Let me know when we're live.
Start recording. Oh, thank you. Okay, we're live.
Okay,
I would like to call this meeting of the Bedford Planning Board to order.
Tonight's meeting has been convened in accordance with the governor's March 13, 2020 executive order 202.2, which suspends certain provisions of the open meetings law to allow a municipal board to convene a meeting via video conferencing.
in accordance with the executive order the public has been provided with the
ability to view tonight's meeting via video conference or to participate by
telephone and the transcript will be provided at a later date. I'm going to do
a roll call of the board members to make sure there's a quorum. Is Mr.
Tierney here? I'm here. Mr. Cattoliano. Here. Dr. Lewis. He's joining right now.
Okay, let's wait a moment for Dr. Lewis to join.
There she is. Dr. Lewis, would you please tell us
you are present?
Dr. Lewis? Sorry, I've been muted. I am here. Just heard you now. Okay. And the
chair is also present. We do, in fact, have a quorum tonight. Madam Secretary, has the meeting
been properly noticed. Yes it has. So I have confirmed with the secretary that this meeting
has been duly noticed. We have fulfilled our legal notice requirements by posting notice on the town's
home page of its website and providing it to the appropriate news outlets. A link has also been
provided so that the public can view the meeting and I'm advised that that link is active and
working. Furthermore a webcast of the meeting is available on the town's website and a video
and transcript of this meeting will be available. We ask that all members of the public mute
themselves at this time until they are directed to speak so that there will be no interference
during the meeting. Before we actually start with the business of this meeting, I have
a very sad announcement to make. Our town council, Joel Sacks, passed away suddenly
after a short illness yesterday, on behalf of the board, I, I'm sorry, I offer our condolences
to Joel's wife and family. We mourn the loss of a colleague, but more than that, we mourn
the loss of a friend and even a mentor. Joel was smart, caring, ethical, and very, very
kind. His pain leaves a hole in our hearts. Thank you for your time.
I'd like to now begin
the meeting. Excuse me. With the first item on our agenda, which is a public hearing,
the owner applicant is Jamie and Judith Diamond. It is an application for preliminary subdivision
approval. Is there somebody here to speak for the applicant?
Yes, Charles Mornavana for the applicant. And with me tonight is also Rich Williams from
Insight and Steering.
Thank you.
And it's just someone who's been before the Board a lot. I echo your sentiments exactly
about Joel. It is a great loss and thank you for the great comments. This is a summary
a subdivision application, but in the form of a lot line adjustment, and if I could have
Ritz put the map up on the board, we'll walk you through it. It's a situation where
the diamonds are the owners of a parcel of property. It consists of 33.803 acres. And
is there a way, Ritz, to blow that up a little bit so we can see that a lot line
What's important to understand about this application, it's an exchange, as I pointed
out.
The diamonds are acquiring parcel X as shown on that plan from their neighbors, the mains,
and they are transferring the mains parcel Y. So it is almost an exact swap.
I think the difference was around 1,400 square feet.
The purpose of that was to ensure that we didn't create any non-conformities on
the main parcel.
and the purpose of line adjustment as you can see if you can see within the area of parcel X
there is already an existing access from the private road to the diamond parcel where you see
that there's a building down there this has been in effect for years and I think originally it may
have been that they thought that they own the property but in fact it is owned by the mains so
this is to effectuate an actual transfer of that property from the mains to the diamonds
And
is that it?
That's it.
I'm not saying I wish there was more, but that's it.
Any questions or comments from members of the board?
Questions or comments from members of the audience?
If you may unmute yourself to make a comment.
Or ask a question.
This does not seem to be an overly controversial issue.
It seems quite straightforward.
Mr. Osterman, is there anything that you have to add about it? Anything we're overlooking?
No, this little property swap doesn't really create anything that we're concerned with.
There's no problem with it cutting off an access that might otherwise exist or anything like that as far as I can.
No, it's actually the reverse. It's solidifying an existing access point.
Which is a positive.
If this seems extraordinarily simple to me, would any of the board members entertain a motion?
Motion to approve.
Well, before we do that, could I have a motion to adjourn the two?
Oh, motion to adjourn the public hearing.
To end the public hearing.
Motion to end the public hearing.
Close the public hearing, but that's my fault.
that's okay I was just echoing and I could I have a second second second okay
we have a motion a second is there any discussion all in favor of ending the
public hearing I'll take the role dr. Lewis aye mr. Catoleado aye mr. Tierney
aye and the chair votes aye so the public hearing is closed we'd like to
see as you have done before a lot of my adjustments, we could move right to final approval if that
would be possible.
I don't see a reason why not in this particular case. There were no issues raised in the public
hearing and we have no conditions on it. Mr. Osterman, do you see any reason not to
move to a...
No, you have the authority to do that. You're basically waiving the second hearing.
Yeah. I think Dr. Lewis, did you do the motion to approve with no conditions?
Right. So would you like to amend that to approve both preliminary and final?
Preliminary and final, yes. I would like to amend it. Thank you.
In a second.
Madam Chair, before we – can you hear me okay?
Yes. Yes, I can hear you, Mr. Gordon.
I'm just checking with the director of planning.
Is there, does there need to be a determination under secret before there will be that we do it in a different order.
So there is, there is a motion and a second on the floor.
Let's table that and turn to the environmental clearance form.
They have declared that it is a type two or exempt action. Could I have a motion.
So moved. Second. Okay. Is there any further discussion of it being a type 2 or exempt action?
Then I'm going to call the roll. Dr. Lewis. Aye. Mr. Cattolietto.
Mr. Cattolietto, you have to unmute yourself.
Aye. Mr. Tierney. Aye. And the chair also votes aye. It is a type 2 or exempt action moving back to the original
item on the floor. Is there any further discussion?
I'm going to call the roll. Dr. Lewis?
Aye.
Mr. Cattolietto?
Aye.
Mr. Tierney?
Aye.
And the Chair also votes aye. You have it in what may be one of the fastest subdivision
approvals we've ever given.
Thank you very much, everyone, and good night and we'll be safe.
Take care.
All right.
Good night.
The next item on our agenda is a discussion of Indian Hill Road.
We're here tonight to hear a presentation from Gunniston Consultants on the Alternative
of Verizon Public Utility Wireless Communication Facility.
Venison is going to do a presentation on a possible alternative approach to providing
self-service in the village of Bedford, in the Bedford Village area.
Before we begin that, I did want to offer a clarification on behalf of the Planning
Board because in a number of newspaper articles and the like, it's been said that we were
or implied, I'm not sure which is the proper word, that we were suggesting that one single
tower in the could, in fact, provide service for the entire town of Bedford.
There was some miscommunication here that, logically, we could never have said that
because there is already more than one large tower in the town of Bedford.
We recently approved, have begun the site discussions for one in Bedford Hills near
Haynes Road near the Bedford Memorial Park in the former sewage treatment plant area.
And there are others in the town as well. I think the confusion came from an argument that we've
made that if we were to, as everybody realizes, this began
with a proposal for a tower at Hickory Lane in the Bedford
Village area, the board has had some concerns about the Hickory
Lane one, particularly what it covered and where.
As an alternative, Verizon suggested another location
at Stone Hill. The problem that we have with both of those, or one of the problems that we have
with both of those, is that in both cases, Bedford Village, as I think most people realize,
is not well covered by cell service. Things are far spotter in Bedford Village than in either
the Katona or Bedford Hills parts of Bedford. And either one of those two existing towers
hours would leave still a significant gap, which leaves the possibility of another second
tower coming in at a later date to fill that gap that would be left.
It's been proposed, and this is what we are talking about and still very much at the
beginning of talking about, it's been proposed that a location on the edge of Indian Hill
Park might actually cover enough of that considerably more than either the Hickory Lane proposal
or the Stone Hill proposal, and cover enough that there would be no significant gap left,
although there would still, of course, be small gaps left.
And that's why we're considering it that it might mean that we only need one large
tower in the Bedford Village area.
But we were never talking about the entire town of Bedford when we talked about that.
So I just wanted to clarify that because there seems to be some misunderstanding about it.
That said, the friends of Indian Hill Park have gone to great efforts, and I applaud
them for this in hiring Gunnison consultants to try to give us some alternative approaches
to this.
And we have given them this forum to make their presentations.
We have a large crowd tonight.
The purpose of this meeting is for all of us to see the presentation.
They have requested that the presentation go forth uninterrupted,
and I think that's a very good idea.
So there will be no questions from the planning board or anyone else during the presentation.
And I'll ask my fellow members to not interrupt the speakers.
We are not going to entertain questions from the public for this meeting.
If you have questions as we go through the discussion, what I would urge you to do is
to put them into the chat or to email them to Kim Kowalski.
They are not going to be handled tonight.
We will pass on the ones that are relevant to Gunnarsson to Gunnarsson, the ones that
are relevant to us, we will look at.
So I do want to point out to you, because sometimes things get a little wild and woolly
in the chats for things like this, it can be a little bit like social media, to keep
in mind that the chat in this case is going to become part of the official record
of the town, subject to foilability and that sort of thing, and one might want to
keep a civil tone in what one puts there because chances are you're
Your name will be connected to it as well. So, we welcome questions. We also welcome civility
along the way. With that said, I'd like – oh, the other thing I'm going to mention is that
we are, in fact, going to silence the microphones during the talk and then eventually release
the microphones of the planning board and our consultants so that we can ask questions
at the end of the talk after the folks from Gunnison have completed their presentation.
I would ask all of us to watch this with an open mind. We will certainly watch it
with an open mind. And I hope that everyone will pay close attention to everything that
is said tonight. Thank you very much. And I'd like to turn it over to the folks from
Gunnerson. I saw Brian Gunnerson's name here. I did not think he was going to be doing the
presentation himself, so I'm a little bit at a loss for who from Gunnerson is going
to be doing the presentation.
Brett Realio are going to be doing it. Okay. And you,
I believe have been unmuted, so.
Well, I have to work on the mute, and I want to just do something before we start so I
don't mute everybody and then have to figure out.
So give me a second here.
Okay.
We will.
This is a complicated situation for all of us, so bear with us while our Secretary
gets the system working.
We've – Brett, are you with us?
I am. Can you hear me?
I can. And here's – I can hear you, right?
Yep.
Okay, so that's all who we have unmuted at the moment.
I think Ella's had a introductory statement also.
Actually, we had spoken to Mr. Cousins and made it clear that we were not allowing any members of the public to speak.
Okay.
If you need anything from our town attorney about that, we can have Mr. Gordon unmuted as well to discuss it, but I believe that.
Not at all.
Thank you.
That's perfectly fine.
Okay, so right now we just have Brett and Deirdre were unmuted.
Okay.
I'm going to keep you can mute me for that matter.
All right.
So jumping in, we did want to thank the town for their feedback. We wanted to thank the planning board also for their willingness to allow us to make this presentation.
We wanted to thank the chair especially for suggesting that as opposed to just presenting problems that the Indian Hill Park Conservancy presents solutions.
And that's the reason we're here right now.
I was able to view the last meeting when the 68 Stonehill Road crane test was reviewed.
I must say that we were impressed at the chair's time that she took to walk through all of the photos and listen to the feedback from the community.
It seems like the town is really taking a holistic approach to this cellular coverage solution.
We've also noticed the wireless working group put a lot of research into coverage on both the 911 and the cellular.
And it really does look like the town is taking a holistic approach, as I mentioned.
Hopping in a little bit to what it is that we were asked to do.
The goals of our involvement were to, number one, make sure that coverage is available.
And I'm assuming everyone can see my screen.
