. They were the first types of antennas. They're the facilities that go on private buildings and they can be a ray of antennas so you can have multiple providers that are on one building and they typically have a larger coverage area and they're typically higher and they can be placed on private structures or they can be placed on city buildings. This image to the right is our fire training center. We also have these on water tanks. They're fairly common and the approval of these is addressed under our zoning code which typically is the section under our planning side that deals with land use entitlements. Next slide please. So the approval process with these historically they have gone through a use permit. They do have design review. In some ways they are discretionary but in other ways they are very ministerial and that's because of the federal law associated with them. They are typically reviewed against published design guidelines which makes them ministerial. They have often had to submit what are referred to as alternate site analyses which basically take a look at various other locations that are proposing and that's all intended for them to take the least intrusive option for basically closing a coverage gap. So that was a lot of the regulations that did apply to some of the macro sites we have. They also are required to basically submit radio frequency analysis which basically shows the radio frequency emissions that come from these sites and that's an important point. Gail will talk about that a little more in the regulations section. The FCC or the Federal Communications Commission has set those admission thresholds so sites do have to show that they are operating within those thresholds. Macro sites also involve a public meeting because it's more of a planning application and they have a public hearing and they typically have longer shot clocks which is the time frame in which we can improve them and once again Gail will go into more detail on that front. They have building permits and when they are on city property there are lease agreements associated with them. Next slide please. So the public installation are what are referred to as small cells and this was really the push into the public right of way. So small cells are intended to basically fill in smaller coverage gaps and they basically do some heavy lifting when it comes to densifying a network. So there may be situations where residents experience the appropriate number of bars on their phone. They can still call, they can still have text but they're not getting good data connection and that data connection the speeds might reduce when multiple people jump onto the network so that's usually capacity issues and small cells really densify the network so they're smaller, there are more of them and in most situations they're attempting to increase the capacity level for that big data demand that we're seeing on cell phones. And they are almost solely placed in the public right of way that was the big push is to put them in the city's right of way and typically on polls in that location. Under our current policy chapter 13 of our city code does apply and our public improvement plan and our public improvement standards apply. The challenge with those documents is we don't have any language in that those two documents that are specific to small cells. They're very general in nature so they address general operations in the right of way which are traffic control, pedestrian safety. There's no specific requirements for siting for those locations or how they're built. Next slide please. And I do apologize there's a slight typo that should be joint utility polls in that title but small cells are going on two poll types. Joint utility polls are wooden polls and they are typically owned by PG&E the city does not own the infrastructure. Those do have to go through an approval process on our end. They get an encroachment permit and that has a traffic control review and it has consistency with our design standards and once again there is no specific language in there for small cells so it's fairly general it's protecting public infrastructure. We do have notification requirements but those notification requirements are for construction impacts. So typically after the permit is issued we will notify the residents that within 24 to 48 hours work is commencing which might impact parking which might create noise in the area. There is no notification of a pending approval for the permit. And they also do have building permits because all of these are powered they have separate meter connections from PG&E. Next slide please. So the small cells are also going on city owned polls and those are typically street lights and they have a very similar approval process from an encroachment permit standpoint so they have to march through that same process but before they get to that point they do have to go through a license agreement process. So we require that all providers are executing a master license agreement which gives approval to deploy on city street poles and then they also go through a site license agreement which approves a specific street pole. And as part of that there is a bit more discretion. We can mitigate operational issues with that street light how does the wireless facility function in a pole knockdown situation there's issues with routine electrical maintenance and obviously we can control ground equipment in that area to to avoid negatively impacting the available space in the right of way. Next slide please. There have been a few past council actions surrounding telecommunications facilities. Council policy 300-04 addresses telecommunication facility placement on city owned infrastructure that was initially adopted in July of 2000 at that point really all we were seeing were macro sites that addressed placement on water tanks or city buildings and it was tailored to that. There was an amendment to that policy in February of 2017 to address street lights and that policy is what creates the master license agreement process for street lights the site license agreement process for each individual location it also brings into the equation an annual license fee for the placement on those street lights and it grants the execution authority for those pole agreements to the city manager as you meet. Next slide please. In addition to the adoption and the modification of those policies we've also had a few study sessions that focused specifically on small cells those were March 6th of 2018, June 5th of 2018 and then also December 10th of 2019, July 21 of 2020. In 2018 most of the conversations in those study sessions focused on the deployments that were happening through Verizon at that time well we just started rolling those out there were community concerns as part of that and those were opportunities to discuss that as we got into the study sessions in 2019 and 20 we started talking more about solutions to address some of those community concerns. Next slide please. So this slide was pulled out of some of those those previous study sessions and it addresses some of the community's concerns that we were initially hearing with those initial deployments of small cells and they fell into a few different categories one was health risks there were concerns from the community about RF exposure and the proximity of those polls because obviously in the right of way they're getting much closer to businesses and residential units. They were concerned about aesthetics and those fell into really two buckets at the time which were loss of property value because of the infrastructure changing the visual characteristics of the streetscape and there were also scenic impacts in some areas where they were thought to impact a view corridor that somebody was experiencing from their home. There were also concerns about saturation because obviously if these were providing the network their lower power there are more of them how many ultimately are there going to be and those were some significant concerns from the community. There were also concerns about lack of notification and I think that was typically notification up front of a pending approval of an encroachment permit. There was construction notification but that's really done on the back end and then of course there were at that point we were looking at backup batteries that were providing two to three hours of power to those small cell sites in the event of power shutdowns and concerns about environmental impacts due to the fact that those batteries were in cabinets and they were very close to the street and how would that operate if there was a vehicular strike to that cabinet. Next slide please. In many of those concerns have progressed through this. Of course there have also been concerns about 5G and a lot of times the 5G conversation bleeds right into the small cell conversation. 5G is dealing with generational changes from the cellular providers. Typically as you go up in the generations there is more of a robust services provided through that and much of that discussion has been about data and the speed of data and the small cells are really needed to maximize that so they really go hand in hand but what we found is that all the current installations in Santa Rosa are still supporting the 4G network. They're still building that out. The providers have not provided any timelines associated with 5G upgrades and when it comes to 4G there actually is still infrastructure that needs to be done. Most of the small cell wireless facilities do communicate with the greater network through wired connections. They refer to it as backhaul. So there's fiber connections that go into it and there's quite a bit of infrastructure that goes out to extending and building out that network. The important point and one of the concerns expressed from the community is once these sites are acquired they are acquired. They are permitted for that site. There's nothing that basically takes the rights away from the site simply because there's an upgrade to 5G. So existing small cell sites can convert to 5G with software upgrades or minor equipment and those can occur with little or no local control and Gail will talk about that a little more in her presentation. And I think the important point here is the new sites that are deploying now will support 5G so even though they are 4-4 they can support 5 and then 5G deployments will obviously be required to meet FCC requirements associated with exposure. And that's an important point as well. Next slide please. So this is going to step us into the federal and state regulations and I think we can go ahead and move to the next slide. And at this point I will hand it over to Gail and she'll talk about some of the more relevant federal and state regulations that have happened over the years. Great. Thank you very much Gabe and thank you for having me. Mayor Rogers and council members I'm pleased to be working with your staff on this update and I really think that Gabe is giving me way too much credit. He's worked very hard for quite a number of years on these issues and I just came in to sort of help shepherd the last few steps but I'm going to focus my presentation quite as a very brief overview just to give everyone a basic understanding of some of the major federal and state laws that place limits on local authority with respect to the placement of wireless facilities and in particular emphasis on what we're talking about tonight which is wireless facilities that are placed in the public right of way. And so the first statute that I just want to go over briefly is one that was actually adopted in 1996 and this federal statute recognized local authority to regulate wireless placements but it imposed some limits on that authority and as you'll see as I go through the presentation the FCC the Federal Communications Commission has picked up on some of these limits and expanded them into various orders and regulations. So one of the limits is that action on an application must be taken within a reasonable period of time. The second is that your regulations and decisions may not prohibit or effectively prohibit the provision of personal wireless service so that's a reflection of a national policy that there should be wireless service available throughout the nation and local jurisdiction could not simply say you know no wireless here we're not going to let you build your network. Another another limitation is that it's not really a limitation but a procedural requirement if a local jurisdiction is denying a permit application it must be the denial must be in writing and it must be supported by substantial evidence. A very important limitation again reflecting a national policy is that in making decisions on citing wireless facilities or regulating replacements you cannot consider the environmental effects of RF emissions so long as the applicant meets the relevant FCC standards so that again is a reflection of a national policy that the Federal Communications Commission is responsible for establishing what is safe RF emissions and so long as an applicant will comply with those there's not an opportunity to really regulate or deny placements on the basis of a local view of what may or may not be safe. Another important limitation is that there can be no unreasonable discrimination among providers of functionally equivalent services so that's a nod to the fact that different carriers use different technologies to roll out their networks and there shouldn't be unreasonable discrimination among these different providers and finally this Federal law allows for an expedited appeal to the courts and in a lot of instances where local governments are sued over a denial for example those that litigation is launched, it's a 30-day limitation and it's usually filed in a Federal Court. Next slide please. So that's the law that was adopted in 1996 and I'm going to get into some of the FCC regulations that have interpreted that law but I also want to alert you to the other Federal law that was adopted much more recently and that is in 2012 and this is a law sometimes called Section 6409 because that was the original statute number, this is the codification 1455 it's also referred to as eligible facilities requests and basically this statute Federal statute indicated that for a certain category of modifications to an existing wireless facility so you'd have an existing wireless facility already there certain modifications must be approved at the local level completely eliminates your discretion to deny them and so those EFRs can entail colocation of new transmission equipment so adding equipment removing equipment replacing transmission