New Permit Process for Public Right-of-Way Wireless Facilities Goes to San Francisco Board of Supervisors 1

Gay Outlaw, San Francisco resident: I’m a homeowner in the city, and I have lived here for 23 years. I care deeply about the quality of life here. I would like to echo the thanks already expressed for your efforts with this legislation. I’ m here because I have had a crash course in the past week on wireless antennas and how fast and seriously they are going up at the moment in the city. An antenna is being activated as I stand here before you on my street. Do I need to tell you how unsightly it is and how poorly installed it is? The crew has worked until 10:00 P.M. and on Saturday and Sunday, to complete their work…The first thing I wondered is where else are they installing these things? Are we just unlucky on our street? There is one a single block away and two more within a four-block radius. It seems to me that this proliferation goes against any intention to ultimately bury the utilities underground, like in the area immediately surrounding us. While constant exposure to one device might not offend, according to the FCC standards, how about this kind of density? Who is asking these questions on our behalf? are they being asked? The more I research, the more I learn how my hands are tied — how our hands are tied as residents and homeowners as far as what we can do about this.

Sister Joan Hopkins: The three of us who live in this house are outraged that this has gone on with no communication to us that it was happening. At no time were we told that this was going to happen. I personally called city and county offices after this thing was attached. I was told that it was OK. It was not dangerous. I do not believe that. So we do not want it next to our house. Thank you.

Richmond District resident: I have downloaded some of the antenna search.com data on wireless transmitters and towers in my neighborhood. There are 489 antennas within a three-mile radius of my home… There are also 64 towers within a three-mile radius of my home. Henry Lai at the University of Washington is doing research on the health effects of wireless transmitters and towers, and there are animal studies on that and some human studies related to memory deficits, performance deficits, genetic deficits, cancer, reproductive deficits — a whole host of health issues. I’m wondering who is going to monitor the cumulative burdens of all of this technology being added in our city?

Eric Brooks, San Francisco Green Party: The green party position is that this legislation is excellent and every opportunity should be made to minimize the amount of these things that are out there…So many times, we have seen the planning commission approve a placement, and then it is appealed to the board. The corporations will get up and argue that their coverage is not good enough, but then it will be made clear through the appeals process that the coverage is actually good enough and the appeal is upheld. This happens over and over again. So that is the standard. Also, it does not just apply to cell phones. It applies to broadband access. you need to make sure there is not already sufficient coverage for an easy way to get there, and the direction we really need to head, especially in light of the FCC’s recent decision to unfortunately make the internet a two-tiered system is to have a major buildup of underground fiber-optic lines in the city. If we did that, fiber would allow us, to the extent that we do need wireless devices, to operate on very small antennas the size of cigarette packs or smaller, that are hooked into the broad fiber-optic system, and would also allow us to set up so that multiple corporations do not have to have their own antennas. They could look into the public fiber network and all ride without having the proliferation of antennas all over the place. Supervisor Chiu , you are probably interested in that direction. i would love to see you work with advocates that are working with broadband to get that in motion so that we do not need all these ridiculous antennas all over the place.

David Tornheim, San Francisco Resident and member of SNAFU: The carriers, despite their claim that they think there should be more notice, they could provide notice if they wanted to. They could just put little posters up on their telephone poles. I do not believe them that they want to provide notice. We need this This is very important. NextG in particular, I want to point out has an aggressive campaign to put up these devices before this legislation goes into effect. They are not providing notice, even though they have known about this…Basically, they are trying to circumvent this legislation, and these guys are all saying, “Let’ s come up with another plan. Let’ s go back to the drawing board.” and they will just put more of these things up without notifying residents.