Hopefully, if you're not, please give me a head shake to the negative.
But what we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that coverage is available.
It's critical to have coverage to the elementary school, to the downtown corridor,
and to make sure that the emergency responders have coverage that they need in doing their jobs.
The infrastructure that we'll be discussing today is in use right now,
including in places like Medina, Washington.
And Medina coincidentally is Bill Gates' neighborhood.
This is newer technology. It is in use. It is available.
It's also important to understand that small sites do not equal small cells.
There's a large misunderstanding among the general population of the United States right now
that there are smaller sites that are not small cells and there are small sites that are small cells.
And we'll cover that a little bit more in depth as we get into this.
What we're looking at is planned targeted coverage.
How do we cover the areas? How do we fill the gaps?
And also making sure that we understand that should a large single tower be built or a large tower solution be looked at,
building a tower does not guarantee co-location. A little bit more on that one as well.
And as the chair mentioned, one tower will not solve the coverage issues in Bedford.
It will require a multi-site solution.
A little bit on Gunnerson Consulting's background. We work on wireless sites all across the United States.
We've worked in some of the most pristine areas. We understand the need for restrictive zoning.
We also have experience that allows us to provide alternative solutions.
Another unique piece in our background is we do not provide solutions or we do not provide services to the wireless carriers,
which keeps us free from any conflicts of interest that may taint our solutions or our recommendations.
When it comes to 911 type services, we have built 911 networks.
We are designing 911 networks.
We understand how the network goes together.
We work with our customers on all aspects of that network,
whether it be administration, legal, down to the end users
who actually use the system.
Back to the presentation at hand.
The scope of work that we were asked to put forth
is not to identify specific locations,
not to build a coverage model, but to identify if alternatives are available.
We are not making any recommendations as to specific locations in this.
The number one priority for us that we were tasked with is to evaluate if a 150 foot,
which could become a 170 foot tower in Indian Hill Park, could provide the town of Bedford with comprehensive cell coverage.
The number two priority was to identify if other structures could provide similar or better coverage as well as 9-1-1 communication coverage to the Bedford Village area.
What we found is that there is no single site solution, again, as has been mentioned already, but that multiple solutions or multiple tower sites would be required
And that it would be up to the wireless carriers ultimately to provide locations for each of their individual networks.
And each wireless carrier has different coverage needs.
So a single tower that may be built does not necessarily solve that solution.
It's been verified by Verizon in their own submission documents that additional towers would be needed, especially at the 68 Stonehill Road.
And as any proposed single tower will not provide the comprehensive coverage that's desired,
we recommend taking a more holistic approach, looking at the coverage that is desired,
and then building the comprehensive model before we build any single solution.
What we found is that by utilizing a multiple different types of structures,
instead of just a single type of structure, coverage can be provided to the town.
And also hitting the elementary school, providing the E911 coverage that's needed,
using the requirements that are already in the zoning code to use innovative camouflaging techniques
and minimally invasive structures gets us there.
A little bit on that. So again, reminding people that cell towers, having a cell tower does not necessarily mean
you will have cell service. By that we mean you may have a Verizon tower, but that doesn't mean AT&T will go there.
There's multiple wireless carriers.
Small towers do not equal small cells because there's differing technology that's in there.
So what's on your screen right now is modeled coverage for Verizon Wireless's network.
And just for reference, you've got the town down here with the building.
You've got the school here, Indian Hill Parks up in this area.
And what we see is, yes, coverage exists, but it's spotty.
And there's targeted areas where coverage could be built in.
Towers are only one means to do that. In fact, the communications towers are quite old when they date back to the 1800s.
The current trend is not to build large towers in areas that are populated, it's to fill in the coverage.
So, for example, if you have a gap in town and you want to build a tower, you can target that specific area and fill it in
with a utility pole or a smaller structure versus something else, and the same would hold true in outlying areas.
When you look at why a taller tower may not be better than a small tower, here's a specific example.
If you build a 150-foot tower in Indian Hill Park and you're trying to reach the elementary school, there's a hill here off Seminary Road.
And because radio frequencies work largely offline of site, you're not able to get across the hill,
and as you move down the tower should co-locations occur, the ability to reach the school is even further diminished.
Hopping over to, we mentioned earlier, Medina, Washington.
And Medina is Bill Gates' neighborhood.
Jeff Bezos also lives in that neighborhood.
It's similar to the Bedford Village area,
because the topography is very diverse.
You have rolling hills.
And in this particular area, just for reference,
Bill Gates' house is kind of down in here,
and Jeff Bezos lives kind of down in here.
What you find is they're using lower-rise structures.
You have utility poles.
You have light poles, you have standpipes, they're using existing water tanks and even low-rise rooftops from Verizon.
The way those structures actually look when you get down to a granular level, you have these type of low-rise standpipes,
and you'll see them, you'll see different versions of these as flagpoles, but these are a much smaller type setup.
Water towers that are existing have been used, and these are surrounded by trees, so the aesthetic impact is minimized.
several different utility poles, another light pole here that has the cellular integrated on the top,
and then even this pole happens to be a Verizon cell tower that exists,
and this one has been in place since about 1999, if memory serves.
So going back to the model of smaller is not necessarily small cell.
When looking at different small cell networks, they can be poorly implemented as well
and sometimes not feasible.
This particular site comes from Princeton, New Jersey, where they have different towers surrounding the area.
But instead of coming in with a holistic approach, T-Mobile specifically has come in and built a bunch of small cells in less than a one mile radius,
which creates a bit more of a blight than what we would want.
What we would prefer to see as a holistic approach, again, planning coverage in advance so that when you're building out the network,
you know where you're targeting and you know what you need, so it's not a piecemeal approach.
When looking at the existing wireless zoning code for the town of Bedford, we find some good things.
The code already requires that you utilize existing structures where possible.
You minimize the adverse visual and aesthetic impacts and use innovative camouflage techniques.
Historically in the wireless industry, we do see a model of building large wireless towers at the maximum height possible as opposed to the minimum height possible
and then hoping that you have additional carriers coming in and co-locating below there.
What is possible as well, though, is building towers at a lower elevation
and potentially extending that tower if a co-locator comes in.
That fits the need of building at the minimum height possible
and then working out if you get the opportunity to co-locate.
One of the other pieces is to minimize the visual intrusion
And keeping things in a model where they're either closer to the tree line or they're camouflaged or using existing structures usually fits that bill.
And building no higher than the minimum height necessary.
There's a couple of pieces of wire of legislation out there at the federal and state level that allow for streamlined processes to extend towers so that you don't need to build large towers.
The downside of that is if you have a 150-foot tower with no co-locators,
then you have a tower that is extended beyond the absolute need,
and it seems to miss the intention of the zoning code.
It also creates a double argument.
For example, Verizon's contractor C-squared presented a argument
that the 150-foot is the bare minimum height that they need.
The challenge with that is if it's at 150 feet and that's the bare minimum height,
other wireless carriers would not want to take a diminished position to go any lower on the pole.
Of also importance, when you're looking at the minimum height necessary, the minimum height has
a lot to do with the design of the network and the coverage desired. If you go in planning for
lower structures and more structures, you're able to design the network at a lower elevation
versus trying to cover something like a sprinkler where you're shooting out as far as possible.
The other pieces, blending into the surrounding environment and minimizing the aesthetic impact are a lot easier with the smaller structures.
And we were happy to find that the Bedford Code already anticipates the use of utility structures and structures within the right-of-way to provide wireless communications services.
When you look at the model of if you build it, will they come, kind of that field of dreams thing, what we found is that's not always the case.
These are statistics taken from the most recent reports available
from the three largest tower companies in the United States,
keeping in mind that there are four national wireless carriers
and there are a number of smaller entities,
whether they're wireless Internet service providers, 9-1-1 services,
or others that would go on a tower.
The average tenant per tower in Crown Castle's portfolio is 2.1.
American Tower sits at 1.9, SBA sits at 1.8,
averaging to less than two tenants per tower.
Another interesting bit comes from a Morningstar's analyst report where Crown Castle had stated that historically it has taken about 10 years to add a tenant to a tower.
So just building a tower hoping co-location comes is not necessarily a good model because it generally does not happen across the board.
to the towers that are currently proposed in the town of Bedford. We're aware of three current proposals.
There is Indian Hill Park with 150 foot tower, also at 68 Stone Hill Road, 150 foot tower,
and 91 Hickory Lane has been revised from 150 to 115. Each of these towers do provide distinct cellular coverage,
but as you'll also see, there are some gaps. Before we get into that though, talking about the 911 coverage,
there is a
Report put together on behalf of the wireless working group by federal engineering talking
about the creation of a tower at Indian Hill Park as well as several other towers surrounding
the town. And what we'd recommend is before we look at building new towers, we would recommend
looking at existing structures, existing communication structures and existing structures that may
provide advanced or enhanced coverage. So just taking a quick look at this. And again,
These are all high-level views. This is not in-depth engineering, but the current 911 network uses a tower at Katona Park, Mount Kisco, Gard Hill, and a utility pole off of Indian Hills Road.
The coverage that you see in this lighter green would be your excellent coverage. This darker green would be your not as great of coverage than less coverage, of course, in blue.
So what we would recommend doing is look first to existing towers.
And in fact, the Federal Engineering Report does talk about utilizing a tower out here.
But there's multiple towers or structures, for example, a water tower in this area,
that could be utilized to add coverage.
And you'll have to forgive the lack of CGI that I use,
but when you look at the ability to cover it, if you were to look at the inside towers location
And put 911 on there, the enhancement to the coverage would look something like this.
If you look at the site above the high school, you could get enhanced coverage.
It looks something like that.
And if you use this water tower up here, you could enhance the cellular coverage even further.
So again, not recommending any specific site, but recommending the use of alternate structures
or existing structures to create the solution seems to make more sense before creating additional towers.
As an additional solution, FirstNet is a network that was put together at the federal level.
It's currently being managed and run and operated by AT&T.
The costs for the infrastructure are borne by AT&T and the federal government,
and it provides a commercial grade communication system that the emergency service providers can't integrate into their network.
When we go back into commercial cellular,
There's a few things you'll see consistent throughout these slides.
So I want to touch on them briefly before we get too far into it.
When we're looking at the existing coverage, the coverage that you see here in the green and blue.
And let me preface this by saying I've been accused of being colorblind.
So I will say this is green and this is blue.
And if you disagree with me, that's okay.
The coverage that you'll see here, green is strong reception, blue is fair reception.
The dots are actual drive test dots that were performed using equipment that measures the wireless signals.
This is based on Verizon Wireless's network, so AT&T and T-Mobile may have slightly different coverage patterns.
But the green dots that you see here would be good coverage.
The yellow dots that you see would be fair reception, and the red dots would be very poor reception or drop calls.
For reference, and again, this will be consistent across these slides,
The little building here represents the Bedford Village Town area.
The schoolhouse, of course, represents the elementary school.
So as we get into looking at the different coverage, we're going to start with the proposed tower at Indian Hill Park should Verizon locate on that tower.
And what we would expect from a 150-foot tower, the estimated RF proposal would be what you see here.
And we outlined the good coverage or the basic coverage in red.
When we overlay that with Verizon's current network, you see that it does enhance the
coverage that Verizon currently has, but it does leave some significant gaps where coverage
would need to be enhanced by either another tower or some other solution.
Important to understand also is frequency matters.
