Wireless industry representatives called Glendale’s rules the most restrictive they’ve seen during a city council public hearing in April 2010. Now advocates in Los Angeles and the Bay Area are citing Glendale’s new ordinance in efforts to persuade their own elected officials to enact stricter rules for wireless installations.
Friday’s New York Times featured a bay area community’s opposition to a T-Mobile cell tower on a Boy Scout campground, and related details of Glendale’s ordinance, which was praised by San Francisco resident Doug Loranger:
“After an 18-month moratorium on new cell sites that will end this June,” Mr. Loranger said, “Glendale will have adopted one of the most stringent celltower-siting ordinances in the state of California.” The ordinance will increase the city’s oversight of the placement of antennae; cellular equipment proposed for residential areas will face a more intense review process; and carriers may need to prove why the equipment is needed.
Loranger is a co-founder of the Coalition for Local Oversight of Utility Technologies, which Glendale Organized Against Cell Towers joined, and which advocates repeal of Section 704 of the 1996 Telecom Act’s health and environmental preemption, and investment in high-speed fiber-optic broadband technology as a safer, faster alternative to universal wireless broadband.