equipment and I would just note that transmission equipment includes power supplies so if you have batteries or generators that potentially also could qualify as an EFR the city has no discretion to deny an EFR if the requirements are met and one factor in determining whether a qualification as an EFR is whether the proposed modification would actually defeat the concealment elements and this is part of the FCC's regulations that interpreted what is an eligible facilities request so if there are concealment elements or actually a stealth structure now meaning a facility that looks like something other than a wireless facility if that's how it is so say decorative streetlight or something like that and there is an applicant that wants to propose to add equipment that would make it look like a wireless facility and no longer like a streetlight then that would be an example of something that might kick it out of the box of qualifying as an eligible facilities request and it would have to be processed under another procedure in your local code and it would not be subject to this mandate to approve so as I mentioned a stealth facility is one that is designed to look like something other than a wireless tower or base station and these two terms you see in the ordinance a wireless tower is purpose built it's something that was built for a wireless facility a base station is simply an existing structure that then has an antenna attached to it so if you have a light pole it's just a light pole until a wireless facility is attached to it and then it potentially can become a base station for the purposes of these rules next slide please so as I mentioned the FCC has been very busy adopting a lot of rules and regulations and I'll run through these just hitting highlights but you know that this really starts in 2009 and yet I mentioned that first law was adopted in 1996 and 2009 is really because if you think of when the first iPhone came out and people started just being glued to their phone doing all kinds of things and just using a lot of data 2007 so since that period there's been a huge demand to upgrade networks we went from 2G to 3G to 4G to 5G and so the first action that the FCC took in 2009 it was the first time that it adopted shot clocks interpreting what's a reasonable period within which to act on an application that was a 90 day and 150 days depending on if it was a co-location attaching to an existing structure or with proposing a new facility in 2014 the FCC adopted rules that implemented that 2012 law that I mentioned so put down all of the criteria that have to be meant to qualify as an EFR that must be approved at the local level in 2018 the FCC adopted two really important orders one banned any sort of moratorium on wireless deployment so a city can't hit the pause button and say we want to stop taking applications and just decide how we want to upgrade or change our policies you must continue to take applications in and meet the shot clocks and also in 2018 the FCC adopted another order that we typically refer to as a small cell order and it adopted new shot clocks two more so I should mention when the FCC adopted the rules for eligible facilities request in 2014 they also adopted a shot clock for those applications so in 2018 when they adopted a small cell order two more shot clocks we now have five federal shot clocks that apply to any type of wireless application there's no application that wouldn't have a shot clock applying to it now the two for small wireless facilities are 60 and 90 days those are the typical applications you would probably see in the public right of way under this ordinance that's being discussed this evening and the FCC also adopted other rules that put limits on sorry I just got some alert put other limits on the aesthetic rules that you can adopt at a local level and limits on your fees that you can charge for use of your light poles and for processing applications in 2019 the FCC interpreted the scope of cable franchises to grant a grant of cable franchises to include wireless devices and cable operators are sometimes involved with small cell deployments because they have large fiber networks that can serve as backhaul in 2019 there was an order issued reaffirming the RF emission standards that the FCC had adopted in 1997 and actually that order is under appeal in the DC Court of Appeals the two orders that the FCC issued in 2020 so last year were clarifying and modifying the rules on eligible facilities request that category must be approved so if we can go to the next slide so I talked briefly about federal law now I'm going to turn briefly to state law because state law also imposes some limitations on local authority with respect to the review and approval of wireless facilities I'm focused in particular here just on facilities that are placed in the public right of way so California public utility code section 7901 provides a grant of a state franchise to telephone companies to use the public right of way for their facilities so that grant include has been interpreted as of also applying to wireless companies and wireless facilities and there are some limitations on that grant it's not unfettered the grant is for placement but these placements may not incommode the public use and that's kind of an old phrase or phraseology but that's because this is a long standing state franchise grant in state law and that incommode the public use has been the subject of quite a bit of litigation to determine whether it means just very limited cannabis traffic or it means anything else and it actually has been upheld to mean that it includes the regulation of the aesthetics of wireless facilities or other facilities in the streets so it confirmed in the California Supreme Court decision in 2019 confirmed a decision that the federal court had made 10 years earlier so you do have under or under state law a limitation in terms of preventing you cannot prevent of carriers from placing facilities in the public right of way but you can regulate the safety and the aesthetics or I should also mention there is a bill pending and I see that it should be SB I think SB 556 that would actually mandate as a matter of state law the use of city light poles and traffic poles just for wireless facilities right now the cities are making those poles available for use largely because under the FCC small cell order there was language that suggested that it may be mandatory it didn't actually impose the requirement but it suggested the FCC order suggested that not allowing the use of your poles may create an effective prohibition of wireless service but if this bill is adopted in sign into law it would require cities to make their light poles and traffic poles available and the 270 per year rental rate is the same rate that the FCC adopted as a safe harbor next slide please so I mentioned the shot clocks just a little bit of information about how they work they're so important with respect to the processing of applications these are specific time periods in which a city must basically take final action so it will include the appeals and it includes all the permits and authorizations that might be needed so in this instance if you're looking at being in the public right away on a city street light that would include the master license agreement as well as the requirements that would be needed and of course which shot clock might apply depends on the type of application I mentioned there are five in federal law and the shot clock may be reset or told in only two ways one is you can always agree with the applicant if they do agree to stop the running of the shot clock but the more common way it's stopped is by local jurisdiction issuing a timely notice of incompleteness so when the application comes in there's a certain period of time it can be as little as 10 days and as long as 30 days to review the application and determine if it is complete or not and send out a notice if you send out a notice of incompleteness that will toll the shot clock if it's a small cell it will actually reset it the first time you send it out and after that each review of the resubmittals continues to eat into this very limited time period within which to act on applications next slide please so I mentioned already all of these five shot clocks that have been established by the Federal Communications Commission the one at the very bottom I haven't spoken about yet there was a law adopted last year in the state legislature went into effect in January 1st and that requires certain types of generator applications to be approved and so it's sort of like a mini eligible facilities request just for generators and it has a 60 day shot clock the criteria of what size of generator and things like that that would go on a macro cell site and that law will only be in effect for three years but there are a lot of applications that are coming in for those types of upgrades to existing macro cell sites next slide please I already mentioned this that there are deadlines for I always called this the shot clock within the shot clock deadlines in order to send out a timely notice of completeness in order to stop the shot clock on the review and these as you can see 10 days for resubmittals between 30 and 10 days for the initial and so this is very much a part of why it's important to have a pretty streamlined process for reviewing applications because you really can easily get tripped up and run past the shot clock deadline next slide please and the reason why you would be worried about running past the shot clock deadline is that there are certain remedies available to the applicant if you missed the deadline so for the eligible facilities request ones that you must approve that are 60 days there's actually in federal law and federal regulations a deemed granted remedy you missed the shot clock as a local jurisdiction the carrier the applicant can simply send you a notice and say you missed the deadline the application is deemed approved for the other for the emergency generator shot clock under state law there's also a state deemed granted remedy for the other shot clocks that are the 90 and 150 day shot clocks under the original ones from 2009 that were adopted by the FCC again there is a state remedy that would those applications complete simply not complete granted simply if the local jurisdiction was the shot clock deadline in the carrier sent the notice the small cell shot clocks do not currently have under federal or state law a deemed granted remedy but there is a bill pending in the legislature that would actually give a deemed granted remedy and basically a construction authorization for missing shot clocks for the federal shot clocks next slide please so I mentioned before a little bit about aesthetic regulations this is just to kind of recap what your authority is based on limitations in state and federal law generally local governments can regulate aesthetics however there are certain instances where you have limitations eligible facilities request one if an applicant can meet the criteria which will allow height increases and other additions if they meet the criteria under federal law that overrides your aesthetics unless of course they are defeating concealment which would kick them out of the box and qualify aesthetic regulations for personal wireless facilities must not prohibit or effectively prohibit the provision of wireless services and the FCC in their small cell order as revised based on a nine circuit ruling that struck down part of the order basically leaves you with these limitations your aesthetic requirements must be reasonable and that is technically feasible and reasonably directed to avoiding or remedying the intangible public harm currently or out of character deployments and they must be published in advance and so that is an important reason why it is good to have a resolution that addresses these requirements spacing, separation and setback requirements for small cells are subject to the same federal standards reasonable and published in advance and under state law as I mentioned wireless carriers and telecommunications providers have the right to install facilities in the public right of way so long as the placement does not incommode the public use that also allows you to consider aesthetics but you will be limited by federal law as well and spacing requirements may not keep the carriers out of the public right of way entirely that would give rise to not only potentially an effective prohibition claim but also a claim under state law that you are frustrating their state franchise right to use the public right of way and I think that concludes my presentation I'm here for questions and I think I turn it back to Gabe now thank you Thank you Gail so as we can see with that portion of the presentation there is a significant amount of federal and state regulation that overlays this so as part of this process what we had to do is really take those regulations where we did have control on the aesthetic side and then try to better understand the community's concerns and incorporate that into the process and I'll talk a little bit at the end about the public outreach we did as part of this but it's really about creating that balancing act so the next set is going to talk a little bit about our specific proposal today so next slide please so this slide was actually presented in the July 21st study session and it really laid out what our conceptual plan was at that point and based on all these I just want to highlight that this is the direction we wanted to take it and how does this overlay with the direction we actually did take it so what we really identified at that process is obviously we had macro sites and small cells and we had different codes and policies associated with them so our goal was to create some level of alignment on that level we needed to revise our submittal requirements because we didn't have any specific language for small cells we did recognize that the notification and the public participation processes were different between macro sites and small cells so we wanted to look at some opportunities to align that and obviously deal with development standards that was an important piece when we talked about the amendment process at that point we were really anticipating a bit of a heavy lift and I know Gail wants to give the credit my way but I think she has really helped us with that heavy lift because we were looking at a 9-12 month timeline as part of that and typically with these policies we take resources from other council goals and specifically housing that's one of the core functions that PED handles so by