When we look at the frequency that – and let me actually back step briefly by saying
the coverage that we're showing here from Verizon comes from Verizon's own report
that was put together by C-squared their engineering firm. So the modeling that we saw, they were
using something in the 700 megahertz band. And it's important to understand the frequency
doesn't matter because the lower the frequency, the farther the signal carries. So you can see
that Verizon Wireless does operate in the 700 megahertz band, but they also operate all the
way up into the 19 and 2100 frequency band. The higher the frequency you go, the faster
the data typically is carried, but the shorter distance the signal carries.
So how that works is this is looking at the propagation in the 850 MHz range
versus the 1900 MHz range broadcasting from Indian Hills Park over to the elementary school.
And again, carrying through the conventions that we talked about before,
the green being the good coverage, the blue being fair.
At 850 MHz, you can see the elementary school,
And it kind of cuts halfway through being decent coverage and great coverage.
When you go up to 1900 megahertz, the coverage drops off.
So the modeling that you'll see here is built on the 850 megahertz models.
However, it's important to understand that additional coverage will be necessary,
or you'll have to model it differently when you're looking for the best coverage.
The multi-site solution allows for that because you can target and surgically insert the towers where you need to.
To create a tower at Indian Hill Park out of the three proposals, this would be the highest impact of the three.
Largely because you have to create a road that needs to be created down this narrow strip of land.
Back up in here and then over to the tower, we anticipate it would have to be about a half mile long.
The tower itself would create a significant impact.
The tower would soar about 100 feet above the tree line, maybe 80 feet above the tree line.
Power and fiber would need to be installed underground all the way down that area.
It's currently densely treed.
There's some talk about the destruction of animal habitat.
We also estimate this would be the longest time to market or the most difficult site to zone
or the longest time frame to get zoned due to some of the concerns that are there.
When building a new tower, this is a construction build from a recent tower site and a road must be created.
You have to go in and remove any of the obstructions that are in the way.
Utilities have to be put underground. Debris has to be hauled out.
Usually the site has to be leveled because it's on a hillside.
And then the foundation needs to be board or dug or however that's going to be created.
Once that's done, a reinforced steel basket gets put in the ground.
the concrete gets poured and then the tower is stacked and finally the antennas are placed on
what in this case is to be a faux pine tree and usually they'll
try to disguise the antennas in some way so that it somewhat matches the surrounding
area. From this site we ran a
review, this is called a reverse view shed and what it shows is
all of the areas surrounding the tower from which the tower would be able to be seen
and it's not a surprise that it's a fairly large
area. Something we found that was rather interesting is if you can see right in this area, that
appears to be the other monopine that's out in the pound ridge area. So you can tell it
definitely is visible from quite a distance.
Switching gears to the proposal at 68 Stonehill Road. This is the estimated RF propagation
or the coverage you would get from a tower at 68 Stonehill Road. And if we overlay
on the current Verizon coverage.
This is about what we would expect to see,
where it definitely fills in the central area,
but it doesn't even appear to get to the elementary school or the town.
So it still leaves significant gaps.
Some side notes on how that works is it is the closest to the right-of-way.
We expect that the power and internet are already in the road,
so it would take less to get this one up and running than the others.
The site does not, though, intend to really provide coverage to the town
or to the elementary school.
You'll see this, this may be a little foreshadowing,
but it doesn't also appear to gain any significant coverage
over using utility pole in the right-of-way
directly adjacent to that property.
Moving on to 91 Hickory Lane.
This would be the anticipated coverage that we'd get
from 91 Hickory Lane.
And again, you've got the green being the best coverage
and the blue being the fair coverage.
You can see that it does get to the town.
It gets to the school, but not as good as you would hope, but then it leaves significant gaps.
Overlaying that on the current Verizon network, it gives you a better indication for where the coverage gaps would be.
Again, remembering that this is the drive test data, and it would still leave some significant holes in the town.
91 Hickory Lane would be the second lowest impact site behind 68 Stonehill Road to create.
It does provide the most overall coverage, but it provides it more inconsistent coverage,
and that would absolutely require additional coverage solutions,
whether they be towers or low rise type solutions.
And it appears also to completely miss Indian Hill Park.
So when we get into talking about alternative sites, there's a few things that we look at.
Number one, well, let me back up.
Number one, it is important to remember that these are not specific site solutions.
We're not recommending putting any pins in the map as there may be.
We're looking at alternative types and models that could work.
So the locations that we'll reference here are not a reference to a specific recommendation.
Instead, they are something that shows a model of something that can work and has worked in other locations.
When we look at where the industry is and where it has been,
when this information, by the way, comes from CITA, that's a wireless industry group,
When Verizon filed their initial application in 2017,
the wireless industry was still primarily using cell towers
to provide their commercial wireless service.
Over the last few years, though, the use of smaller structures,
whether they be small cells, DAS networks are just low-rise structures,
the use of the smaller structures has exponentially improved.
There's been a shift in the technology that doesn't necessarily reflect
the same infrastructure that was being used by Verizon when they filed the application.
We have found that utility poles generally can be deployed quicker because they're already in the right of way.
They're usually already streamlined processes in place, whether they be from the federal or state or local levels,
to either use the existing pole or replace the existing pole with something that will work for the wireless providers.
They offer significant economic advantages as well.
For example, in running a couple of different models using costs that are familiar to the industry, the cost of a single tower over a 20-year period when you add in the construction cost and there are more significant costs there, maintenance and rent, you could pay for five to nine utility pull sites.
So, and when you add that to the speed to market that the wireless carriers or even the 911 groups can utilize, it provides significant advantages.
Looking now at specific examples or representative examples of non-tower alternatives.
Here are a couple of examples that we used. Again, not using specific sites.
These are simply illustrations. The rooftop of the Bedford Playhouse was looked at,
a 80-foot pole on the water tank property, and then 50-foot utility poles at Stonehill Road,
Long Ridge Road, Old Post Road, and Indian Hill Road.
And what we found are the coverage is able to be provided with utility poles consistent across the town in a better manner than what we're seeing from the towers.
So looking specifically at the Bedford Playhouse, if you were to add an antenna to the Bedford Playhouse, we would expect this outlined area to be the coverage that would be provided.
Overlaying that on Verizon's network, you see you pick up a lot of different coverage, including the town area.
You pick up this – this is Indian Hill Road up here and, of course, Seminary Road.
And while there are still gaps, we anticipate those, and that is afforded by the multi-site solution.
The way that would look is you would put the antennas on top of the rooftop.
It would be screened so that the antennas are not visible from the ground.
Multiple wireless carriers could be served from a single site,
and 911 could also be added to this location.
I did note in some of the discussions that 911 actually talked about putting their equipment on top of the firehouse as well.
So there's a lot of different options to do this.
Generally rooftop sites have power and internet to the street, so there's limited disruption in the creation of those sites.
Looking at a utility pole site, and this would be a site that would be on,
my apologies for that noise,
at 668 Stonehill Road directly adjacent from the proposed tower at 68 Stonehill Road.
We're finding that the coverage is not exact, but it is similar.
It uses a lower height pole than what is being proposed as the tree or the tower,
and either structure will not be a single site solution,
so we need to look at the most minimally intrusive site for that location.
The coverage that you see from the utility pole versus the tower is shown here.
The blue would be the 150-foot pole.
This orangeish-yellow would be the utility pole.
Overlaying the utility pole on the current Verizon coverage,
you see you pick up some significant areas with the roadways and in the town area.
The town area is the same where you still need additional coverage there,
but you do pick up some additional modeling.
Putting that side-by-side with the proposed Verizon tower, and this is what Verizon sees as their modeled coverage,
and this is what a 50-foot utility pole would cover, the main difference is going to be signal strength.
You have the excellent, the five bars here, and probably your four or three or four bars in this area.
And with the 50-foot utility pole, the signal strength is apparently one of the predominant differences.
So the utility pole is still providing coverage and anticipating a multi-site solution.
You're still able to meet the goals.
What this looks like from an aerial view, utility pole versus where the tower would be.
The tower is up in this area.
This one is right on the road.
There's minimal disruptions because utility structures are already existing.
911 can use the same type of a setup by using utility poles and power and internet
because utilities are already above ground in that area.
they exist. The power is there, the fiber is there, and the components to get that site
on air already exist, and it can be done much quicker.
A slightly different type of approach
would be to put an 80-foot pole on the water tower.
Water tower property. And this is the water tower above town. Should a 80 foot pole be used, this is what we would expect the coverage to be from that location.
Overlaying that into the existing Verizon network, we took a little different color scheme here where the magenta is the fill-in areas.
And you can see you pick up a significant amount of coverage that would be provided by using that structure.
And again, it's an 80-foot pole set back by the water tank, so there's limited visibility from anyone on main thoroughfares.
The property is already a non-residential type use and it's already owned by the city, so the visual intrusion is minimized.
The construction is minimized because it's an 80-foot pole versus a large cell tower, and power and fiber are readily available.
Looking at a infill type coverage or a coverage, a gap coverage would be using a utility pole on Long Ridge Road.
And in this particular case, it's a 50-foot utility pole.
This would be the expected coverage if we were to place a utility pole at this location.
By the way, all of these locations do exist, but again, these are just modeled.
If we overlay this on Verizon's network, this would be the expected difference.
So you're picking up the town. You're picking up some significant roadways and affording yourself additional coverage with minimal visual intrusion.
The benefits here, the points here are similar to all of the others. It's located in the existing right-of-way.
It provides 911 coverage should that be desired and should that be modeled, and the utilities already exist in the location.
The other one that we looked at was how would utility poles look if utility poles were used versus Indian Hill Park?
Indian Hill Park is unique in that there already are some existing locations.
For example, here's what we looked at.
So Indian Hill Park here is modeled in red, the coverage that would be provided by the park.
When I say there's already an existing structure, 9-1-1 currently uses a utility pole off Indian Hill Road
and the anticipated coverage for that would be shown in green.
And there's a road or a pole down here on Long Ridge Road just off of Seminary Road
that would anticipate to be covered or to provide the coverage shown in blue.
So when we modeled this we decided to use the pole off of Old Post Road which is by the way Route 121 for those who aren't familiar with that road.
The coverage that would be anticipated to be gained for that location is shown in blue.
And you can see that picks up a lot of the uncovered areas, a lot of the areas that were previously not having coverage and that were shown in red or picked up.
So the coverage there is very similar to what you would get using a 50 foot pole versus a 150 foot tower.
One of the largest reasons for that is the differences in topography.
This is the slide or the topography that you saw earlier on where you have the tower but you have the ridge line here.
This is the topography going from the old post road to the elementary school.
And as you can see, there's no null there.
It's direct line of sight.
Even a lower structure is able to provide much better coverage,
because it can, as you would say in the RF world, see the tower directly.
And again, with the utility pole in this situation, it's already existing.
It's in the right of way.
It's screened by surrounding vegetation so that it's minimally visibly intrusive.
Now, the way that this works is we have to put all of these pieces together.
We don't expect a single utility pole site or a single low-impact site to create the solution that we're looking for
So as an example, here's what we put together
And a picture will pop up there in a second
But I didn't want everyone to be too distracted by the picture before we talk about how we get there
So if we use a 80 the 80 foot pole at the water tank that we talked about
There's also the transmission line easement across or above town if you put a hundred foot utility pole
or if you use a 100-foot antenna in the transmission line easement
and you combine 50-foot utility poles from Long Ridge Road and Pound Ridge Road,
you could expect coverage to look something like this when you overlay it on Verizon's current network.
And as you can see, you get a fairly consistent coverage throughout town
that rivals anything that a tower would provide.
Moving forward, the question comes up of,
okay, if you're going to use multiple utility sites or multiple sites,
How does that look? Are we going to have towers all over the place?
