While San Francisco’s draft wireless ordinance stresses the need to preserve its scenic views, Los Angeles-area residents groups are petitioning their city to apply such standards to cell sites. Pacific Palisades Residents’ Association is fighting to preserve a scenic section of Sunset Blvd. and to bring city decisions in line with the Brentwood-Pacific Palisades Community Plan.
In a March 4 appeal to Los Angeles Public Works over an approved cell site at Capri and Sunset, the group states:
There are no above-ground utility poles in the area of the Project Location; the light standards are of consistent design (most being historic light poles less than 20 ft. in height); and the area – the Palisades Riviera – is one of the most scenic residential neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles. The many residents and non-residents alike who travel along this stretch of Sunset Blvd. daily are privileged to enjoy the vistas and beauty of the area unmarred by multiple, inconsistent high poles or other commercial structures in the public-right-of-way.
…In considering the totality of the Cell Site Installation, the Board should not be restricted to the narrow definitions or standards imposed by the AGF ordinance, which were drafted prior to recent rulings (at a time when the city’s ability to regulate wireless facilities was believed to be limited), which were not intended by the ordinance drafters to apply to poles, and on their face apply only to cabinets, not to poles.