leveraging professional services we were able to keep those other pieces intact so it didn't become as much of a priority setting discussion because we were able to find other solutions so the benefit of professional services definitely helped us move this forward next slide please so specifically we have two actions today so the first is an ordinance and that ordinance will be adding chapter 13-6 to the public right of way to the city code and that lays the base foundation for what we want to do moving forward and what that focuses on it actually creates a separate permitting process we're calling it a wireless facilities permitting process for all those installations in the public right of way so it gives us that individual permit avenue for treating these separate than other general work that occurs in the right of way as Gail mentioned there are shot clocks and those are fairly aggressive so typically with a 60 day shot clock if you can imagine we may very well be 45 days in the review not necessarily that there's that amount of staff hours but that is in the bucket of encroachment permits and other permit types that are coming in and hitting PED so in some situations it may be difficult to manage those we do think we can but it is still a very aggressive timeline so we wanted to make sure that the process was very administrative which would allow us to meet that seminal requirement in that review within the 60 days we also needed to obviously publish those requirements in advance so really what we're doing is we're laying the foundation in the code that allows us to publish those specific application requirements and those design and development standards as separate documents and I do want to point out in the council package we do have standards and those are adopted typically by resolution we also attached some of our supplemental submittal requirements we typically develop those at the staff level we're more or less providing those an example we're not asking for an adoption today that's typically part of our permitting process so I just wanted to point that out so one of the pieces by doing that it makes those documents a bit easier to amend in the future updating the code is always a bit of a heavy lift if we have those design and development standards they can be a bit more fluid we can test these out, we can change as needed it also approves the transparency and the noticing so what we're doing as part of this process is we will have a noticing that goes 300 feet in a radius from the proposed site and that noticing will be when we receive it and the C handles this noticing which is typical with most of our development applications so that notice gives it's typically on a postcard it gives information about the project it allows people to get in touch with the applicant as well as the staff member that is processing that application it also gives them access to any digital files associated with that application and instructs them on their appeal rights that they have so we try to put as much as possible we also put visuals in there to make it look like and this ordinance also creates an appeal process and I think that's an important point to touch on a bit typically with appeal processes you render a final determination by an individual and then the appeal goes to a group of individuals and that may be the council that may be a board or commission the challenge we have within this particular process is that it's very difficult to administer in a 60 day review because it's quite possible that we can receive appeal on the back end and simply getting it before a board and commission on a time frame we just don't think we can commit to that on a regular basis so unfortunately we had to neck that down to an administrative appeal process so in this particular case the director of transportation and public works has authority for that initial approval and then the appeal goes to the city manager or his or her designee next slide please so as I mentioned in addition to the ordinance we also have a resolution and that's tackling the design and development standards and these are the particular nuts and bolts of the requirements that apply to those specific installations and I think this is an important point we talked a little earlier that there are two different pole types between joint utility poles and city-owned infrastructure we're trying to align the requirements for all joint poles because they are going in the right of way they have the same impacts aesthetically to that streetscape so we want to align that we are also looking at stealth elements and techniques to blend the facility into the surrounding environment and I think an important point with that is there's a lot of push to keep it and we've seen artificial trees to mask cellular infrastructure but there's also a transparency point to this to notify the public of what it is so to stealth is not necessarily good because it loses that transparency so there is even a balancing act there important piece we have undergrounding of a pertinent equipment when technically feasible so a lot of these include boxes or equipment on the ground there's also cabinets on the poles that are in addition to the actual antenna it tends to be incredibly transparent the undergrounding of that a lot of agencies have attempted to encourage that there are some situations where you can do it in most situations it probably is not going to be technically feasible it is very challenging and oftentimes it will result in a fairly large vault in the right of way that has other impacts to maintenance of underground utilities taking space in the right of way so we will encourage when we can just for the visual aspects of it but I just want to point out that in many situations it likely will not be feasible to underground all those equipment components we also complying with state and federal law and I think that's the important point with this is that we built in flexibility on all these steps to be in compliance with state and federal law and at least have the flexibility to do so and it also basically sets design requirements for replacement poles, new poles and existing and once again is trying to align as much as possible across all those different options one of the most important points in the design and development standards are typically what are referred to as location standards or preferences so these are citing requirements so they determine aesthetically where these can be placed so what we've incorporated in our design standards is a street preference so we have certain street types and those certain street types are in certain zoning districts so we have defined our most preferred location are major arterials that are in commercial zones and the benefit in a commercial zone is there you don't have the typical residential impacts we do a lot to protect the aesthetics of our neighborhoods we have design standards that protect the aesthetics of our neighborhoods so this would place in commercial zones and major arterials are typically wider streets there's more of a buffer from the structures so there are better location for these types of facilities our least preferred location are dense residential neighborhood streets they're very narrow there's usually structures very close to the street the visual impacts are more prevalent to the people living there we also incorporated into our proposal 300 feet measured from the property line of schools, childcare centers, hospitals and religious facilities those are civic and community use spaces and we typically protect the aesthetics of those as well so once again this is all about the visual aspects of those areas a significant number of members of our community are going to these sites so we take additional steps to protect this aesthetic value of those types of uses we also have 50 feet from residential structures and as I mentioned before there's a lot of push from a design and development standpoint to control how residential structures look and the visual impacts of those so that is our attempt to address those concerns we've also incorporated a thousand feet from other small cells from the same provider and I think that's an important piece because you wouldn't necessarily have one provider taking available area from another by simply getting out of the gate earlier so the providers are creating separations from their own utilities essentially you could have AT&T and Verizon in a closer proximity than that a thousand feet but that's really attempted to address kind of the cluttering and the saturation concerns that we've heard from the community we also have a few other components located as close as possible shared property lines and not located directly in front of a window or door now the important piece as Gail mentioned you can have aesthetics but you cannot effectively prohibit the deployment and when we look at the human effects of these standards how do you know if you just pull that out of a box and say 50 feet looks good that it works or it doesn't so we've done a few different things and there's future slides that will go into more of exposing the engineering process that we went through to develop these but we've also created a relief valve and that is in the form of a variance or a limited exception so if it is not technically feasible for the provider to meet these they have an opportunity to show why it isn't to come in and how they can get closer to those preferences to say there are other sites that might not exactly meet all of these but the site here that does is not technically feasible this other site is basically making modifications on some of these and they can get closer to those preferences so there is a relief valve built into that to avoid that effect of prohibition of service next slide please so what we've seen here is that when we went through this exercise obviously you look at the cumulative effect what you're doing with that is you're taking away available geographic area for deployments and what we wanted to do is do a little bit of a GIS exercise to show as we apply the setbacks what sort of effect did it have and what we see here is the dark lines are our tiero streets so that's our highest preference for a street the gray dots are street lights and those are highlighted in this situation simply just to make them stand out off the image and we have about 16,000 street lights so we don't actually document the number of joint poles because the city doesn't own those as infrastructure I could not tell you how many joint poles we have there are a significant number they don't exist in a lot of areas where we've undergrounded but where they do exist they have a tendency to exist at a higher frequency than the street next slide please so when we start to look at how small sales really kind of interact so the brown in the situation shows the area that's not available that is a thousand foot radius from existing small sales that we know today and most of those were deployed by Verizon AT&T as had it some this doesn't include some of those AT&T sites but that gives you an idea of the area you're taking away next slide please so now when we look at all of the cumulative effect of all of that what you really end up with is a fairly significant impact to the geographic area but there's some important pieces to this so what we wanted to expose is we wanted to expose available poles on the arterial street so as you see the green show through it's showing areas where these can go in and what you're also seeing as part of that is those areas where it can go in have a tendency to be in all areas of the city so we have the northeast, northwest we have the Oakmont area we're seeing some options we have the southeast, southwest so what that's doing though is that out of the 16,000 poles there's approximately 5,000 available through that process and that brings us down to a percentage of street lights that's hovering around 31% so we can see that over all of that that in some of these areas and I'll talk about this in a future slide you're seeing very dark areas where there are no options and that likely is where we have to exercise those limited exemptions next slide please so one of the things that we also looked at is typically with these we'll often try to take a very regional approach with these sort of standards and in this particular situation it's difficult because all cities are made up in a different way Santa Rosa has a lot of residential structures and we're encouraging housing to go into areas that it wasn't in before so when we take Petaluma's requirements which they're a bit more aggressive they have 1,500 feet from small cells and 500 feet from residential buildings when we take that aggressive approach you can see it's taking on the vast majority of the geographic area so that would neck us down to 539 street lights of 33% of the available pulse and there were some discussions in previous study sessions about trying to align regionally we looked at that as part of the exercise and unfortunately we're just not able to do it based on the pretty significant impact that some of those standards have on Santa Rosa next slide please so now what we saw in some of those very dark areas in those slides where we weren't creating an area this kind of highlights really why that occurs so what we see in this particular case and I think it's a great example this is the Mendocino Avenue corridor adjacent to the Santa Rosa junior high excuse me Santa Rosa high and the junior college so it has two schools it has a major arterial road that runs in it and a commercial corridor and it's really surrounded with residential so we would normally say that placing these on Mendocino Avenue in front of commercial is our preferred location but what's happening is the school setback is encroaching into that commercial corridor and you have no flexibility to go further away from it because you're getting into the residential area so this is a prime example of where we would need to work with a provider to figure out a good location and how we would look at that is obviously if you're not impacting the streetscape of the school visually impacting the view of that school from the street we would say put it on the other side of the street you're not necessarily meeting that 300 foot setback but you're still meeting the general aesthetic design it's in front of commercial areas that's on a main arterial we could also look at locations where you put it in front of the parking garage in front of the school instead of right in front of Santa Rosa high school which really has a beautiful streetscape so that's really how we would balance that