Aug 3 — City Council Staff Meetings

The Problem is the Revised City of Tucson Public Utility Manual, Itself

Aug 3, 2021 — Wire Tucson to Vice Mayor Nikki Lee’s Staff re: Disasters of so-called “small” Wireless Telecommunications Facilities

Aug 3, 2021 — Wire Tucson to City Council Member Paul Cunningham’s Staff re: Disasters of so-called “small” Wireless Telecommunications Facilities

https://youtu.be/vR5Li41U53Q?t=4m22s
 
https://youtu.be/oe2SjBYDRh0?t=15m55s
 

Purpose of this meeting:


To publish a manual before an ordinance is passed is inappropriate. Residents are full stakeholders and owners of the Public ROW and must have equal representation and input in the management of the ROW. We have supplied the wanting ordinance which took significant resources and national expert collaboration to create. 

The link for the correct version of the bill is here
(Only the revisions to Title 9 are relevant to the City, which comprise the first half of this document)The A.R.S. that came from that bill are here here
(Keep clicking “next section” to continue reading)

In the law (^above) there will be found provisions to freely create code that promotes public safety, protects property values, enforces co-location and enact significant design requirements plus more that we must take full advantage of. 

Questions/Comments Delivered:

  1. Minimum power providing telecommunications service operations -and no higher– as it relates to climate emergency and 1 million healthy trees.
  2. Evidence of assessing the pass-along costs to residents as consumers AND tax payers must be provided.
  3. Detriments of social engineering, surveillance and attention economy have yet to be addressed and considered.
  4. Fiber optic increases home values whereas cell poles decrease values up to 20%.
    Utility manual can make it harder for fiber companies and the City to plan/encourage fiber to the premises, which is something we actually need.
    That is why we need a fiber sharing plan, such as the one found in the revised ordinance. 
  5. Drastic increase in cluttered appearance/ugliness will be a huge loss for the City and must be addressed before the problem is compounded any further – (suggestions: codify language to regulate for small size -like the size of a Wi-Fi router- design and stealth requirements such as cactus appearance, scroll wrought-iron, etc.) 
  6. Will the final version of the manual be voted on by the mayor and council or just published by DoT without a vote?
  7. Again, the directive of council, particularly Councilman Cunningham was “to make it as difficult as possible” for telecom companies to not collocate. This manual is non-compliant with that vote and directive, and precedes an ordinance that the City Manager and City Attorney are obligated to deliver. Any deliberations to deliver the manual instead of an ordinance did not occur according to statute. A manual must reflect requirements codified in an ordinance or it is nothing more than a wish-list. 
  8. All Utilities can present different needs, standards and regulations, therefor each utility can be expected to be governed accordingly, in order to provide an “equal basis” standard. 
  9. The Tucsonans’ WTF Ordinance is newly revised, and improved. It will be expected/delivered shortly. 
  10. Other questions are found in Dr. Witte’s Letter to Mr. Ortega. 

Dr. Witte’s Letter To Ortega

Our follow-up contained the latter documents as well as this excerpt from a former letter submitted to the Mayor and Council establishing the need for a moratorium during the State of Emergency