And what we look at is if we have four wireless carriers and emergency services are planning on adding new sites,
the model before was done using four wireless sites per wireless carrier,
and EMS plans on adding based on the working groups report eight new sites.
So if all of these numbers come together, that would be a total of 24 poles that would be needed.
Now, just to give a little bit of context to that, I looked at an area between Seminary
Hill Road and to just up past Indian Hill Road about a mile and a half, and this was
on Route 21, and I counted 21 poles, just over 20 poles in that one and a half mile
area.
So there's not a shortage of utility poles, and if the coverage is planned accurately
and appropriately, it's not an excessive number.
giving you a little different view of how the topography looks in the different areas.
Between 68 Stonehill Road and the Utility Road, and this is a topographical map,
you can see the different layouts that we have here and why some of these sites work out better
as far as being able to see different sites in different areas and provide the coverage.
Other factors, I won't belabor some of these slides that are a little bit technical just in the interest of time.
Some of the other factors that we look at when we're looking at different sites,
the elevation of the ground matters, the pole and the tower height matters,
the overall height from the top of the antennas, the trees,
the square mileage that's covered by the propagation, by the radios that are broadcasting,
the impact of the roads that need to be covered,
any environmental concerns that may exist and the availability of Internet,
Of course, it's critical because you've got to get that cellular connection back to the network somehow.
We also look at specific comments like if they struggle to reach a target area or if the coverage is not being provided that's necessary.
Those are all important facts to consider when building any tower, but especially when you're building a lower site solution or a lower elevation site.
So we also look at those with the lower sites and then we look at similar factors.
And these are some of the data points that we discussed and we looked at when we were building this model.
Another very important thing to keep in mind that I did touch on earlier is we've been talking about Verizon's network.
AT&T and T-Mobile currently have networks that exist in the town area.
Their coverage needs will be different than what Verizon's is.
And as DISH network builds out their nationwide network, their coverage model will be different also.
So any tower that's built would be built based on assumptions of one carrier.
And unless all of the carriers are brought together in a format where they're able to discuss their ultimate needs,
it's difficult to plan a single tower or any large tower site that will become a multiple carrier solution simply because the coverage models differ.
So that's the bulk of the presentation on the sites that we're talking about, but we did want to give some context to different sites that are available.
So this is a view of different utility pull sites that we've seen all the way from the smaller light pulls to varying different types of utility structures.
And then even to the flag pull type or even stand pipe solutions, if sometimes they take the flag off and just use that as a stand pipe.
This is a newer style pipe where they've got the venting in it that allows for the ARUs to be cooled and the radio equipment to stay cooled.
This site here would be a transmission line set up.
Sometimes they will mount the antennas directly on the transmission lines, other times they'll build a tower immediately adjacent to it.
But the visual impact is already there, and adding antennas to it is, again, minimally intrusive.
Different types of utility pole structures that are currently in use, you'll see them from some that are within the tree line to some that are above the tree line.
You'll see these glue lamp poles, they're laminated poles that allow for higher elevations and additional strength to using your standard round wood utility poles.
The other types that are currently in use, this is a utility pole with a 911 antenna on top of it.
Again, this is another flag pole. This is a 65 foot flag pole. This was a 35 foot utility pole, by the way.
This is a two-story rooftop. These are two low-rise standpipes that I don't have exact heights on, but you can see that they're probably about 20 to 25 feet.
For this one, I want to say this one's about 35 feet, and this is a utility pole with DAS antennas that is clearly within the tree height that is providing coverage to a targeted area.
Understanding if these will work in Bedford. When we did our research, and it's important to keep in mind that low-rise structures are not required to be logged in most databases.
So these numbers will be grossly underreported generally. But we did find on the cellular range less than 50 feet of elevation.
They're already 11 in use within 50 miles, 51 to 100 feet.
There were 83 that we were able to find, and then you go up from there.
Public entities are also using these.
These would be EMS or public works type situations.
You have similar numbers on the lower rise poles there.
Giving you some insight into additional structures that are used to make sure that they – to minimize the view of these.
Church steeples a lot of times will have antennas.
This is a church steeple in Southport, Connecticut, where antennas are in that pole or in the steeple.
When we talk about camouflaging the equipment, that's another piece that a lot of concern needs to be given to
because the equipment can grow and it can be very intrusive.
They are vaults that can be used to hide the equipment.
So this shows the vault that's being installed in Los Angeles, California, right off the beach.
And when they're done with it, the vault is completely underground and not visible.
its access via hatch and the antennas are mounted on a light pole in this area. Some other types
of structures that are seen that are that are becoming more and more common. This is a church
steeple that was built to house the antennas and the antennas are hidden in there and the
cabling can be routed different ways. This is a rooftop site with a privacy screen that has
antennas behind it. A clock tower obviously, water tanks are becoming more and more common
where these are fake water tanks. It's a screen that's built out of fiberglass,
and the antennas are hidden behind that screen, so you still have the aesthetic appeal of
an older water tank. The built-in cupolas are frequently used when they're designed and custom
built that way. This flagpole right here is in Haberstrah, and the hotel cupola here is in
and then silos can also be used to house the antennas.
In addition to giving you the views
of different types of structures
that are currently being used,
we also wanted to create a couple of photo simulations
to show what a 50 foot utility pole structure
could look like.
And this would be on Long Ridge Road,
anticipating a 50 foot utility pole.
And this is from 150 feet away.
So facing north and facing south,
that's what we would expect that to look or look like.
We also built one of those for Pound Ridge Road, and again facing west and facing east,
what the views of a utility pole would look like in those instances.
The next piece would be options for equipment vaults, and I alluded to this earlier with the one on the ocean side,
but generally they can be buried underground and then accessed either via a hatch or a manhole type setup,
and this is a good example of one that's been installed where the equipment is right here,
and the antennas are mounted on top of this light pole there.
And as you can see, the topography there is very similar where it's rolling.
It's not as heavily-treated, of course, as the area that we're talking about.
And then just a simple size comparison for different towers, how it looks side-by-side.
The 150-foot tower obviously dwarfs everything else, where it just is 100 feet taller than the utility pole.
But in addition to that, you can use the 50-foot utility poles.
And depending on application, you can use shorter structures as well.
So those are the pieces that we've put together for this presentation.
I'll turn the time back over to the chair to see if there's any questions that we need to handle right now.
Okay. Can you hear me? Oops, I've got to turn my video back on.
Can you hear me? Yes, I can.
I think at this point I'm going to ask Kim to unmute the members of the planning board
and our wireless consultant and
our town attorney and Mr. Osterman and
have I left anybody
out?
Oh, the members of the spokesperson members of the wireless committee.
that would be Kyle and Hank.
I do appreciate the presentation. It's very interesting.
Some of it we actually have been aware of. I was pleased to hear you talking about that
it makes sense to ask tower people to build, if you're looking for co-location, if you
are looking for co-location, which at the moment our code requires us to do, that it
can make sense to ask a carrier to build for two carriers and build with the structure
that could then support four carriers, if necessary, but not put them there right away.
Interestingly enough, we suggested just that for the Bedford Hill site that we're talking about.
I think it was at our meeting two weeks ago and the and the
Homeland Towers who's building that site is looking into that possibility.
We've had rather more success with co-location than I guess some other places have from what
you've said. I know the Green Lane Tower has all four spaces taken. The Bedford Hills
one is proposed for two sites already of the.
There are two separate licensees for the homeland, there. Jeff, do you know offhand how
well we're doing otherwise with co-location? The prison site, I think.
The ones at corrections are more than one carrier. The ones at Fox Lane, I believe all four
carriers at Fox Lane. Are these the ones immediately off the freeway?
Well, there's also a set at 684. That's a multiple installation also.
Yeah. I have seen that some of the towers around the town,
especially in the high traffic areas where you have the freeways or high traffic counts,
some of those do have co-locations, and some of them there are a couple towers that,
one comes to mind that is near the correctional facility, but it's not directly there.
It only has a single tenant. So it does happen.
It's important though to understand or to make sure that going in it's not, especially in a remote area or a more rural area, to not necessarily build it for tenants that haven't even been approached yet.
But you have taken a thoughtful approach I've seen with the tower up by the water treatment plant.
Yeah, and the what happened with the one. It's not something we're particularly pleased with with the one in
The one that only has one carrier on it in the light industrial zone.
We had built that one or we didn't know we didn't build it we approve that one it was in precisely the kind of place where we felt that sort of thing belong which was in the middle of a
of an industrial area by a quarry, then the tower and the prison came by.
We had no control over that.
Of course, the prison is state property.
So the tower went in and went into competition with the one that we had done.
So that's one of the planning issues that can be frustrating for municipality,
that we have all of these other organizations whose rights and privileges override ours.
The reason the one in that we approved is now obsolete is that the prison came in and
built an even bigger and taller tower and licensed it out, and we could do nothing about that.
So it was an unfortunate situation, but that has not happened with any of the towers that
have been part of our larger plan. And it was partly to try to avoid that kind of thing
that the town has decided to take a holistic approach and have the wireless committee do
the work that it's been doing for the last couple of years.
We've seen that. We've seen the thoughtful approach and the comments that have been
made, especially with the Hickory lane with regards to not breaking the view line
or the ridge line with the views that would be created by a tower and the feedback
that you were taking into account from the community as to the impact of the crane test of 68 Stonehill.
We can see that the town is absolutely taking the concerns of the citizens and their constituency into account
and recognizing when there is visual impact.
Yeah, and we will be talking a little bit about, there were some shortcomings that we will acknowledge
with the balloon test, but we'll talk about that at the end of the discussion here, because
we are going to consider doing another balloon test, but we'll talk about that in more detail
later.
The problem we have, at least the problem that I have with it, and it may be a lack
of understanding, and we've spent a lot of time talking to consultants about the kinds
of alternatives that you have talked about.
And in fact, if you look at even the first presentation that CityScape did, it shows
that we are looking at small cells.
Now I understand from – I understand would be too strong a word, I will admit.
And I do understand that you're saying that what you're proposing are not small cells.
And that made it a little bit more clear to me, because when I first saw your presentation
and thought of these as small cells, they contradicted everything that our consultants
have told us about how far a small cell could reach.
So I'd like to talk a little bit about what the real nature of these towers that you have
are because our immediate reaction has been that this is what our professionals have told
us smaller.
It's what they've told us small cells cannot do.
Now you're saying it's not small cells.
levels, how does a 150-foot tower reach the same extent that a 50-foot tower does so consistently
as your things show?
I'm thinking of the one picture that you had with the three,
let's see, it was Indian
and Hill Park and the tower by,
I'm sorry.
You're fine, let me bring it up.
I think this is the one you're talking about here.
I should get my copy of this on my either head.
Well, let me touch briefly on the small cell
versus the others.
So small cell, and let me just bring this one up
because it has a picture of a small cell on it.
The small cell is generally built
to have a much smaller radius.
that you use as a higher frequency because it's targeting putting higher data or reusing
frequency in a smaller area. So the equipment that would be utilized is much different. You've
got smaller antennas, you have smaller base station equipment, and again you're operating
at much lower power levels, which it's not meant to broadcast it to a large area. They're
typically used in commercial areas where it's high density population. You'd see it
like it for example, in the downtown Bedford area,
it may make sense.
When you get out where you have one, two, three
to five acre lots, it's not going to make sense
because the economics just aren't there.
So it depends on the situation
and what our recommendation always is,
is let's look at the best application for the situation.
If we try to hit everything with a tower,
you're probably not gonna get coverage
as well as if you use multiple different types
of solutions.