out we would look to basically meet those preferences to the best of our ability based on where we know technically it works from the provider so hopefully that exposes a little bit of that exercise that would go through the limited exception process next slide please so one of the main questions is what do we really do if development standards are too restrictive and you know the reality is is obviously we talked about the relief valve what we want to do is have some flexibility with the design and construction standards to amend in the future and it really can go either way as we you know really track where federal law takes this in the future state law we will have the ability to change as needed but this just highlights some of the specific data so really any separation from residential can become problematic and that's due to the fact that half of our streetlights are within 50 feet of residential structures so certain things like reducing that to 30 feet gains 2,000 poles into the mix so there's certain pieces that we can play around with for example reducing the civic and community use where you're not measuring from the property line but you're measuring from the structure itself but it still could end up placing those right in front of the use where we're trying to protect the aesthetic corridor so important piece is flexibility in this much of this the city does control much of it doesn't we need flexibility to be consistent with state and federal law but we also need flexibility to really interact in that band of authority that we do have under state and federal law next slide please so this really documents some of the next steps in what we want to do so this was all about addressing small selves that was the biggest concern and we identified that as the biggest gap in our code we do have obviously some code sections that are associated with macro sites so what we want to do and those are very stale actually many of those were developed in the early 2000s and they need to be refreshed so as part of this process in a second phase we're going to be looking at those macro site code sections and looking at making changes that will also give us some time to monitor our small cell procedures and codes and to push some permits through it and to test some things out to see what works and to see where we might need to create a little more flexibility so our goal is to move that forward by the end of the calendar year that's our target goal at this point and what that really does once again is we're trying to align as much as we can but we also have to create these permitting procedures that are consistent with state and federal law and efficient because what we're finding is as those shot clocks decrease, decrease, decrease we have to be more efficient with our process to make sure it can happen within that shot clock so we constantly have to review that to make sure it's feasible for that overall steps in that application to operate within that short window of time and I think an important point to this is when we look at overall telecommunications wireless plays a role it plays a significant role with cell phones what we've seen from COVID is that obviously people are operating in their home some communities have better broadband service or sections of the community than others and there's a lot of different things that go into fix that and we can't discount the benefit of cabled infrastructure that's needed for small cells the deployment of fiber is important to that backbone infrastructure and it also provides different service to the building so we'll continue to analyze the feasibility of those programs some of that's through the city some of the other providers are also providing that function but I do want to mention that is one of our focus is to maintain our keep our eye on how fiber deployments are happening in the city. Next slide please. So I know it's been a long haul and thank you for I know it's very technical and thank you for going through all this and I want to just mention before I close with restating the recommendations we did try to implement quite a bit of public process in this so in addition to the item today in the public process that that provides we developed some websites to give us much information as possible about this process we did some newsletters that were published in City Connection and that was pushed out to all subscribers to that which are getting close to 97,000 people but we also over the years had a very targeted audience through this and those were the providers and those were members of the public that were concerned and I do have to actually extend a special thanks to Alex Cron as part of this and I know many of you have experienced received emails from Alex and I know many members of the community have run the full range of emotions with this from frustration to anger and it's been a bit of a long process but Alex has helped me really consolidate that and better understand what those were and it gave me an avenue to better educate those individuals that had those concerns on where the city's flexibility is so we worked very closely with that group there's been multiple meetings we've stepped through this kind of more engineering approaches that we took to make these determinations and we also gave opportunities for the providers to comment on that so they were able to review those draft documents early and provide comment. So with that I will conclude the presentation and restate the recommendations and we do have two so we want to consider an introduction and a first reading of an ordinance adding chapter 13-6 to title 13 street sidewalks and public places of the Santa Rosa city code pertaining to wireless facilities and environmental quality act and adopt by resolution design and development standards specific to the placement of wireless facilities in the public right of way as authorized by chapter 13-6. Next slide please. And with that I will open it up to any questions you may have. All right thank you so much Gabe and Gail that's quite a bit of information so I appreciate you putting it all together on one place for us. I did have a couple of questions to start with. I'm going to start with a little bit on a little bit SB 556. I wanted to start with just an overall question around whether or not I'll just say that bill is expected to pass in Sacramento this year. If it does pass does this ordinance still hold up or would the council be right back here having this discussion again early next year? Thanks and so that ordinance is that ordinance that bill is what would potentially have some impact on the license agreement that the city has entered into for use of light poles it's not according to regulate the permitting process but it does create what I would call shot clocks for review of requests to use the poles and it puts some other limitations it mandates that they have to be made available establishes that you would have to the $270 rate or I think you're allowed to do your cost it may mandate a cost study I can't I'm not sure what the current version looks like it wouldn't impact this ordinance which is dealing with the permitting process not just for permits to use street lights or traffic lights but also utility poles so this is wearing a regulatory hat what the permitting process is for we're going into and making installations in the public right away on certain types of infrastructure the bill is targeting your property that you own in the public right of way and ensuring that it's available for these deployments alright thank you just sitting it out front the mayors and council members legislative committee has already opposed the bill so just want to make sure I put that out there as well but I do get concerned when I see phrases in it such as unreasonably denying the leasing or licensing there's another section that talks about poles must be made available under fair reasonable and non discriminatory fees those are obviously things that the courts will have to help to define as cities have ordinances like this and so it's always helpful to the best that we can to put in place an ordinance that we think is defensible particularly against some of those lawsuits gave under the current fee structure are you able to recover your costs for the applications coming in excellent question mayor what we'll be looking at is since we're changing this process slightly we do have obviously a fee schedule that addresses encroachment permits so as it comes in now we are recovering that fee associated with that review as we layer more of these requirements in it will likely increase the staff time associated with that review there is a safe harbor fee that we can incorporate but really I think when we look at it that would not properly recover the cost so our goal is as we test this out and we run this through the paces you can do a bit of a nexus study to actually determine how many staff hours go into that and the rate of that how much time goes into the noticing and the cost of that and we will likely be adopting a different fee schedule specifically for this as we're able to get that data to inform what that fee should look like thank you because we talk all the time about cost recovery particularly in your department and this is one that I know that the council is eager to see cost recovery on I don't think the $270 fee is going to cover it if the legislation does pass at the state but hopefully we can put that in place in the short term the other question I had sorry if I may Mr. Mayor just to clarify the $270 is the rental rate the annual charge for using the poll and I think Dave was talking about the permit processing fees which are required to be cost based both under state and federal law and the question is whether you will do a fee study to determine what are those costs of service of processing the applications. I appreciate that clarification my understanding of SB 556 was that it eliminated the additional fee the encroachment permit fee and perhaps I'm just mistaken in that but I thought that the $270 per year rent was the only charge that cities had available but I can go back I can reread see where the bill is out on that and then my last question Gabe is when you talk about requiring under grounding of the components when it's technically feasible I noticed that that doesn't say economically feasible and it doesn't have any standards around reasonability can you expand upon that a little bit. Yeah absolutely so typically anytime you underground facilities and I think there's really a few issues with that so most wireless providers have some level of cabinet that goes along with that what we saw with Verizon they were doing ground equipment and what they were doing is most of those infrastructure pieces are now going on to the pole with the original Verizon layout there were bigger cabinets in the right of way they had triggered a whole another set of concerns so basically what we had looked at really as part of that process is can you underground all of that so if you have backup batteries and meter connections can you put that below ground and the challenge that creates is that I think it is a very technically infeasible and I think when you run it technically infeasible you're running into some other concerns we have in the right of way to where we're not approving it and for example if you put a large vault in that large vault can create a trip hazard there might be cooling in that vault because it's more exposed to moisture you might have fans that violate noise ordinances so it starts getting into a very technical review to determining you're benefiting it from aesthetic standpoint but you're just not visual so it is a little difficult to give a clear definition of how one would march through that but that typically is how it is the right of way is used for a variety of different purposes so you can address the aesthetics but at what point are you negatively impacting the ability of another provider or the city to utilize that right away or when are you not creating a safe corridor because of trip hazards and vaults failing and things of that nature thank you has this ordinance been run by safety chiefs to make sure that it wouldn't interfere with the public's safety particularly noticing and alerts during an emergency yes especially on the fire front there was a lot of discussion with the previous study sessions about you know really the deployment of wireless infrastructure and how it functioned in an emergency situation and that really is one of the benefits of wireless infrastructure is that in disasters people are communicating with their cell phone and maintaining that connectivity is important to that we had gotten to a lot of discussions initially about the safety element of these so at what point when battery backups were being installed does that become a fire hazard so our fire chief and our fire marshal had a lot of review into that overall design they will be reviewing these applications as they initially come in to determine the nations about the safety element so we did get into both of those discussions and they were involved which are the benefit of wireless facilities and putting them in certain locations from that you know communication benefit in the disaster but also these are powered infrastructure sitting in the right of way so how do we maintain the safety of those in pole knockdown situation so all of the department's transportation public works fire we've all been looking at those to make sure that we're informing that review of the safety elements to be placed in the right way then my final question game is looking at this from an equity lens which is something that we're trying to do as a priority for the council does this ordinance disproportionately impact certain parts of our community versus others and in particular obviously during COVID we've seen access to the internet has been crucial for students and for younger folks in our community to impact their ability either to have adequate network coverage or also disproportionately placing more of these in specific neighborhoods the excellent point and I think really when we look at it from aesthetic standard what has a tendency to happen is you start pushing it away from residential structures so the denser the residential structure the tighter the area the more standard start keeping it out of that area and that's where the relief valve comes into play because I think the important exercise that we wanted to look at as we went through this and we developed these more regional standards is how did it affect the different quadrants of the city are we creating opportunity