Santa Paula: Preparing for 5G Wireless

By Sheryl Hamlin

Item 11 on the April 17, 2019 Santa Paula City Council was a new ordinance to allow 5G wireless towers on the public right-of-way.

Typically, the wireless equipment has been on private property, such as the new tower disguised as a cross on the church located at Steckel Road and Harvard Boulevard, which was reviewed at the October 24, 2017 Planning Commission meeting.

How Does the 5G Process Differ?

The new 5G ordinance only covers the public right-of-way. According to City Attorney John Cotti, the federal government and the state want to move fast on this potentially explosire market, so are requiring a ministerial permit (no citizen review) and a fast track (90 to 120 days). If the city cannot meet these tight time periods, then the permit is assumed to be approved.

CEQA will not be allowed on these 5G applications because they are not considered “projects” under CEQA standards.

Fees must not be exorbitant and must reflect the city’s cost.

Santa Paula is defining the process now to get ahead of future more stringent rules from the State of California or the FCC.

The Santa Paula ordinance also considers RF (radio frequency) strength and stipulates that each tower must be measured to ensure that the tower is emitting less than or equal to the allowed amount of RF.

Citizen and Council Comments

Citizen Aaron Dunkel said he felt a citizen planning commission should review the aesthetics.

Council Member Sobel said that the range is only 60’ for these small boxes so conceivably a provider could “pepper Main Street” with them.

Council Member Crosswhite reiterated that the city must make guidelines now before they are handed down to the cities.

Council approved the first of the three new ordinances with the other two to be flushed out at a future meeting.

Federal Communication Commission

The FCC is fast tracking 5G. The website for the FCC 5G can be seen here. They are auctioning 5G spectrum too and the bidders are shown on this website.

Simi Valley Concerned Citizens

At a recent Simi Valley council meeting, many citizens spoke on the health issues of 5G. Read about that meeting here.

Health Concerns

5G carries with it health risks due to its ultra high frequency signal and the huge number of boxes required to carry the massive amounts of anticipated data for things like autonomous driving cars. In this article are pictures and a discussion of health issues.

Who Benefits?

Car makers who are providing autonomous cars, makers of devices connected to the Internet (IoT) called the Internet of Things. CNN Business has this forecast.

Apple Computers and its new iPhone, Qualcomm chip maker, and Verizon 5G provider are some of the vendors who will benefit as this technology becomes ubiquitous.

To watch the video, click here.

For more information on author click sherylhamlin dot com

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