So it's small so what we're recommending
and proposing for the entire area? Absolutely not. Does Maul cell have an application? Maybe
in limited use, but when you have the lower elevation locations that we're talking about,
those use the same type of equipment that a macro site would use,
meaning the large platform antennas, you have the base station radios,
you use similar equipment, you're just using a smaller tower.
Okay, and that was actually what threw me about it, and that probably is something I'm
I'm missing here, but so the piece of equipment that's on top of the tower is emitting the
same intensity of RF that the antenna that's on a 150-quad tower is emitting, except for
Not necessarily.
So it's a great question because this is something that everyone runs into.
And Kim, if you can unmute Brian, he can also add some additional insight to this.
But when you model a cell site, you can do it based on a few different factors.
Frequency is one. The power level is another one.
The elevation is another one. The topography and what we call the clutter,
the different pieces of foliage or buildings or other things that could impact the signal,
those are all factors that you look at.
So, a tower that is sitting at a lower elevation wouldn't necessarily need to cover.
And if you can still see my screen, I'm kind of highlighting a couple.
It wouldn't need to necessarily operate at the same level as something on a mountain top,
but it can still use the same frequencies and the same equipment and provide coverage to the area.
We can't see your screen.
We can't see it right here.
I'm sorry.
Well, that's something I can remedy.
Can you see the screen now?
Yes, now we can.
Okay.
So I was circling this one here because it's one of the lowest rise pictures that we've
got, or the lowest rise pieces of infrastructure.
But you would have normal cellular antennas within that platform, but it doesn't need
to operate at the same radio power, the same ERP as what we'd call it, as a tower on
a mountaintop, if that makes any sense.
No, that does make sense.
So let me ask you something.
When you mapped the say that the one I was talking about,
I've almost gotten to it.
I can tell you which number page it's on.
Hold on.
I've got mine up.
Anybody else gets to figure out?
I think it was in the 50s.
I'm paging through the document now.
54, Deirdre?
Hold on.
Maybe.
I'm sorry.
There must be an easier way to do this.
There it is.
It's 53.
53, yes.
Slides are three.
This one here?
Yeah.
But when you map, say that the tower at Old Post Road is reaching as far as the 150-foot
tower in the in-hill, what power is it, is it at to do that, whatever it is?
This one, and I'm going off memory here.
but I believe that this was a 50 foot tower on 150 watts in the 850 megahertz range.
And how does 8 and 150 watts, how does that connect to where it gets?
What would have been, what would be on the 150 foot tower?
For consistency, we ran them at the same.
So, in this case, you're talking about putting, again, as I said earlier, a fairly high intensity
antenna at both – at 50 feet.
What does that do to the calculations for figuring out whether or not an antenna meets
FCC requirements or for the cap on?
That would – good question. That would need to be run generally if you're on a 50-foot tower.
Our experience is that you'll still be within the FCC guidelines.
Generally, at those levels, you're well, well within the FCC guidelines.
But that would – excuse me – that would absolutely need to be modeled and run by a RF –
someone that performs the RF engineering for that.
Yeah. And you would be in addition to that.
So you would meet the guidelines, be below the guidelines, but still probably be higher
than you would for the 150 foot.
From our experience, it would meet the guidelines, and logic would say it would be lower because
the farther you get from the RF source, the lower the RF, the maximal, permissible exposure
is, the MPEs.
Diane, do you want to say something?
I just a question. I'm not quite understanding what you're saying and if you could just go
through for me, but what it seems to be is that if you're at just a 50-foot height with
the same radiation, it's going to be instead of being like 150 feet above someone's head
and 500 feet from their house, now you're talking about making it only 50 feet, you know,
which means like 40 feet above their head and maybe 50 feet from a house.
I know we're not supposed to consider the health effects of the frequency,
but it just, are you telling me that there is no difference in how that can affect people?
So, real quick, if Kim can unmute Brian, he actually just came to me and asked if he could be unmuted. He can weigh in on this.
I have to try and.
Okay. So, to answer the question from a high level, will the RF exposure be more than from a tower that is one mile away?
And would the tower be, would the RF exposure be less from that tower one mile away from a tower that's 15 miles away, the answer would naturally be yes.
From the FCC's perspective, though, they'll also look at the maximal permissible exposures, the MPEs, and if you are 5% versus 7%, you're still within those guidelines.
And again, like you just mentioned, we're not allowed to consider those, but we also want to make sure that it's reasonable.
But we're not talking one mile away, I'm sorry, but we're not talking one mile away or a mile away.
We're talking about sites that, for example, you've given us where the tower at Indian Hill is more than 100 feet away from any residents.
The one on all post road is I believe within within a hundred feet of a residence.
I think maybe 200 feet, but I think it's more like a hundred feet of a residence.
So it's bouncing through.
Can you hear me now?
Gotcha, Brian.
Okay.
So there's a code section in the FCC.
And I also refer to the bullets in 65, which is the science required for determining this.
So the FCC says anything that is above 32 feet is categorically safe for all of the emissions.
The bulletin 65 goes into more depth, which talks about the horizontal distance as well as
the vertical distance. In our experience, anything that is more than about four to six feet away
from directly in front of the antennas becomes safe. And we know this because we do this on
building tops all of the time where we have what's called controlled environment, which
are your roof workers.
And you'll find that they're gated or skirted around the antennas out to a certain distance.
And we measure that with attached radmands to their belt, essentially.
So those go off if they ever get into that envelope within that six feet area
or so.
And then we usually calculate that down into the first floor of a building so that the top floor of a residence or school or whatever, we calculate it below the ground, below the roof.
So from the experience level that we have, the knowledge that the FCC bulletin 65, which is the science part of the FCC for non-ionizing radiation levels.
And what the FCC has essentially mandated in their order is that roughly anything above
32 feet is categorically safe.
Now, and I do understand that in terms of making decisions about these things, we are
preempted.
We don't base our decisions on the health issues.
So I'm thinking of this more from a categorical point of view, you know, part of what I was
hoping for from this, because as some of the representatives from the Friends of Indian
Hill have said, these sell tower applications are among the worst that we have to deal
with because we are preempted and so much and because there's nobody who wants them, frankly,
sometimes for pathetic reasons, but often for reasons that the federal government doesn't
recognize and that may not be entirely rational. I am married to a scientist or a physicist
And I do on a personal level, I'm pretty well convinced that I probably get more damage from the cell phone I put up to my ear than I do from any of the towers that I look that far away from.
But, but if we're talking about finding
multiple sites, smaller sites that have all the same RF characteristics of the fall tower sites, only we're going to have more of them.
Then we would have the tower sites. I think it's something we have to have to consider. But that's why I wanted to make sure that that's actually what you were saying.
The one added note that I would say is that the pole configuration is a single carrier and the envelope.
for the near levels for that single pole is from the single carrier.
As soon as you put multiple carriers on the same pole,
it becomes additive and totally collective on the radiation envelope that comes out of there.
So it's not – each carrier is independent of each other.
They are collective at that point.
But then if you have four carriers on Olfo's Road,
you're going to have four of these poles in a row.
Yeah, but they never become collective.
You have separation at that point, whereas the tower at Indian Hill Park, you would have,
the plan or the goal would be to have four wireless carriers within a thousand feet of at least ten households.
And then you have to add those numbers together where a utility pole, again,
if you're using a surgical approach to add multiple sites in the infill areas that you need,
operating at the highest levels possible is not required.
So it gives you more control and it gives more flexibility when modeling that.
Something that the town could do is ask the wireless carriers for the exposure levels
to ask for verification that they are complying with that so that you have that assurance.
No, we definitely do that on all of them. We would ask for that on Indian Hill.
We would ask for it.
Good.
We'll be asking for it in Homeland. We've asked for it before.
or Mr. Cattoliano, did you want to?
No, you guys actually covered everything
I had a question about, so.
As for the number of houses that are close on Indian Hill,
that's, that there are a number within 1,000 feet,
but in some of the other places you've suggested,
I'm just trying to,
I'm trying to be clear on what the problems we face are
because I think they haven't been explained to you as clearly as they could.
If you consider the water tower, for example, in Bedford Village,
there are a number of houses within 500 feet of that. I'm not quite sure how many at this point,
but because Bedford Village is a denser place, but the other issue is you've proposed an 80-foot
In the one example you've given, you pose an 80-foot tower, a mini-tower who will in front
of the water tower, wouldn't that be clearly visible from Sunnyfield Farm and from the approach
to Sunnyfield Farm, which is one of our major scenic areas, would even as an 80-foot
tower by the water tower do that. If it were on the other, we have considered the water tower
were lower kind of tower, more of a small cell kind of thing, and putting the antenna behind
the water tower. But where you're proposing it, it's 80 feet, and it's in front of the water
tower. And I mean, we do a balloon test there and find it, find out I may be wrong about
the visual impact. So something to keep in mind and you're all of your concerns
are very they're important to consider but what we're looking at is we're not
recommending any specific location as much as we're looking at alternatives
that are available. So a utility pole or an 80-foot pole behind the water tower
versus next to the tower is not what we're looking at in this scenario
because either of those would probably be viable. What we're looking at is are
alternatives that could be used? And the answer is categorically yes. Where those are placed would
be something that the town and the wireless carriers would need to work together on.
And that's the problem. I know that the public often doesn't understand that we've
been looking at these for a very long time and desperately looking for alternatives.
and what I have to admit I was hoping and praying for was that there was a new
technology that we were unaware of because you know when when people said
we could use three three of these and take care of all all the problems and they
could be in these specific places it seemed to it seemed very promising but
So what I looked at when I saw this is, what I looked at first, I have to admit, I totally
misunderstood it.
And I saw a small cell, I saw what you were proposing, a small cell.
And they just don't go as far as you were saying these came.
So it was a revelation when you started talking about, when you sent us answers to the questions
and told us they were regular towers.
And at first, I said to myself, I didn't know you could do that, and then I started thinking
about it and saying, I'm not sure I want you to do that.
And I find myself
offering a hope to people that I don't think is likely to actually
be fulfilled.
Could you share some specific concerns? I mean, the RF exposure, we understand that. We also
understand it's something that is difficult to quantify. What other concerns about viability
are there on the town's part?
Okay. When you finally gave us a map, one thing that actually showed a possible combination
And the coverage is very good on the slide that you've got showing right now.
It includes, first of all, the 80-foot pole at the water tank in a place that our wireless people had already,
I believe, looked at and decided this was a problem visually because of the – because of Sunnyfield Farm.
But then you also show a 100-foot pole within the transmission easement line,
which is a fantastic idea, which we spent hours trying to talk nice again to letting us do and in Bedford Hills
I mean it it's as far as I'm concerned
It's a no-brainer to put even a hundred and fifty foot tower in the transmission line easement
I have seen it done in other states
Right above the area where we have we're putting a tower in Bedford Hills
There is a transmission line that would have been made a far superior place
And I don't think there's anybody in town that would have objected to it, because as we quite rightly pointed out, if you're standing next to a massive transmission.
What do you care about a cell tower in addition to it you're going to try and not be looking at it in the first place.
I think we'll not agree to it. We've tried. So we don't have those alternatives.
So then we're back to finding more utility pole issues in different areas that we'll do this.
And
then I look at where you put the utility poles on Long Ridge Road and Pound Ridge Road.
And the pictures look fine, but the pictures assume that you're going to bury all the equipment.
That's an awful lot of equipment for antennas that size.
And burying all that equipment is going to be a major construction job,
as the drawings of the equipment containers going in indicated.
I notice they were mostly going in pretty urban areas all paved and the rest, but I know you can do it in rural areas.
But how many of the trees around those holes are going to be left after you've dug the holes to bury the equipment?