for these to go into those areas and if we're not we need to because that reason that basically the provider is providing a baseline level of service that should be available to all members of our community we also have aesthetic standards we can still get them towards preferences we can incorporate those in the communities that may not currently have them but we can also do it by maintaining that aesthetic standard and I think that's important because you can get it in but you don't necessarily overly burden that situation because I think that's been some of the concerns from the community and there's many members of the public that don't necessarily use the wireless communications inside the house they're still relying on broadband connections and I think that's what we do if we're dealing with this issue where we're disproportionately providing service wireless plays a role in that but the broadband aspect also does as well so how do we provide cable services in those areas that are more stable connection and I think we've really seen it with Zoom is that all of a sudden where data wasn't used as heavily now we're pushing significant amount of data and many of us are communicating through Zoom meetings so it's an incredibly important thing from a telecommunication standpoint we have our eyes on it we're having an equity aspect of how we're deploying these both from aesthetic standpoint but also availability of services and the legislature has definitely stepped up and is allocating funding on the broadband front so we'll continue to utilize some of that and work with our state and federal partners on that as well Council Member Sawyer you have questions thank you Mayor just one quick question I think it's very simple and thank you all for bringing this forward to us and it took a while to get here and it's very easy to see why lots of information a lot of hurdles to jump my question has to do with slide number 24 pertains to that and the administrative process and the what are the chances of an entity that they would do this on purpose overwhelming a department in looking for entitlements and then because of the number the quantity of work necessary that the shop clocks run out or do we have enough do we have are we so well staffed that that just wouldn't be would not be a concern that's an excellent question that Gail chime in on that a little bit basically the way it works with encroachment permits is we have historically received probably about three to five hundred a year that's our typical average on encroachment permits over the last five years we've seen that dramatically increase and much of that was due to the Tubbs Fire to where we're almost doing 2,000 encroachment permits per year so our staffing levels that's pretty much the top end of what we can handle so the staffing levels are kept because that's peak can come down they're kept at a level to be financially responsible to make sure we can meet that demand but it can get overwhelmed fairly quick because that's a very small team so if we throw the small cells into the mix of that in a significant number of those it becomes very challenging and I would say based on the batches that I've seen thus far they do come in waves and what would happen likely is if we focus our attention on that because it has this defined shot clock that will be pulling our resources from other development types so because of the threat of these really going into an approval state on the back end we really need to take that opportunity to review those and it probably would have an impact in a batch situation to basically the other permits that are hovering around that may be just general encroachment permits they may be associated with larger projects so that piece and I'll maybe let Gail talk about if there is any impact if there is any remedy in a situation where a provider may actually be able to overwhelm a jurisdiction and then clean shot violations. Thank you and I look forward to Gail's response and it would concern me and I would assume that we would get an alert if that situation started to present itself which could slow down development in other areas so Gail what are the odds of things slowing down? Well I would say that that's definitely a risk that is a risk that you could be in a situation I've heard of some cities where that's happened where you know they get 175 applications or something that all come in at once and there are a couple of things to think about in that aspect and one that I've seen cities look at is to have potentially outside reviewers that can come in sort of on call to take up when there are additional need for review for large projects that might be something where you want to look at modifying your fee schedule so that you can pass through those costs so that's basically like contract reviewers to assist the department when you hit high levels of demand but the main point that I want to make is with respect to the shot clocks that are the five that I spoke of not the eligible facilities request which is under that 2012 law but the federal ones that are under the law that was adopted in 1996 that requires you to act within a reasonable period of time those are all presumptively reasonable periods within which to act meaning that the presumption is that typically you could act within those periods but if you were challenged on it you could potentially have a defense and say with respect to this project or these circumstances it was reasonable the presumptively reasonable period shouldn't apply and a longer period should apply that would be what you might say in court in defense if you were sued if the circumstances presented it and that's what makes those deemed granted remedies so dangerous because they kind of flip the responsibility so the carrier simply sends a letter says here's your notice the out you missed the shot clock it's deemed approved and puts the onus on the local jurisdiction to go to court to try to overturn that result so that's why those deemed granted remedies are so dangerous the one other thing that you can always do and I mentioned this in my part of the presentation is you could always go to the carrier and ask them to agree to toll the shot clock on the applications to give more time and I would say that in a lot of instances you can get that agreement you can't bank on it obviously and you can't set up a process that would guarantee that you'd have that but for large projects or where a project or an application becomes quite complicated and it's just taking more time that's another potential action for the city is just to make an arrangement with the applicant to agree that more time should be allowed to process the applications well thank you for that I'm more concerned now than I was before I asked the question I appreciate the answer I was hoping for a little more relief but it sounds like we may lift up potentially our legal department at the same time we're beefing up our entitlement the permit department so it gives me a small amount of concern thank you piggybacking off of councilmember Sawyer's question is it possible to build into the ordinance a limit on how many can be reduced or applied for at one time by an applicant would that be considered reasonable to meet the city's staffing abilities do you want me to take that game yes please gal so I have seen some smaller cities actually do that not to just try to manage the flow of applications given the size of their staff the require applications to be submitted only on certain days of the week or by appointment or we developed language and I'm blanking on which city it was but where we said if you're going to submit more than a certain number say 10 applications then then you should alert us to that and allow us to set up a separate fund for funding contract reviewers that we're going to need to bring in because our staff will be able to handle that so there are ways that you can try to manage that the pushback at the end of the day that you have to be cognizant of imbalance is that you can't if your rules are too strict in terms of submitting applications then you maybe get to the point where an applicant is accusing you of effectively prohibiting service because you're slow rolling the development or you're creating a moratorium in some way because you're not accepting applications routinely but I think in certain circumstances certainly it's justified to try to manage those situations and certainly I should also mention when there are communities that I've worked with that have suffered fires wildfires and evacuations and things like that certainly notifying putting up a notice that we're not going to meet the timelines in these circumstances and you've just got to accept that is that's not something that you're going to get challenged on by a courier or an applicant in those sort of circumstances in May or if I may add on to that quickly the discussion about professional services and consultants is usually a very useful conversation to have as part of that typically when we hit our capacity level professional services is our relief valve so it is a conversation we can have as we move this forward and we adopt the appropriate fee some utilization of professional services will have kind of a full cost recovery as part of that program so we can discuss that as a reasonable relief valve which would then help us avoid any additional impacts to the current staff would have with moving their time on housing projects or the other menu item of things that PED normally deals with so we'll analyze that as part of the process to see if that is a suitable means to assist with this potential issue alright thank you Gabe Council Member Schwedell thank you Mr. Mayor for this presentation Gabe you always bring me a great level of comfort when I know you're involved in a project and this is no exception to that so I want to talk just kind of our voyage you outlined when we this first came to council and I know my first recollections I know we saw images of these on city polls which seemed really like who would be bothered by that and then you showed another picture in this presentation on Yalupa and then the reality with one of our council meetings we had the situation on West Ninth and Link Lane which it really seemed like it was in their front porch so if we are to adopt this ordinance with a situation that occurred and again I don't know if it's on Link Lane or West Ninth and hopefully remember that one would that be allowed under this ordinance or what would be different that's an excellent point and it really is trying to protect against that in a lot of ways and I think what we've seen from the aesthetics is are incorporating different technology into the design and the streetlight polls have a tendency to be a bit more streamlined one of those reasons is you can use the polls the conduit they can hide wires so the joint utility polls the aesthetics are not as good as the streetlights but we got into a lot of conversations about when we look at these conceptual designs of these polls that are submitted as part of applications and you look at them in real life at different angles they look very much different and that was some of the concerns with the community is I thought it was going to look like this and it looked like this so we've done a couple things to protect against that one is we're attempting because that is directly out of somebody's living room window we do focus on our streetscapes it is aesthetics we're attempting to not allow deployments in that area there's some situations where that will be challenging because they're literally the only option but overall that would be protected against with that 50 foot separation of the arterial and I think a great example in Ling Lane is from a proximity standpoint can you put it on College Avenue we have main arterials there they're close to it so we protect that we're also implementing more designs more requirements on the specific equipment that they can install within our rights under federal code so I think with that cabinet type that was one when we looked at backup batteries so the backup batteries literally only provide three hours of communications when that equipment is down is that something that we do want to incorporate we have that right to say yes or no to that by making that backup battery go away that entire cabinet goes away on the ground so it protects those aesthetics so this whole process that we've gone through we've utilized those examples to say how do we really control that and can we yes or no and is it a tweaking or is it a moving from that site so that is an excellent point some of those sites did look very different than what we initially saw we want to have the community assume that it's going to look like something and have it look like something else so we have examples now we're going to provide images as part of our notification that are more real world visuals of those sites and then obviously we're trying to protect the best of our ability those very dense residential corridors where people are more impacted by the physical elements of those sites great thank you for that I also want to applaud you for recognizing any comments before this body and I really appreciate his understanding in depth and his commitment because he's all about the safety of this community so thank you for acknowledging his efforts are there any other questions from council members okay with that we will open the public hearing I'm going to look first in our chambers and see if there's anybody interested in speaking in public comment on this saying nobody moved to the podium I'll go to our zoom public comment if you're interested in giving a comment on this item go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom or hit star nine we'll start with Hannah followed by Alex good evening Mayor Rogers and council members my name is Hannah Boris speaking on behalf of Verizon Wireless thank you for the opportunity to provide comment on the proposed ordinance and design standards regulating wireless facilities in the right of way we would like to thank the council and staff for their efforts on this important topic there are a few key issues that need to be addressed to ensure that the code and design standards are workable to make the necessary investments to improve services for your community Verizon supports the adoption of the ordinance with the following key changes section b2 under appeals on page 6 provides a process for automatic appeals to the city manager for applications that are approved based upon a finding that denial would result in an effective prohibition under federal law that criteria for this type