The Eugene, Ore., City Council has proposed a four-month moratorium on tower building for wireless phone services that has some operators sympathetic and others calling their attorneys.
Eugene officials and citizens are concerned not only with aesthetics and health-related issues, but with “the unknown,” said City Planner Cathy Czerniak.
Wireless carriers argue moratoriums impede market entry, a violation of their federal rights.
At the Eugene City Council meeting Sept. 9, cellular and personal communications services carriers urged the city not to pass the moratorium and indicated they would fight such a measure if implemented, said Czerniak.
Once the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was written, “the council realized how much more there was to learn” about siting for wireless infrastructure, said Czerniak. To date, Eugene has no land use codes that address wireless tower siting procedures.
“The code doesn’t address this. Let’s just stop, take 120 days, put something in our code, and go from there,” said Czerniak. Eugene wants “to minimize the number of towers while accommodating the providers,” Czerniak commented.
The city recently received three applications from AT&T Wireless Services Inc., five from Western Wireless Corp., two from Sprint Spectrum L.P., two from AirTouch Communications Inc. and a few filed by private individuals, including a local company that wants to build a tower and lease space on it.
In the past, AirTouch’s and AT&T’s cellular applications were few and infrequent enough the city considered permits on individual merits, said Czerniak.
Today, the city believes a period set aside to evaluate siting options will be a more efficient process, saving time and money for service providers and city staff alike, said Czerniak. The city is conducting an inventory of existing structures and gathering data about collocation and other protocols for tower siting and building. The city has received “contradictory information from providers about what’s possible” regarding collocation, Czerniak added.
Building permits were issued to Sprint Spectrum for collocation of antennas on existing structures, said Czerniak.
Bob Kelley, Sprint Spectrum’s director of public relations in the western region, said the company is disappointed by the prospect of a moratorium, but stated, “We’re committed to working with local communities to alleviate any concerns they have.
“Collocation is an option we’ve done and we explore,” said Kelley. Decisions whether to collocate are made from an engineering standpoint, he explained. Sprint’s two approved and two pending sites will complete phase one of PCS network buildout, said Kelley.
Bruce Amundson, a spokesman for AirTouch, said his company does not have that many problems with moratoriums “as long as they are being used by the government agencies to call a time out and come out with a process,” and as long as they are short.
The Eugene city council is scheduled to meet tonight, but has not indicated whether it will announce a final decision regarding the moratorium.
Medina, Wash., a suburb of Seattle, instituted a similar moratorium earlier this year. Sprint Spectrum agreed to suspend a lawsuit that challenged Medina’s authority to institute a moratorium if Medina considered Sprint’s tower site application. The city denied that application and a hearing is set for Sept. 22 in which Sprint plans to ask for reconsideration.