One of the things the neighbors at Stone Hill, you said you watched the public hearing.
One of the things the neighbors at Stone Hill.
were upset about was the fact that that tower was going to be so close to the road. These
are going to be even closer to the road. And I don't think it's likely that they are going
to look the way they look in your picture because when you look at those towers in Bill
Gates's community, there's nowhere near the number of trees in Bill Gates's town.
it's a whole different aesthetic. So the it it you know yeah well at this point what it seems
what it seems to me is you know I'm not saying that any of these sites wouldn't be possible I see
in the chat somebody quickly said we should do a crane test from the water tank I think we
probably will look at the water tank eventually for something. I doubt it'll be an 80 foot pole and
I doubt that it'll be in front of the water tank. I think it'll be behind it and maybe if you mapped
it that way it would it would still work but but what I see is what I'm trying to get across I
guess is that I don't see these being any easier to put in terms of people's objection to them
than the tall towers, except that we'll have to do so many more of them, 24. And I doubt
that there will be any easier to do than a single tower somewhere.
Respectfully, the ex- I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, no, Fred. I'm sorry. I got to agree with our chairwoman, dear. Again, my line
I have to agree with her.
It is not going to be that simple.
You're in the right of way.
You are along the thoroughfares of our town.
It is going to take, it's an arduous task 24 times over,
and that is one carried.
She is absolutely spot on.
To correct that real quick, it's not 24 per carrier.
That would be an all-inclusive.
And something else important to keep in mind is,
in the right-of-way, there are multiple options.
So the options for putting in equipment,
burying is one option, screening is another.
Yep, topography absolutely matters,
and you do have a different type of tree in your area.
In the Pacific Northwest where the example was
in Bill Gates' neighborhood,
the difference they have is evergreens,
where it's there all year.
So I understand the concern.
Again, what we're proposing is an option that is viable that does work.
The coverage that can be provided is feasible.
It just takes a matter of looking at it.
Now, are there concerns and is there disruption when you're creating this?
Yes.
is permitting a, or is installing a 50-foot tower that doesn't
We don't require a 35-foot foundation that has a concrete basket less intrusive than a
tower. Of course, it is because utility companies replace utility poles all the time. And we've
seen it in a number of locations where they do replace these utility poles. So we understand
your concern and their valid. What we also do is we see these go in in a lot of locations
across the country and they do work. But again, what we're proposing is not specific
locations, but alternatives that do work that some of them may not be feasible based on the specific location that was represented.
But again, the wireless carriers will ultimately determine what their coverage needs are.
And then working together, the town can provide a minimally invasive solution that doesn't require multiple large towers across the town.
You know, I can tell I'm glancing at the chat and I know people are getting upset with me
because I'm finding holes in this and it's not really what I intended to try to do, but...
Dita, I think the difference in opinion comes from, you know, our knowledge of building thousands of sites
and what we see on a daily basis since this is our business.
And Bedford hasn't done this yet, so do one or two and see how you like it,
because it does work. It is one of the better things to do.
And keep in mind that no matter what you do at Bedford Hills Park,
You have to build another site or possibly two sites to fill the coverage deficits that are created or left behind because of that.
One site just doesn't do it.
Now, I understand that, but I see that there is a difference between a,
sorry, I just got
a text message from Diane, Kim, Diane can't unmute herself.
I
see a difference between a small cell, which in Bedford Hills, for example, is something
that I think is being considered.
And what you're talking about, which is essentially a macro antenna, it's, and it has, you know,
you say telephone poles are replaced all the time.
And of course they're replaced all the time.
Do they have bolts that have equipment in them that get replaced with them?
I've never seen a telephone pole that's had a bolt of the size of the one that you showed in that picture.
That's, that vault can hold more cabinets than what you typically find out there for macro cells at this point.
The macro cells that are being built are typically two cabinets, one for battery and utility and the second one for the actual control and internet.
And all of the radios are now at the top of the towers or the poles, so they're becoming minimized.
That's just one model of a vault that's done by castle concrete.
There are other vaults, and you can even do more compact above site stuff.
So, as Brett was saying, your comments, we could answer those.
We could give you more examples. We could probably take you to see a couple of them in a neighborhood as soon as we locate them, something that's out in your neck of the woods.
But these are done more often than not. And the percentage of poles that are being put in versus large towers is astronomical.
Small poles or small cells?
No, no. Small polls.
And here's an example of when I was building out all of the networks
across the country for T-Mobile between the years 2000 and 2004, thousands and thousands
of sites. I was able to build Portland in the surrounding area because they had a code
that was similar to yours, which allowed for 50 feet by right,
as long as you made your 35-foot setbacks
from your property lines.
My competitors were all trying to build 150-foot monopoles
and 125-foot monopoles in many cases.
And they were going to take over two years to get it done.
I got the entire city and most of the surrounding communities
done in about seven months because I just literally bought up a heap of poles
and put them in by right and they look great and they're still there today.
Could you show it? That's interesting. I'd really like to see a picture of
some of those.
They're just like what Brett was showing you. I used a
combination of steel poles and concrete and concrete aggregate poles. When I go
downtown I use concrete aggregate to match again nature matches as much as I
can. Some pictures in the more rural areas that you put it something that the
parts of it that are closer to Bedford but that might help convince me that this
is more of a new area. And the poles we were suggesting for the Bedford area
being in the tree area is there's a fiberglass pole a hollow core pole
that you can order to length, specific for the wireless carriers, and they are nature-matched.
So, you know, they go in and you can even replace the power line poles and put the power right on those poles,
so they don't have to be exclusive to the wireless carriers.
Jeff, did you have something to say?
I just wanted to say that this whole discussion began because of an application from Verizon.
So I think it would be really helpful if we could find something in our region that Verizon
has done along this line.
Is there something you know like that?
Well, we're having a hard time getting Verizon to talk to us.
I think it's up to you guys to, you know, we'd be glad to sit down.
down and have a meeting with Verizon, obviously, over Zoom.
But they're not going to talk to us at this point.
They want a 150-foot pole in a park.
But has Verizon done an installation similar to this?
Like I said, I don't know about your area specifically.
But if you could reach out to them,
we'd be glad to help wrangle that steer to the ground.
I'm sure they're listening.
I just want to correct something.
There is no proposal. There is no cell tower at Gard Hill, and there's no proposal to raise one to 140 feet.
That's all radio tower installation.
I believe there was a comment in one of the reports that had mentioned raising that to 140 feet.
Yes, radio, not cell.
Correct.
Diane, did you want to say something?
Yeah, just going back and sort of reiterating what you said, Deidre, we had asked Verizon
about putting the equipment in a vault and sinking it when we were discussing the other
towers because we think that would drastically decrease the visual impact of these things.
And they said in the topography here, that's very difficult because there are often
There's often a lot of rock, but again, it would depend on an individual site, but to
be able to put in 25 of those right next to a road and not hit rock would be more difficult
here.
We've had these other problems with things in the right-of-way in this town that's
sort of unique to the town, and that's the thing in bike paths in the right-of-way.
There are stone walls and trees which have prevented us from putting in what we would
really love, which is bike trails that are with the road all over the town.
So these ideas are really great if they work, but these are impediments that we have seen
around here.
Again, I'd like to get some more of the technical end of things. It was a problem for me that
the examples of coverage that were used used the same intensity for the 50-foot towers,
for the 150-foot tower, because it doesn't make sense to me that the lower ones would
have the same impact. But I may be misunderstanding the technology. So could I ask Mr. Taglia
Ferry, our consultant, to chime in on this a little bit? Is this something we should be
looking at more seriously? Does the logic work? Are we overlooking something here?
Oh, sorry. What was that, Chairman? I'm wondering, am I being unreasonable in
what I'm talking about of being concerned that these towers are not actually going to
match what we could get from the Indian Hill.
Well, the thing is, there would be more of them, like, which was presented in order to
match the coverage for the central tower.
And the thing is, I mean, you have to remember that it's all driven by Verizon originally
originally came to the town looking for a solution in this area, and, you know, they
would, they're the ones that are going to have to ultimately, you know, we can present
them with other options or multiple site solutions, but they're the ones that are ultimately
going to have to agree on that to do it.
And when you're talking to small cells or if they're going to put utility poles
and typically they may need to involve the third party infrastructure like the crown castle
or an extinet to come in and put in to build the infrastructure for a small cell or smaller
multiple site solutions that Verizon may not be willing to do.
Extinet usually is for small cells directly not they don't generally build the lower
elevation macro sites, correct? Right. They're basically a DAS network.
And same as Crown. Crown, we're talking low solutions, yeah.
But for small cells, as an alternative, DAS would be,
would be another alternative, but you would then need a lot more sites,
accommodate additional carriers as well, where these small cells would basically,
Basically, like Chairwoman was saying, macro sites just at a lower level.
And the thing is, too, we can identify areas, but we still have the issue of finding exactly
the locations that will work for Verizon, because everything we're saying now is speculation
on what will work for them, where they're only asking for one tower in one location.
They're not looking to cover the entire town right now.
So then, to be fair, this proposal is to bring the entire town either.
It's just that the deluge area.
But I...
Maybe I should pose the question to Al, just to reiterate, if Verizon or if the town were
to say, this is our wireless code and these are the type of structures that we would
need to see, would you see a model in which Verizon or the other wireless carriers
could build a model using the lower solutions, non-DAS,
non-small cell, still using the macro site.
But do you see a model in which they could cover the town using the lower elevation towers?
Yeah, they certainly can.
The thing is they would have to identify specific locations
and mark those locations and run their modeling to make sure that it would all work.
I'm sure they could do that. The question is, will they do it? Because this case law that says the town probably can't force them to use a certain technology when another type is available.
So that's what we're trying to find the best trade-off where, you know, do we want multiple sites that could be, that could ultimately be more visible to the community than one tower, you know, in a specific location, wherever that might be, Hickory or Stonehill or Indian Hill.
I'm wondering when you were developing this site,
did you talk to any residents who were volunteering sites near them
for these small towers?
It's a little preliminary for that simply because what we were tasked
to do is find if alternative solutions would work.
Ultimately, the wireless carriers would need to propose the sites.
So getting in front of property owners or other people to talk about something like that was outside the scope of what we were needing to do,
since we were simply looking at, is there an alternative type of site that would work?
Unfortunately, what people don't understand is it is our scope of what we have to do.
Absolutely.
I had to do under under law and it would be it would certainly be helpful in selling me
on this idea if if I saw some folks who live near potentially viable sites who said we think
Thank you very much for watching.
Saw some folks who live near potentially viable sites who said, we think this is a good enough
idea that we wouldn't fight it here. Because I'll tell you, as soon as one site was identified,
we got on Indian Hill Road, we got an email saying that that particular homeowner was not
least bit interested in that one. And then when your report came through, and I have to say this
bothered me a little bit, when your report came through, although you used the site on Indian Hill
Road in some of your examples on your chart, you actually said that that one wasn't a good site
for ascetic reasons. And I'm wondering why the pole that you think would be fine at
Old Coast Road and Pound Ridge Road would not be fine on Indian Hill aesthetically.
Maybe something I missed, but I'm not sure I understand.
So two answers on that one. Just briefly, you know, number one, the poll that is on Indian Hill
Road was something that was brought up by members of the community. And to be intellectually
honest, it's actually in use currently. So to ignore that one, it would not be addressing the current situation that exists.
As far as tower locations, what I think we're getting caught up in is we're still talking about specific locations when the locations that we
reference were specifically meant to be conceptual and the types of locations that would work. The actual locations would have to be approved
by the town and we have to be requested by the wireless carriers. So if we're discussing
those specific locations, we're not suggesting any specific location. We were simply modeling
options that do work, showing that other technology or other locations and other types
of structures are in fact viable.