of appeal would be and how the city could complete these automatic appeals within the federal shop clocks additionally it's also unclear who the appellate would be in such a scenario and typically a city manager would not have the appropriate training and expertise in federal law to adjudicate such matters Verizon therefore request that this requirement be removed condition of approval number two regarding permit duration on page 9 states that a wireless encroachment permit shall be valid for a period of 10 years unless it expires sooner or is terminated pursuant to the code the minimum permit term for wireless facilities is 10 years under the California government code and limits less than 10 years are presumed to be unreasonable condition of approval number 4 regarding the commencement of operations on page 9 requires the operation of an approved facility commits no later than one month after completion of the installation or the permit will automatically expire there are a number of factors that may delay the removal of the wireless provider to commence operation that are outside the control of the provider such as the delivery of commercial power or fiber Verizon therefore request that a reasonable exception process be provided as an end user of the design standards the Verizon respectfully request that the design standards be continued to allow additional time to work with staff to ensure the standards are feasible and consistent with FCC requirements as currently drafted many of the standards are infeasible and would materially comply with the CFC and would not accommodate the simplest of small cell equipment configurations the standards also currently require that antennas and radios be top mounted on utility poles however PG need no longer allows antennas on the top of poles in the space it controls and while we appreciate the fact that an exception process has been provided for we fear that the current standards are restrictive so we're not standards are so restrictive, whereas the exception might follow the rule. These are just a few examples of current design standards that would make deployment in Santa Rosa infeasible under the current requirements. Additional technical and legal compliance concerns have been more fully outlined in the red lines submitted to the city prior to the hearing. We respectfully request that the council defer approval of the design standards to allow staff time to make the revisions needed to craft workable standards, but also presents a path forward for the efficient deployment of wireless technology in Santa Rosa that also preserves a look, feel, and aesthetic goals of your community. Thank you. Thank you so much. Alex. Hello. Can you hear me? Yep. Go ahead. All right. I'd first like to thank Gabe for his hard work on this issue. He's definitely the smartest and nicest guy in the room, and thanks to the council for listening and being open-minded and really understanding the concerns from the community. This is Alex Krohn speaking. I'm a part of Safe Tech for Santa Rosa and a longtime resident, lifetime resident of Santa Rosa. And I want to say that it's just not me. It's a group of many other Santa Rosans working on this issue to protect the health and well-being of your constituents. And I just want to be clear that companies like Verizon and AT&T are private companies, and they are beholden to their shareholders and their executive bonuses. They are not putting the top priority of our people at hand in terms of things like the digital divide and emergency communication. They like to throw these things around in order to make it seem like them gaming the system with their lawyers and lobbyists, the state and federal level, making laws to take all their responsibility and liability away and take all the local control away, make it look like it's something for the better. But it's not. So the digital divide, access to internet, we already have the infrastructure and cable to provide gigabit speeds for data and the home and network places. And the reason we don't have that is because monopolies like Verizon and AT&T want to jack up the prices as much as possible and charge as many hundreds of dollars a month in order to maximize their bottom line. And that's just how it is. And I want that to be front and center to this discussion. Verizon is a public utility company. They're also a private wireless company. Verizon is a public utility company. A lot of places back east New York. And AT&T is also two separate entities, a public utility company in California. And they are also a private wireless company. And a little story, we paid for broadband connection, fiber optic to the premise over 20, 30 years. And what happened was is that the public utility company cross subsidized that money to their wireless company because they make so much money off wireless. So of course, they want to provide services wirelessly because they can charge tons of money for data. And really Verizon's goal with small sales is to be able to provide video streaming services to people. They'd love to be able to sell you cable video services through your wall wirelessly. This is not about the digital divide. It's nothing to do with making broadband connection affordable. And if they really wanted to do something for emergency services, they could put up facilities that were only active during an emergency. So that needs to be understood. Thank you for your time. All right, thank you so much, Alex. That is the last hand that I see. Let's go to our prerecorded voicemails. Agenda 16.2. Hello, it's me again, Mary Doll. Sixth time I've addressed the city council in regards to the cell tower at 439 Calistoga Road, Lincoln Valley. Last Tuesday, June 21st, when I spoke via phone, I need to clarify one part. It is, I can't, cannot live in 90% of my home due to the enormous amount of RFR emitting from said tower. It ranks weeks from a carrier's request to apply with clear opportunity for public input and appeal. Even a community meeting with date scheduled, helpful RF radiation. Thanks for considering these recommendations and thank you for serving the people of Santa Rosa. This is Jennifer LaPorta, item 16.2. Thank you and Gabe Osborn for your service. You are about to vote on the telecommunications ordinance, which is going to have far reaching consequences for this city for decades to come. 5G intends to provide streaming services while gathering data from its users, which is spying. 5G will not bridge the digital divide because big telecom is unregulated and unaffordable to many low income people. The FCC is a captured agency run by industry insiders. The city could greatly benefit by providing municipal broadband, fiber optic lines to the premises, thus creating low income tiers of service to bridge the digital divide. This would reduce the need for small self and protect us from all their negative effects. Aesthetic blight, reduce property values, potential fire danger, and yes, damaging health effects. Fiber is faster, easier to upgrade, more cyber secure, safer to health and fire, and more reliable and affordable. This is what we need in the ordinance. One, signage on poles of potential cell sites with large lettering, easily visible from vehicles and passers-by posted immediately upon telecom's request of permit. Two, no camouflaged antennas, however aesthetically pleasing, as people need to know that they are being exposed to RS radiation. Three, how can we ensure that the facilities are non-flammable when they contain batteries and or petroleum fuel as well as flammable smart meters? Four, insurance coverage without a pollution exclusion so that their harmful health effects are insurable. Five, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance must be included and the carrier must assume all liability and hold the city harmless. The ordinance should say that the WHO recognizes electromagnetic sensitivity as an illness under ICD code W90. Six, no co-locations for small cells on any structure. This will double the aesthetic blight, add to fire danger, increase the amount of RS, and increase electricity usage. Seven, periodic RS admission testing needs to be done via an independent certified engineer, not a telecom employer or contractor whenever our resident requested with results posted on the city website. Eight, since technology is changing so fast, 10-year permits are too long. How about two-year permits? Nine, must include parks, walking trails, and community centers with protective setbacks. Dear city council, please remember, you are accountable to we the people, not telecom corporations. Hello, this is Richard Boyd. I'm calling in reference to agenda item 16.2, small cell ordinance to express my concerns about its ability to regulate the activities of the telecommunications industry. I am familiar with the ordinance you are considering and while it is not perfect, it is a good first step. And Mr. Osborne deserves a great deal of credit for bringing it to its present state. I want to comment on how the telecommunications industry is attempting to perpetrate. I'm a retired physics professor, so I know a bit about radiation. The buzzword telecom is using is connectivity, which is supposed to provide all of us with improved Wi-Fi and with the advent of 5G, greater speeds, self-driving cars, better daming, et cetera. Some of these things really may be improvements, but others are catering to the whims of human beings and are in serious conflict with the needs of many of those same humans. I note that much of this connectivity could be achieved by fiber to the premises, that is the radiation that floods our atmosphere is not essential. However, it should be noted that radio frequency radiation at the 5G frequencies has not been tested to see how damaging it is to living organisms. What's more, there is apparently no intent to do so at least in the United States, but the signs are not good. The FCC has set limits on the amount of RF radiation that emitters can create that are more than a factor 100 greater than those said by many other countries. And their regulatory agencies have, unlike the United States FCC, considered modern medical evidence that shows without a doubt that RF radiation at the FCC's levels can create serious medical effects in humans as well as other animals, insects and plants. Let me emphasize that point, the stuff can be dangerous and absolutely is at the limit set by the FCC and happily adopted by the telecom industry. Rachel Carson had it right when she warned the world decades ago about DDT in her book, Silent Spring. We're facing a new threat, RF radiation, that could cause another Silent Spring, only this time it won't be just the birds that die. Humans would not escape the die-off this time. The organs you are considering certainly will not cater completely to telecom's desires. However, we'll give them much authority and placement and ultimately intensity of the small cells with which they want to clutter the Santa Rosa landscape. So more will be needed for the future. In conclusion, let me congratulate Mr. Osborn on a job well done given the constraints under which he had to operate and thank him for his extraordinary effort. But I want to advise the council members that this is a first step, that much more needs to be done to protect the citizens of Santa Rosa from the ubiquity of the RF radiation to telecom industry would like to inflict on us. Thank you. Hi, my name's Tom Laporta. This is for item 16.2. I'd like to see the city make some money from their fiber to the premises set up that they can have going. I mean, Palo Alto makes $2 million a year from their fiber access. San Leandro's gross profit margin is over 70%. There's so many cities that have made a go of this that it's not even funny, Bristol, Virginia, Jupiter, Florida, Chattanooga. It's amazing. I would suggest you might want to get in touch with Magellan advisors who put together San Leandro's master plan. There's a lot of good info in there. Now on the safety front, I think we need an ordinance restricting small cells for at least 300 feet from any residents. Not 50 feet, not 100 feet, at least 300 feet. Petaluma and San Otomo have 500 foot setbacks. Now that would be ideal, but I doubt that's gonna happen. Anyway, that's about all I have to say. Okay. Hello, my name is Sydney Cox and I'm calling for agenda 16.2, the ordinance regulating wireless facilities. First of all, it's great that there will soon be a wireless small cell ordinance that will give the city some control over the placement of small cells. I understand the constraints placed upon the city by the FCC's rulings and state mandates. However, it sounds like you've obtained excellent really good counsel and Mr. Osborne has been at this for a few years and has done a really good job. So a big thank you to you, Mr. Osborne. Looking at the bigger picture, I have to add my advocacy for a municipal fiber network for Santa Rosa that will provide fast connectivity without the need for small cells all over the city. Please do whatever you can to make this a reality. Probably most important to the residents of our communities is the issue of setbacks, distance of cell towers from homes and the levels of RF radiation that is being emitted from these small cells. Anyone with a good RF meter can give you numerical values and tell you they are dangerous emissions at 50 feet, 75 feet, 100 and even 200 feet. My findings have been alarming. I have emailed the council an info sheet on my meter readings at five different locations. Of course they are below the FCC limits, which are certainly high and based on thermal effects, eating of tissue only and for short periods of time, 30 minutes, a few hours, not days, not 24 seven. And the levels of the FCC are 10 million. The council of Europe and building biologists have precautionary RF levels for sleeping areas at 0.1 and determined by building biologists and countless studies that levels of 1,000 or more, have been considered extreme concern. Last Saturday I took readings on a driveway at Monteverdi Drive at 75 feet from the small cell that measured 203,000 microwatts from meter squared. The man there, that lived there, made comments about his frustration and helplessness over the small cell that's in direct line to his house. And my meter can't even measure if horizon is millimeter waves that are emitted at 28 to 39 gigahertz as the meter only reads up to eight gigahertz. But these small cells emit a combo frequency of 3G, 4G, 5G. So undoubtedly there's a lot more radiation than I can even measure. Can you imagine co-locations? That would be twice the radiation and twice the visual blight, which is another concern. We