[1st-mile-nm] Santa Fe Telecom Ordinance: Town Hall Meetings 4/8 & 4/22

[Tom Johnson]

Talk about fuzzy wording:  "...two to three hundred small towers on the
streets and sidewalks of the city."  Makes it sound as though we could
become a city designed by Gaudi -- http://gaudi.notlong.com

But yet again this perspective of the issue fails to recognize that fiber
optics are an alternative that works best for everyone.  UNLESS the city
legal staff has split out WiFi from fiber.  Could that be possible?

Any idea when and where the "further revisions of the ordinance" will be
available?

-tj

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Richard Lowenberg
<lowenberg at designnine.com>wrote:

> I've held off posting the following announcement, to get clarification on
> whether the meetings
> would address the entire Telecom Ordinance, or just wireless issues in a
> pending City Ordinance.
> I've had no response from the organizers, yet.     RL
> --------
>
>
> *CONTACT:     John McPhee            505-577-8351       *
> *                        Azlan White              505-983-7071
>
> WHAT:           Santa Fe Public Town Hall Meeting
>                        on City Telecommunications Code Revision
>
> WHEN:           Thursday April 8th, 7pm
>
> WHERE:         Mary Esther Gonzalez Senior Center
>                        1121 Alto Street *
>
>
> *CITY TO HOLD TOWN HALL MEETINGS ON WIRELESS ORDINANCE*
> On April 8th, 2010, from 7-9 pm, the first of two Town Hall Meetings will
> be held on the revision of Santa Fe’s telecommunications ordinance.  It will
> take place in the Mary Esther Gonzalez Senior Center at 1121 Alto Street.
>
> The second Town Hall Meeting will take place on April 22, 2010 in the
> Genoveva Chavez Center, also from 7-9 pm. The public is urged to come and
> participate at both meetings.
>
> Further revisions to the proposed ordinance will be presented, and
> the possibility of a temporary moratorium on antennas and towers in Santa Fe
> will be discussed. Critical issues that have led to the calling of these
> Town Hall Meetings include: property values; homeowner rights; aesthetics;
> public notification of and public input into the locations of proposed
> antennas; and preservation of the cultural and historic values of Santa Fe.
> The purpose of these meetings is to gather public input into the ordinance
> revision before the city council next considers it on May 12, 2010.
>
> Santa Fe's current telecommunications ordinance, which regulates antennas
> in the public rights-of-way, was partially struck down in 2004 by the Eighth
> Circuit Court of Appeals, and it was never revised. Santa Fe has a separate
> land use ordinance that regulates antennas on private property. The lack of
> a valid public rights-of-way ordinance did not pose a problem for several
> years because no applications for antennas on public streets were submitted.
> However, the advent of iPhones, iPads, and similar technologies has greatly
> intensified the demand for bandwidth for mobile devices, and in 2009,
> several antenna-building companies approached the city with proposals
> to place as many as two to three hundred small towers on the streets and
> sidewalks of the city. These would be a combination of new antennas placed
> on existing PNM and Qwest poles, as well as new 25-foot towers in areas of
> the city with no overhead utilities.
>
> To accommodate these applications, city staff has revised the
> telecommunications ordinance and presented it to the city council for
> approval. However, the revised ordinance, according to members of the Santa
> Fe Alliance for Public Health and Safety, lacks necessary protections. It
> eliminates effective public participation in the approval process; allows
> antennas as a permitted use in all residential areas for the first time; and
> gives blanket franchises which allow these companies carte blanche to not
> only to install cable underneath the streets, but to install antennas
> wherever they please along the cable routes with no further notification or
> approval process. The Alliance is proposing that the cable and antennas
> regulations do not belong in the same ordinance, and is presently working to
> draft two separate ordinances for presentation to the public at the Town
> Hall Meetings, and to the City Council at an early date.
>
> Other cities, such as San Diego, Pasadena, and Glendale, have dealt with
> similar situations by first passing temporary moratoria on antennas in order
> to craft careful ordinances. Glendale, for example, has a 17-month
> moratorium which is still in effect and will expire in June, while it
> solicits public comment on its newly drafted ordinance.
>
> Councilor Miguel Chavez and the Santa Fe Alliance for Public Health and
> Safety are co-sponsoring the upcoming Town Hall Meetings.
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 1st-mile-nm mailing list
> 1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org
> http://www2.dcn.org/mailman/listinfo/1st-mile-nm
>
>


-- 
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.com

"Be Your Own Publisher"
http://indiepubwest.com
==========================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/1st-mile-nm/attachments/20100401/103b09b5/attachment.html>