I would like to see us continue to look at this, but I have some, I was looking for something
new that I hadn't heard before, and I don't mean to insult you, and there is the idea
that you would use the macro technology antennas on a shorter site is, I wouldn't call it new
technology, but it's an idea I hadn't considered. But my reaction to it is, frankly, now instead of
one or two applications in a year that drag on forever where people are upset and distressed,
and the rest I'm now going to be chairing meetings. I'm not going to be doing anything
but chairing meetings over placing towers, because as you say, each one has to be chosen,
each one has to be argued about. I don't see the basis for the argument that's been made
that nobody will get to these. So if, again, I guess I'm putting this out as a challenge to
the community to some extent. If the community thinks this is a good idea, I'd like the
community to start to actually suggest some possible sites because that's what that's
essentially what Verizon has forced us into. Yeah, we did. How soon do you think you could
get the 150 foot tower built in the park? I have no idea.
I think it that's I don't
bill cell towers.
Well, from the planning and approval timeframe,
isn't that a fairly long lead time,
even if you considered it today?
I don't think necessarily, so the biggest question is,
there is a park alienation issue,
and that can either take a short time or a long time,
but that would be the most complicated part of it.
But I wanna be clear on something.
That's assuming that, you know,
So, if we go as far as doing the Indian Hill Park one, it will be only after a serious discussion
of the environmental issues and the rest, there are still things to be quite a bit in the way
of things to be done on that.
But to some extent, what I'm feeling we're left with is either pursuing that seriously
to see if it's possible, and we may find out that it's not,
but pursuing and finding
as possible or or we can turn down the other two locations which we don't like
and get sued by
Verizon because I think we'd be having a problem if we did that without seriously considering
another alternative. And then the courts will put a tower onto either Stone Hill Road or
or Hickory Lane, which are sites which for many reasons we think are truly terrible sites.
The one on Hickory Lane actually that we're rejecting isn't that far off from what you've
been suggesting.
It's a monopole, it's a single monopole, one carrier, basically going to look like a flag
pole, it'll be 115 feet instead of 80 feet or something like that, but it's not that
different from what you've proposed. And everybody hates it.
And frankly, they're right. When
we did the balloon test for that, it still stuck up like a sore thumb on the ridge.
So I don't quite know where, and I don't, from a practical point of view, I don't see where your solution actually makes for the kind of village harmony that I would like to find, and I know people are hating me, absolutely hating me at this moment.
to saying that, but I just don't see it. And there's another more important issue to have
to really discuss here, and I think it's just somebody who wants to talk.
Yeah, Dirk, can I speak just very quickly about this? And I have to agree with you.
It's one you have to make. I think the public needs to understand that in this report,
it's predicated on the approval and you mentioned it, of all of these in unison as a system.
In other words, you can't approve 18, 3, 5, 1, 2.
It's got to be the whole plan.
And if that doesn't come to fruition, then the report and the coverage and the capacity and everything that we're seeing here, it's not going to work.
And I just need everybody to understand it.
So is that what I guess I would ask on that front, and I'm not disagreeing.
It absolutely requires coordination.
Absolutely.
Knowing that a single tower can't provide the coverage across town, I'm not sure that
there's much of a difference because the wireless carriers will still need to provide
additional towers to provide coverage, whether it's 350-foot towers, 250-foot towers.
We would actually encourage exactly what you just mentioned, have the wireless carriers
come in and present their plan to you to provide coverage to the town.
And that way it's not, oh, a tower at 91 Hickory and then a tower at 68 Stone Hill.
Because when you look at the coverage models for both of those towers, they're covering different areas.
So if you're going to end up with multiple coverage and multiple requirements at the same time,
it sounds like it may warrant bringing the carriers in and asking them for the plan to provide coverage.
I've actually been talking about that.
Mr. Secretary, if you have something you want to discuss.
I thought I saw your speaking light come on.
No?
Okay.
Al, do you think, we've been
hoping from the mapping that we've gotten from cityscape
and the rest that Indian Hill would in fact take care of a much larger section of the gap
than either of the other two would enough that what would be left would be areas mostly in
Bedford Village where a small cell technology, something that could be shorter than 50 feet
and a lot less powerful than a macro antenna, probably someplace like the playhouse or
or even the water tower, but something smaller would help fill in the amazing
like terminology
now that the density, the capacity requirements, do you think if we did something at Indian
Hill that ultimately we would still need another tower, another macro tower in the
village area?
Well, in that area, based on the coverage that Verizon shows, because originally, if you
remember, they were at Hickory Lane, a lot of that coverage was going into Pound Ridge,
also, it was more to the south, and the Stone Hill location is a little further north where
the Indian Hill is more centrally located, and would probably provide, based on the
the maps that they submitted coverage into that village area.
So, I mean, this is my feeling.
And I think you raise a very good issue.
We should discuss it and make sure that we're clear
with Verizon on this that this should satisfy
their needs for a tower in the Bedford Village area,
their needs for a macro tower in Bedford Village area.
And again, I don't deny that our consultants are talking about eventually meeting small
cell technology, but small cell technology, shorter something in the 35 foot range, I
think, Tom, is that what they've been talking about?
Yeah, yes.
In the center of the village and potentially in Bedford Hills and Katona as well.
So that's what we're
looking at. Yes, Diane.
There is one other issue that we haven't talked
about at all and I think it's a serious one. We've sort of glanced on past to the issue
emergency services and I'm wondering whether or not our emergency services
people would would be willing to tell us whether the system that has been
suggested here will work for them. Joe or Hank would you have anything to add
about that.
Thanks, Deirdre. Hey, Joe.
The committee has good evening, everyone. The wireless facility working group has reviewed
the information presented tonight. Obviously, emergency services always welcome to new ideas
and new technologies. So for clarification, I just wanted to get some clarification from
Brett, when you mentioned 9-1-1, I assume you're referring to fire, police and EMS communications
when you say 9-1-1?
Are you saying 9-1-1, the ability for a resident to dial 9-1-1 and read?
We've always been talking about what you guys need to be safe out there.
Yeah, and similar on our end, when we say 9-1-1, it's encompassing all the emergency
services.
So, the emergency service providers would be what we were talking about.
Okay.
Great clarification.
A couple of questions regarding FirstNet.
I've seen it personally myself.
I've seen it advertised in, you know, trade and some state agencies discussing it.
As far as from what I could see reviewing it and other committee members when we reviewed the FirstNet site.
It doesn't appear to be built out in this area at all, so I'm not sure if you have any
time frames for that or anything regarding that, because when I look at the website,
there's no mention at all about this area, the plan for a build out.
Some of the concerns also with FirstNet, I'm not sure how much experience you guys
have with it and using it in some of the projects that you've worked on, but
But the initial concerns that we see, and again, the lack of generator backup power for these multiple sites.
That would be one, and especially in this area, we have an issue with storms, you know, and storms that come through the area and typically what happens here is the poles get knocked down, snapped, and then there's no power to the area.
So obviously, some of the stuff on utility poles for emergency services would be of concern.
And also, I'm not really sure how much, how many sites that FirstNet would need to build out just to cover the village along with the town of Bedford.
So I'm not sure how much experience you've had using this product.
So real quick, before I answer, Kim, it looks like Brian, some.
When was the last time, or how long has it been since you looked at the coverage of FirstNet in the area?
Since you sent your presentation, I was taking a look at it.
Okay, so AT&T is under some very strict parameters to implement the solution, and they have certain coverage requirements, so they're working diligently on getting that set up and to put in place.
Verizon, as you're probably aware, Verizon also has a competing service that they offer.
When it comes to the backup, power backup at the cell sites, typically the cellular providers either have it or implementing the
implementing generators at cell sites. And FirstNet operates on the AT&T network.
So the communication sites would generally have either significant battery backup with a temporary generator able to be brought on
if the power outage is significant enough,
or most of them now have generators on sites.
So all of the FirstNet's got an obligation
to do about 1,000 sites a month,
adding the antennas and the radio units
for FirstNet exclusively,
and they're putting them on
all of the AT&T infrastructure at the point.
They're also obligated to put backup generators
or at minimum eight hours plus generator plugs at all the sites.
All of the sites that are in the Northwest, for example,
have already been converted to FirstNet,
and all of the sites that I'm aware of up here
have already been converted with generators.
So I don't know what their build-out plan is
or their strategic plan is,
but we're seeing this hardening of their network
far more robust than ever before, including backing up numerous sites, not just fiber, but getting back into making microwave back all, which is, again, it's their back up there.
Their sites are pretty well hardened just for the first net users.
I have experienced in the Tacoma area because Seattle Tacoma has been experimenting with both FirstNet and their own network and the statewide network.
So they've been involved in it quite a bit.
There's various readings, if you will, from the fire personnel that varies.
The one thing that's consistent is they all think it works great.
They don't like using any network when they're at an incident scene or a fire scene,
and they all revert to a VHF or a UHF simplex channel as their backup,
which is advocated in all of our work with the fire departments across the country.
And what we're seeing from FirstNet is that their radio configurations support that piece
of it, which we think is essential to the incident scenes.
Patrick.
Brian, also, and you said that was Seattle, that you?
Seattle Tacoma has a separate network, Seattle Tacoma Olympia basically that swath
in there, has a separate network of their own.
They've been experimenting with FirstNet and they also have a statewide network that is here that's run by the State Patrol.
They had been using the State Patrol for some time, switched over to their own virtual network.
And of course, FirstNet and Verizon is supporting product.
The uniqueness about going into this technology is that it's all IP consideration.
So it's not channelized like you would normally find in a trunk system, which is fairly old technology.
And their IP configurations that they've got can transport across almost any platform and function.
So if they get out of their range, they can transport into the statewide network or on their own virtual network or the first net network.
And I'm finding that to be the case in Michigan where I'm doing some work up for another 911 county where the statewide network doesn't have the coverage that it needs for their own virtual towers.
but by virtue of the IP transportability, they're going into the AT&T and the First Net Networks.
Yeah, so when you mentioned product as well, do they support the cost? Does AT&T provide the product to the emergency services?
Well, you have to buy the product, and the product is wide-ranging.
The best product that they've got out there is Motorola wins hands down.
Every time you talk about a 911, Motorola beats Kenwood 2 to 1, and they also beat
them 2 to 1 in price, so they're more expensive, but the product is exceptional.
Right, so the product would have to be purchased by the town or the user?
That's right.
Gotcha.
So I guess the biggest concern and again, very open-minded as an emergency services, you know, the agencies in the town because obviously, you know, right now we run on a system provided by Westchester County, the Fire EMS.
We're running a system, the county is expanding that system, and then in the process of an upgrade right now, our police department runs its own system right now in the town.
And that's an antiquated system that's being explored. There's an option to go on the town system future.
For the biggest thing, the biggest concern would be obviously coverage at this point, too, is because the AT&T infrastructure in the town minus any upgrades would be of a concern at this point.
Obviously purchasing the product. We already have a lot of Motorola products that are, you know, all the products, majority of the product for the county for the new system is provided.
There is some expense for the end user.
But again, it would be something that we'd have to look into more, obviously the biggest
concerns, like I said to you up front, especially here, would be power loss, the utility poles
being torn down, and a lack of AT&T infrastructure at this point.
We have predominantly Verizon service in town, but it's something that could be looked
at.
I think there's always pros and cons to everything.
Right. I think you're right in reading that AT&T doesn't have enough infrastructure to fill in the holes.