can't control the FCC. We can't control the laws. The telecom is getting passed thanks to their contributions to our reps. But we can educate the public and speak out in public comment times like this about our alarm at what's coming. Thank you. Hi, this is Kim Schroeder and I am calling on agenda item number 16.2, ordinance regulating wireless facilities. I live in Santa Rosa. I grew up here. My husband and I raised our children here. First of all, thank you Gabe Osburn for your efforts in becoming educated at length on this topic and preparing these documents. I support a municipal cyber network just as many have over the years passionately as been stated in goal-setting meetings and so forth study sessions. The fiber network is superior to small cells for several reasons. It protects our neighborhoods and schools, et cetera, from the negative effects of wireless, but even more importantly, we don't have the unsightly aesthetics, reduced property values, potential fire dangers, the negative environmental effects of wireless as well as health impacts. Cyber is faster, more cyber secure. It's got privacy, it's more reliable and affordable and it is that that will eliminate the digital divide. As a green city who adopted a climate change resolution not too long ago, please recall the testimonies and prior study sessions regarding the significant negative impact that wireless has on our environment. The consumers already paid the phone company's fees to build fiber optic cable as they promised years ago. The fees were paid in our landline bills. They never fulfilled their promise and now they want these invasive cell towers in front of our homes and our schools. This is not for the people. Remember, this is for the telecoms, data mining is a lucrative business and we the people, once again, pay the price. While they can't be completely avoided, cell towers should be strategically placed with the least intrusive means and proof of significant gap in coverage. Another important point is small cells must be covered by insurance without a pollution exclusion. Additionally, I feel important point is regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA compliance must be included and the carrier must assume all liability and hold the city harmless. Periodic radio frequency emission testing should be done by an independent certified engineer, not a telecom employee or contractor. This should happen once or twice a year as there needs to be accountability which is not happening now. Also please keep in mind that we elected you to represent us, the people and we thank you for that, for all you do for us. Hello, my name is Royal Lynn Wooten. This is for item number 16.2. You are about to vote on the telecommunications ordinance and resolution, which is going to have a far reaching consequence for this city for decades to come. 5G intends to provide streaming services while gathering data for its users, which is buying. 5G will not reach the digital divide because big telecom is unregulated and unaffordable to many low income people. The city could greatly benefit by providing municipal broadband or fiber optic lines to the premises. Thus creating low income tiers of service to bridge the digital divide. Other cities have huge benefits on their fiber optic investments. This would reduce the need for small cells and protect us from all their negative effects, aesthetic light, reduced poverty values, potential fire danger, and yes, damaging health effects. Fiber is a faster, easier, upgradable, more cyber secure, safer to health and more reliable and affordable. This is what we need in the ordinance. One, signage on poles of potential cell sites with large lettering easily visible from vehicles and passers-by, posted immediately upon the telecom request of permit. Two, no camouflage antenna, wireless facilities, cell towers, however, aesthetically pleasing as people need to know that they are being exposed to RF radiation. Three, how can we ensure that the facilities are non-flammable when these contain batteries and or petroleum fuel as well as flammable smart meters? Four, insurance coverage without a pollution exclusion so that their harmful health effects are insurable. Five, Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, compliance must be included and the carrier must assume all liability and hold the city harmless. The ordinance should say that the WHO recognizes electromagnetic sensitivity as an illness under ICD code W90.0, six, no co-locations for small cells on any structure. This will double the aesthetic flight, contribute to fire danger, decrease the amount of RF and increase the electricity usage. Seven, periodic RF emission testing needs to be done by an independent certified engineer, not a telecom employee or contractor. Whenever a resident request it with results posted on the city website. Eight, since technology is changing so fast, tenure permits are way too long. Two year long permits are preferable. Nine, include parks, walking trails and community centers with protected setbacks. Dear city council, please remember that you are accountable to we the people, not telecom operations. Thank you. Hello, this is Martin Miller. I'm calling regarding agenda item 16.2, the ordinance regulating wireless facilities. I do considerable amount of work in Santa Rosa and live just over the border. First of all, I wanted to make the point of supporting fiber networks as opposed to wireless. The wireless approach is aesthetically unpleasing. It reduces property values. It's a potential fire damage. And there is a case being brought to the FCC. It was brought in January of late this year that they asking the FCC to reevaluate its safety standards which have not been examined since 1996. There's lots of new reports that were brought in that says that wireless radiation is a damaging both to health and environmental matters. Fiber is far faster and easier to upgrade. It's more secure, more reliable and affordable. I just, there's just no comparison. Next, how can telecom companies ensure that facilities are nonflammable as stated under exhibit A, design and development standards dash vi.c. Small cells must be covered by insurance without a pollution exclusion. Americans with disabilities that compliance must be included in the carry must assume all liability and hope the city harmless. I strongly, if we have to have this wireless, I strongly support transparency and notice for all residents, property owners and occupants within 300 feet of a proposed site. This is gonna be far difficult on everyone, especially Americans with disabilities. No locations for small cells in any structure. This is gonna double the aesthetic damage, contributive fire damage, increase the amount of RF. And lastly, because the technology is changing so fast, 10 year permits are way too long. We suggest, I think a shorter permit times, perhaps every two or three years would be best. Thank you very much for your time. Mayor, that concludes voice message, public comments received on item 16.2. Great, thank you so much. We will close the public hearing. There were a couple of questions that were brought up. I did want to give Gail and Gabe an opportunity to respond to a couple of them. One was specifically about the permit duration language that we have in the ordinance. And I'll read it. It says, a wireless encroachment permit shall be valid for a period of 10 years unless pursuant to another provision of the code or these conditions, it expires sooner or is terminated. What we also heard is that 10 years was the minimum under state and federal law. I just wanted to see Gail if you could confirm that. And if so, what are some of the conditions that might necessitate expiring sooner or terminating prior to that 10 year provision? Thank you for that question. So first of all, let me just clarify what state law actually says because I think we weren't given a full picture. What the state law requires, and this is in section government code, section 65964B, it says as a condition of approval of an application for a permit for construction or reconstruction for a development project for a wireless telecommunications facility, a city or county shall not do any of the following. And B is unreasonably limit the duration of a permit for a wireless telecommunications facility. And then it goes on and says, limits of less than 10 years are presumed to be unreasonable absent public safety reasons or substantial land use reasons. However, cities and counties may establish a buildout period for a site. So the part that wasn't conveyed in the comment was absent public safety or substantial land use reasons. And the reason we have that language in the permit conditions is that for eligible facilities requests, those applications that would modify an existing wireless facility, instead of a 10 year permit for an antenna swap out or an additional transmission equipment added, what we have proposed would be that the permit for that modification be the same length as whatever is left on the existing permit. So that I think is justifiable as certainly a substantial land use reason and just common sense and reasonable. So that's the sort of situation that we're talking about. And certainly a permit could be terminated early for issues like non-compliance. Okay, I appreciate that and that seems reasonable to me. One of the comments that was made was about the one month duration to be able to start. I'm missing or I'm blanking on the specific the names, but more emergency related. There was concerns about it sounded like procurement of some of the components to be able to start construction within a month of approval from the city. I guess my particular question is, is the ask from the telecom representative that the city is required to do this approval in a specific amount of time because of an emergency, but then asking for a waiver on them having to actually construct within a specific amount of time when they've said that it's an emergency. So I think, Gabe, did you catch which provision? I thought that might have been a comment related to commencement of operations, which is a permit condition for under 13-60.8 conditions of approval. And I should also just mention. Where are you looking in the ordinance just so that I can follow up? I'm looking at 13-6.80 conditions of approval under A-4. I think that was the one that they were referring to, which says the operation of the approved facility shall commence no later than one month after the completion of the installation or the wireless encroachment permit will expire without further action by the city. And Mr. Mayor, that is on page 10 of the ordinance. Thank you. And I would concur. I believe that's what the comment was focusing on was the commencement of service after the issuance of the permit. And typically I will state on that front that there are certain timelines that require specific action by the provider. And one example would be as we go through the permitting process, we want the activity under that permitting process and to happen within a reasonable time frame of the issuance of the permit. And it's pretty common to have those timelines associated with it. And if you don't exercise your rights, then it can have some negative impact on the status of the permit. I think the important point with that and with the comments we did get from Verizon is we're aware of those. We did not experience similar comments from AT&T and we're really trying to balance those out. But I do want to stress the important points with this is that as we go into not really uncharted territories, but for us a new permitting process, it will have to be fluid on some of these. We'll have to figure out what works, what doesn't if those timelines need to be extended. What we'll commit to, as I mentioned in the presentation, is prior to the end of the year when we're able to get to those macro site discussions, bringing back some of those comments that logistically just don't work. And I think that's an important point to bring to the forefront is that we are willing to allow flexibility in those. We just want to better understand where that flexibility is needed and we need to run some of those permits through the process before we can fully get to that point. I appreciate that. And in particular on this section, the commencement of operations, it seems to me like there is an opportunity for us to build in some provision here to allow flexibility that would then hopefully in the event that we needed flexibility, create a mutual playing field between the city and the provider at that point to help build a relationship there. And so perhaps we can talk about that once we get a motion on the table. The last one, sorry, go ahead. I'm sorry to interrupt. I was just going to make two other points on this. One is that this section of the code lists the conditions of approval, but it does say that these are the conditions that will apply to all permits granted pursuant to this chapter or by operation of law. So that would be a deemed granted situation where the city failed to act and there was a deemed grant shall be subject to the following conditions unless modified by the approving authority. So it builds in the flexibility and actually issuing a permit to make small modifications if that is deemed appropriate in the circumstances. So that's one point I wanted to make. And the second is with respect to this particular permit condition, this sort of issue has come up in other jurisdictions and one of the modifications that sometimes is made is something along the lines of saying that, that this one month period may be extended by the director for good cause shown. And that's in a circumstance sometimes that the carriers will say, well, we got our facility in but we're waiting for PG&E to put the power in and that's why we haven't started operating those sorts of situations. I think that might be where they gave would be willing to be flexible. It's sort of beyond the control of the permittee why they couldn't start operation. So I just want to make those two comments as well. And I think for the record, we would show flexibility in those areas. Obviously there's a lot of pieces that come together as part of that process. We have had a history of working with the providers through the deployments that we currently have. So absolutely if there's some logistical issue where those timelines don't work, that's a lot of times why we build in variances in those relief valves to be able to address that situation really at the staff level when it's reasonable to make that accommodation. Okay, and Gail, if you can keep that language handy because we may have