Francisco De Costa: If you go to any civilized nation, you will not see electric poles and such nasty equipment as you saw the last time again and again and again. What the service providers do is they invest millions of dollars in Washington, D.C., as lobbyists and come over here, do the same in Sacramento, and come over here on the local level and try to bully us. What perturbs me is DPW, and I know there are some people here from DPW that know me pretty well. If somebody comes and puts a little graffiti thing, they will find you about $300. And you have these nasty, dirty looking things on our electric poles. They are disgusting. Lowering the property value. They do nothing.We need to find out what is the relationship between the service providers and DPW? And secondly, who gives them the right to go inside somebody’ s house, even though it is public right of way, and put these nasty things on these electric poles that in the first place, such things should never be put. These are huge boxes — not all of them, but most of them. You have heard here from Eric Brooks and others that we can do this underground. we can use fiber optics. The city lost eight years ago when we allow Comcast to do the underground, and we did not do it ourselves like other states. Our city does not have the foresight. Now that we have allowed these rascals to come into our neighborhoods and destroy the aesthetics, now, we are planning what to do. It is a bit too late, but not too late. I’ m in favor of this legislation.

Jeff Cooper, Richmond District resident: As of last week, I am a proud landlord of a new wireless facility right outside my house. Last week, we had a crew come out and install a wireless thing on top of our light pole, which sits right outside my bedroom window. I was able to finally find a copy of the permit that was pulled, and it is actually at my address. I was pretty shocked to find out that you can hold a permit of somebody’ s address without notifying the residents that a permit has been told of their address. I have three primary grievances. I strongly support the legislation, but the first is just notification. We need to notify residents, especially when it is right in front of their house. Second is the overall quality. These claims of public safety and in the aftermath of a hurricane or earthquake. If you come outside in front of my house and look what they have put up there, there is no way that thing is going to survive a hurricane or earthquake. It is going to fall over and start a fire, so I have strong concerns about the insulation quality, and I want to make sure that the committees or whoever is in charge, there is a permitting process and that these permits are reviewed and the quality of the work product that is done is reviewed. When I remodeled my kitchen, I had a city inspector come out weakly to make sure I did everything right, and I hope that is happening here as well. My final grievance with the current system is just the overall lack of information. Whenever there’s no transparency, I get worried. I have no idea what they put up in front of my house. I have no idea who to call or how to find out. What is it for? What does it do? Provide citizens with a little bit of information about what is actually being installed. This happens to be 20 feet from my bedroom window.

Richmond District Resident: There is so much equipment going in, and they have come in, honestly, under the cover of darkness. It has been a very strange experience to listen to these trucks in the rain at 10:00 at night installing the equipment. It just does not smell right. Everything that has been addressed today by those here in support of the legislation — I echo that, and I also think that the way this project has been handled has increased our sense that something is going on, trying to bypass citizens’ concerns over the safety and the aesthetic quality is very significant issue as well.

Supervisor Mar: I would like to thank everyone for speaking from the industry to the many residents, not just from my district, but for many others around the city. My office is going to work closely with Mr. Sanders and others in the city attorney’ s office to look at potential next steps, and I also wanted to say that from what supervisor Avalos’ office has expressed to us, there have been good conversations with the industry. The visuals that people put up today and last week are horrifying to me. The lack of public notice and lack of community input into the process is outrageous, and I do feel that the public right-of-way is a place that the federal government and state government have some say in, but we need stronger protections. This not only raises the issue of safety, but also aesthetics and whether these boxes on utility poles are necessary and desirable, but it is a process that should be a community one from the local level in my opinion, but I know we have to be careful and legally defensible in what we propose, but the legislation before us is reasonable, and I do think the two-year appeals process makes a lot of sense to me. I wish it could be a shorter appeal, and I do think the industry’ s concerns have been listened to. On the claim of discriminatory treatment, I think that is totally ridiculous. That was made by one of the industry representatives. I will just say that from so many residents in my district that have raised concerns over a long time, I hope there is much more we can do at the local level to protect the right of people to create more livable communities, and I do think that the proliferation of the antennas has been fast and furious, and it is really shocking at how they are being done, and I hope this legislation is a small step forward, as others said, to really protect our neighborhoods rights to have a say in beautifying our neighborhoods and to prevent ugly and dangerous boxes from being put up all over the place. Thank you.

Supervisor Chiu: I just want to express my thanks for all the stakeholders that have been working on this issue. Obviously, I think there are some larger pictures that we have got to deal with. I know, certainly in my district, there are similar issues that my neighbors have been concerned about. I want to express my support for this legislation, and I’ m happy to add myself as a co-sponsor to it.