some discussion on that. The final comment was around the current aesthetic standards that perhaps do not meet the technology or would be overly burdensome. I just wanted to give you an opportunity to respond back to that, both Gabe and Gail on whether or not you've heard that from other providers or if there is any opportunity to reach some form of reasonable agreement with that provider. So I'll go first and just make one comment with respect to the comment that the Verizon rep made on the volume in the FCC order. There was a comment that the volume limits in the design standards are less than what the FCC small cell order has for volume limits. And let me just explain what is going on there. So the FCC defined what a small wireless facility is in terms of height and volume of equipment. And it actually defined it as like 28 cubic feet volume of equipment, like very large, but a small, so that's the definition of a small wireless facility for the purposes of the shot clock. So if it meets those criteria or it's less than that then it would be considered to be a small wireless facility with a 60 or 90 day shot clock. But the FCC order, as I also mentioned, allows local governments to impose reasonable aesthetic requirements. And so our interpretation is it does not mandate you to consider 28 cubic feet as a reasonable volume standard for aesthetic purposes. It's merely for shot clock purposes. And so I'll let Gabe talk about the standards that they came up with. I just wanted to clarify that point on the record. Thank you, Gail. And then obviously there's two different types of standards of there's more of the design and then the location. What we've seen in the design and we just discussed this a bit in the presentation is in the questions obviously too is the underground requirements. So when are those technically feasible? So that dramatically affects the overall design. Some of the other points that came out which is one of the reasons why we need to be fairly nimble with this is that the joint utility poles are controlled by PG&E and the requirements associated with the antenna placement structures on that pole can change. So as those evolve, we have to have that flexibility in our proposal to be able to approve those types of installations and we don't want to be necessarily overly restrictive because then it can create a situation where we're inconsistent with PG&E requirements. So most of the comments that we did receive on the design obviously when we get to location requirements that does add another layer. It does thrust the whole proposal into a limited exemption because some of those are going to be challenging to meet. So we did get feedback on that that that can be challenging from a deployment standpoint. We did receive feedback on the underground requirements which we recognize are challenging and we will work through them. And that was pointed out in the comment from the Verizon representative around the poles. We do understand that that can change. So PG&E can change requirements about metering that can affect these. So we do understand that and we will be nimble with those. Our concern is to keep these as aesthetically pleasing as possible and to put them in locations where the aesthetics in that area are benefited by not having them there if we technically can do that. So that's the main goal. And I once again just want to stress that we did incorporate that flexibility for that very reason. So we tried to find this balance of being specific but being flexible at the same time. All right, thank you Gabe. I'll see if there are any other questions from council members. Okay, council member Sawyer, do you want to put a motion on the table? Thank you, Mayor. Just to be clear that we do this correctly, the resolution speaks to design and development standards and the ordinance speaks to rights of way. So if the changes that you are considering or would you want them read in the ordinance piece or the resolution? And that might be a question for the city attorney as well. And I believe that that particular language that we were talking about on the 10 year or excuse me on the one month to commence, that was in the ordinance. Ordinance. Yeah, it's on page 10, 13-06.80, section A subsection four. This specifically what was brought up. So I'd like to be able, I'd like to be able to put the ordinance on the table and then consider, I guess at that point, consider adjustments to it. So I'll just let me just introduce the ordinance and we'll go from there. So I've introduced an ordinance to the council of the city of Santa Rosa adding chapter 13-06 to title 13 streets, sidewalks and public places with the Santa Rosa city code pertaining to wireless facilities in public rights of way and way further reading. I can second that. So we have a motion from council member Sawyer and a second from council member Schwedhelm. And then Gail, if you could remind me what that language was, I'd like to offer it as a friendly amendment to the aforementioned section, which is the commencement of operations. Gail, you're muted if you're speaking to us. I thought she was just being very pensive. So many buttons to push. I forgot to unmute. It's a little odd for me to be suggesting that you needed to unmute. So it's kind of, it's an inside joke. Oh, I see so. I'm not alone in this problem. Okay. So yes, the, I think it would be, okay, I have better like, okay. This period may be extended by the director of transportation and public works for good cause shown. That's the motion. Council member Sawyer, will you accept that friendly amendment? I will. And the second? My only question should be just that one person or his or her designee. Good point. All right. With the, with council members, what Helms suggested modification, the director of transportation or his or her designee. I would be supportive. Or their designee. I think in the ordinance you're using just for designee. Okay. You're comfortable with that council member Sawyer? I am. And for the second? Yes, I am. Right. Were there any other amendments that council members wanted to seek? Okay. Do we have any comments on the motion? All right, seeing none, let's go ahead and call the roll on the ordinance. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Fleming. Council member Alvarez. Aye. Vice mayor Rogers. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with five ayes with council members Fleming and Tibbets absence. Secondly, I've introduced a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa establishing design and development standards for wireless facilities in the public right of way and way further reading. Second. Motion from council member Sawyer and a second from council member Schwedhelm. I did want to make a quick comment just because I know that there was concern on the last part of this around the standards and not having reached agreement. There are opportunities built into the ordinance for some level of exception with finding a good cause or with working directly with the city. And so I feel comfortable that even though we have one telecom provider suggesting that they can't make it work. I'm fairly confident with our staff that we can find paths forward for them as well as I fully believe that SB 556 is going to pass this year. And so there may be some modifications that we need to make to the ordinance and to the resolution in the beginning of next year when that goes into effect that perhaps that's an opportunity for us if we do have those changes to also check in on the design standards to make sure that once it's in place are we running into any reasonable roadblocks that we need to fix? And I hope Gabe that you'll bring it to us at that time if we need to. With that, let's go ahead and call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Alvarez. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. The motion passes with five ayes with council members Fleming and Tibbetts absent. Okay, thank you so much Gail and especially you Gabe. I know the two of you have been working very hard on this and I think we heard in public comment just how accommodating you've been and how much the public has enjoyed working with you and congratulations to everybody who's been working on this for years to get this in place. The council is going to take a dinner break so we will come back at 8.15 for items 15.1 through 15.3 and we'll be back at that point. Three more. Thank you, good evening. Thank you. Huh? Okay. Present. Vice Mayor Rogers. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Thank you. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Fleming and council member Tibbetts who are absent. All right, we'll go ahead and jump back into our meeting. So we are at item 14, our public comments for non-agenda matters. We'll start in the chamber. Is there anybody who'd like to make comments for items that are not on the agenda tonight? Mr. Dewitt. Hello, sir. My name is Dewane Dewitt. I'm from Roseland. I wanted to congratulate the city on its ability to utilize this hybrid approach to conduct meetings in which you've been able to have people participate from afar and people here in the chambers. I hope you'll continue to do this type of activity on into the future, even after COVID may have been defeated. This is a good process which follows up on something that you passed in your open government ordinance in which you sought a commitment to embrace a culture of open government to ensure public trust, engage the community and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration. This process has been shown to be helpful along those lines. I wanted to talk with you about the power of a promise. I don't know if you remember the idea of when you make a promise, you're attempting to try and keep what you've said to actually occur. And with government, the power of a promise is very important because if people believe you're not keeping the promise, they lose the trust in the government. That's happened for a lot of people recently, not for me, I still believe in our government and in our system, but I do believe there are people who are being paid by the taxpayers who are not keeping the promise. This is especially important during this opportunity that you folks have labeled Santa Rosa Forward in which you have a opportunity to look into the future for a general plan. General plans are aspirational. There are nothing but promises. There's nothing in a general plan that's required actually. There's no stipulation that anything will be done, but there's the hope. And what's really important though is especially when you get money from state and federal sources that you follow through on a process, which is inclusive. And I feel unfortunately, the Santa Rosa Forward process, the general plan 2050 has been discriminatory and exclusive of disadvantaged, underserved, overburdened community members, especially the people in Roseland and South Park who've essentially are being left out if they're not on the Zoom train. So an example of this is that there are no neighborhood advocates on the Technical Advisory Committee. You may think that's no big deal. I've worked with general plans down in big cities like West Oakland, and it's been pointed out if you're not on the Technical Advisory Committee, you're basically on the menu and someone else is choosing what to cook on you. It's not a good process. So the process needs to be restarted with an authentic community engagement component that actually exists, not something that's just talked about by a paid consultant who's blown smoke up people's tailpipes. We really need to have this true authentic community engagement begin. It hasn't happened yet. And so I'm hoping that you folks will take that into account. I'm hoping to stay for the item later in report items, 15.2, depending on how many more hours we spend here tonight. But you got my message. I'm hoping that you understand that message is from a lot of people in Roseland, at least, who can't make it to your meetings. You can't be on that Zoom thing that everybody does these days. So live up to what your talk is. Walk that talk about that open government. Age the community. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt. I'm not seeing any hands raised on Zoom. Do we have any voicemail comments? We had no voice message, public comments on item 14 or 18 non-agent, it matters. Okay, we'll go on to item 15.1. Mayor and members of the city council, item 15.1 is a report and resolution for approval of a disposition and development agreement for a low income development property on city property located at 702 and 716 Bennett Valley Road and 921 and 927 Rutledge Avenue in Santa Rosa, California with Free Bird Development Company, LLC, and Allied Housing Incorporated. Jill Scott, our real estate manager in Nicole Rathburn, our interim housing and community services manager, and Ethan Walsh with Best Best and Krieger will be setting the staff report this evening. And I apologize, Mr. City Manager, before we start item 15.1, I did want to bring up item 15.3 on whether to add it to the agenda, not to jump to the item, but this is in accordance with the open government sunshine ordinance, a necessary step if the council chooses to add item 15.3. Madam City Attorney, could you please explain? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, the council's early agenda policy generally requires that all items of business appear first on the preliminary agenda, which is published about two and a half weeks before the council meeting, and then again on the final agenda that we published the week prior to the meeting. The early agenda policy however does provide an exception and that is that an urgent item of business that did not appear on the preliminary agenda may nevertheless be placed on a final agenda and discussed and acted upon by the council if there is a showing of good cause and only with a concurrence of six council members or a unanimous vote if there are fewer than six council members present. So a showing of good cause requires a finding by council that as a result of exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the council, compliance with the preliminary agenda requirement would quote impose a substantial burden on the city's ability to conduct its business or result in prejudice to a private person. And tonight item 15.3 was not on the preliminary agenda, but we are asking that the council take up that item tonight despite it having not been on the preliminary agenda. And in fact, it's one of the cases that really falls very squarely within the provision for good cause. The circumstances are that on June 14th, the state water resources