The competing product with Verizon, I think, does. When I analyzed the UHF and the BHF portions of your network,
what I found was you have a lot of outbound signal.
You've got more signal than you really need or, you know, you don't need to duplicate a bunch
of that everywhere that you go. And in most 911 networks, they need voting receivers,
which is what you've got at the top of the hill now is just a voting receiver. It works.
It's not a pretty sight. It could be, I could make that look like, you know,
dress it up and you could take it to church. So it's something that's usable,
But really, you only need voting receivers in a lot of cases.
And again, they don't need to be on megapoles.
They can be on telephone poles or even on top of, you know, the one building in town.
And you would, you know, find exceptional quality out of that.
Right.
So just to kind of clarify, and I'm not going to, I mean, this is something we obviously think there'll be further discussion, you know, as this continues.
But, you know, obviously, you know, we run two different systems now.
So, fire, EMS are on one system that's run, you know, through Westchester County,
it's a trunk radio system, and the police department runs an analog system, a VHF analog system.
EMS and fire also rely heavily now, and this is where there's an issue with Bedford Village,
where Bedford Hills and Katona Fire Department and Katona Bedford Hills EMS
utilize MDTs on Verizon. So, obviously, that's part of our plan, our emergency operations.
You know, the police department also uses MDTs, so there's a lot of holes in coverage
and that's, you know, that's been part of our purpose and function, so in addition
to any of the providing, not only providing residents with access to 911 phone service
to make calls and cell service, but also making sure that the police and all the first responders
have adequate cell and data coverage in addition to improving the VHF system for the police
department plus, you know, the fire department system. I guess.
Oh, absolutely. So would you regard that Verizon and the wireless carriers are an essential
part of the 911 system?
I wouldn't say not. I guess not. I guess you refer to it as 911 system. I guess, you
know, because we use 911 here is making that call as well. So I don't want to get that.
You know, I don't want to confuse that with anyone that might be listening.
Well, the last one would be the actual call, but our emergency networks. Yes, a
Yes, the police department uses it, the fire departments and EMS use data, you know, for the mobile data terminals, you know, the MDTs in the vehicle.
So obviously, we, the emergency services has made that a priority to the town to obviously enhance the cell coverage.
You know, obviously the residents have wanted it for themselves. You know, it's seen more.
Right.
You know a lot of people with the pandemic are working home, you know using cell phones a lot of people got rid of their home cell
Their home phone service to use cell phones
So that's that's where we've come together and and looked at and obviously our priority is you know
Our committee is working on not only the master plan for cellular, but obviously running parallel is
Infra sorry infrastructure upgrades for you know emergency service
Exactly, so the point I was gonna raise
was that, you know, we ran the cellular including Verizon from Guard Hill.
And I know that knee-jerk reaction is you can't put cellular up on Guard Hill
because it's not emergency services.
But in all regards, it is emergency services, both inbound and outbound
for the origination of an emergency call and also the support of an emergency call.
So we ran it. We just want to open that up to say, you know, there's reason to believe that is a viable site.
And depending on how you get there, I know Eric's shaking his head, but it's a viable site.
So you're a support 911.
So you're actually suggesting that guard hill should have itself.
Oh, absolutely. When we ran that, that's an integral hole that's left open that Guard Hill can satisfy.
And you don't have to go crazy on the tower up there. I don't think they need to be anything but above the trees.
I didn't expect.
I think what you're hearing is we're recommending the use of whatever is the minimal intrusive or the minimum intrusive sites,
It's looking at all options because there are a lot of viable options and what I've
heard you even say which I'm pleased to hear is there are options for coverage in town
that may not be viable outside of town and I think that goes right in line with what
we're talking about is let's look at the different options, let's look at the coverage
patterns instead of defaulting to a tower, let's default to what fits the code, what
What is the least intrusive option?
What provides the coverage?
What's safe for the residents?
What maintains the aesthetics of the community?
And I think there's an option there that can work.
I'd like to continue to pursue it, but I think we have to pursue two things together.
I'd like to get you talking to Verizon to see what their reaction is.
I'm not quite sure how to succeed in doing that.
I need some feedback.
You know, I still, I suppose maybe too many years in this job have made me a cynic.
I want to see some folks who think this is a good idea and there are clearly many who
do coming forward and saying this is where we should put it.
This is okay with us.
we'll support a site here, not your kind of site, not the tall tower site, but what they're
talking about. I did want to make sure that people understood that we're not talking about
small cell technology, that we're not talking about the small antennas on top of a white.
I want to see some realistic pictures
of what this would look like
if you had to bury the vault on the road,
if it had to clear the trees,
because in the pictures that showed the towers
actually were below the tree line,
maybe they'll work below the tree line,
but I don't want a picture of one below the tree line
if that actually isn't what will work.
because that's to be I'm going to be very honest with you that's what we get
from Verizon when they do a visual analysis it's why we tried to do
our own visual analysis because what we get that is photographers who would
stand in front of the tree and take a picture of the balloons in front of the
tree, and that sort of thing. We've gotten pictures of designs of towers that don't mesh
at all with what the reality is. We don't want that. We want to see what these will really
look like. And if they are, because all of the kinds of sites you're suggesting, which
which are the practical ones to suggest they are all in the right of way, and unlike where
you were able to put in your towers, as you said really quickly, in the town of Bedford,
every one of those towers is
I'm going to require a permit. It's unless we change the laws. And I don't think that people are going to want us to change the laws to not require permits for cell towers anymore.
Agreed.
I mean, to be absolutely honest, it would take a load of quite a lot off of our backs because we wouldn't be involved in it anymore.
more. But I
want to see, I know why Indian Hill Park is not practical. It's going to be
very difficult to do something there. Whether, and I'm only going to continue to support
it if I continue to be convinced that it is the only really reasonable alternative
it's out there. I'd like you to convince me that yours is a reasonable alternative, but I need
more realistic drawings or examples, something that really fits here. And I need you to sell
somebody in town, not just on the idea that it would look nice in the next neighborhood over,
But that it's something that's acceptable in their neighborhood, assuming their neighborhood is a neighborhood that will provide good service.
If we're absolutely open to working on some of these, you know, some of these are car before the horse type items but I welcome the drive on your end and I understand your concerns that because you've heard so many different
and things from different people.
We would absolutely love to talk to Verizon,
and that could kick off the next steps
of understanding where their coverage needs are
and where a utility poll would need to be placed
to fit their needs.
We have some good ideas,
but ultimately they're the ones
that would need to request that.
But if we get in touch with them
and we're able to have some of these conversations,
we could take steps on what you're asking for.
If you can talk them into that.
We also have a problem called the Shot Clock,
which I'm sure you're familiar with, since it's part of the federal regulation.
We've got to drop their deadline of March 31st.
We have to be able to talk about an alternative
that we feel that is ultimately doable.
We don't have to have it settled by then, but it has to be something
that the courts will accept as an alternative.
So meet the legal criteria of being, I'm trying to remember the exact words.
Eric, give me some help here.
Eric has gone to it.
I think he's muted right now.
Yep.
So just a quick question while Eric's getting unmuted,
when the shot clock is in consideration, generally that's only after an application has been filed.
Do we have one or multiple applications right now for the towers in question?
There are multiple applications on file.
Nobody tells you that?
There has been recently an agreement regarding, you know, a tolling of the shot clock, as the chair said, to March 31st.
If certainly Verizon could be convinced to extend it longer, we could agree.
That's understandable. But as we understand it right now, that is not something that has been made an option right now.
Okay, and is this for both sites, the 91 Hickory and 68 Stonehill?
Apparently, nobody's actually told you or some people simply don't believe.
We have been talking about this and studying it and looking at it as has the wireless committee
since 2016.
17, yeah.
17.
Yes, 17.
We understood, yeah.
We understood it had been going on.
We were not, we had heard conflicting information about the application status.
You can understand the frustration when people assume that we've never seen a
camouflage.
That kind of thing. It's and I know at one point I was told that as I
talked about this cell tower people felt that and probably still feel that I was
tired of it. Yeah right I'm tired of it because I'm tired of hearing people
tell me the same thing over and over again and thinking it's new. I'm not tired of looking for an
option that will really work for the town of Bedford. And if you can convince me that people in this
part of Bedford Village think that this is the best approach and are willing to get behind it
even in their neighborhood. And then that would go a long way towards my looking more seriously
about it, but I have seen I have seen nothing that has convinced me of that
just yet and you know it so if people believe that and feel that way about it
even understanding the strength of the signals which I realize the federal
government says we're not supposed to look at and consider if they're willing
to take the federal government's word for it. It's fine and not be bothered by it if it's their house
that it's 100 feet from. If you could just be so kind as to direct Verizon, we would be glad to
talk to them and work through some stuff with them, but we don't want to do it in the absence
of your wireless board either.
And the 911 stuff, you know, I use that as a general term.
I would be glad to work with anybody from that group, even if it's the county.
Yeah. That's fine to understand that those meetings are open meetings.
I'm not quite, I did notice you said you thought the meetings should be closed meetings.
Well, I think we just need to get the ground-pounding work out of the way so that we can, you know,
go through designs and stuff and then come forward with the results as a public meeting.
Yeah, but you can do it as a public meeting like this when you do it on Zoom,
so people can watch, but they can't complete it.
They can see what's done, so it's done in the light of day.
You can mute the microphones and still meet the open meetings law.
Yeah, yeah.
Diane, did you want to say something?
Oh, you have to be unmuted.
Tim, can you unmute Diane?
I'm not used to running meetings quite this large.
Does that work?
Yeah.
Okay. And this is going back really, and sort of echoing what Tom was saying, but I think it's important that we've been asking Verizon from the beginning for
of what they would like to do to aid in our planning.
And we are working really hard
as a town on the wireless committee.
It's amazing why has told us repeatedly
they are not bound to give us a long plan
with the application.
So when you add that to the issue of trying to get
20 people who agree to have this next to their house,
it's very difficult. But I don't know if I can succeed in convincing Verizon to talk to you,
but I think Eric, is there any reason why we can't ask? We can reach out to them and ask.
As you said, I don't think they can be forced to do it. They have to agree.
Yeah. What is what is the term I was I was looking for when it's what the court cases talk about the best intrusive alternative alternative I know well that's what we keep looking for.
The other one was feasible technology technology that we can ask that we can ask them to consider alternative technologies originally they told us we couldn't ask them to consider that we're convinced that we can ask them to consider alternative technology.
as long as it's feasible. So I think if you could, that this was something feasible.
Did you think that you're in a position now where you're going to be forced to come March
1st or whenever the date is that you're going to have to approve the 68th Stone Hill or
91 or both?
If we're going to have to make a decision by then, I don't know what decision we're going to make.
There have been no decisions made at this point.
No, I get that, but you're up against the clock and it looks like you haven't got at Bedford Park as an alternative either.
So you're almost into, you know, either either approving or disapproving one or both of those sites.
I wouldn't say I would not say that at all.
And I do want to be clear about that.
I know people are going to be very unhappy to hear that.
Will we be in a position to say something definitive?
I don't know.
And, Ginger, can I just say one thing?
And this goes back to Brett, something that you said earlier.
I want the public to know we did not default to a monopole in Indie Hill Park.
We analyzed and derived data in conjunction with our consultants.
within the wireless facility working group.
And the data and the information said
certain things to us in that group.
And that's where a lot of this comes from.
So again, I want to state on the record,
we did not default to a monopole in Indian Hill Park.
And I think that's very, very important.
Joe, did you want to say something?
I did, Brian.
I got cut off before
and I know you had suggested Guard Hill.
Our committee has looked at that,
But there's a restrictive deed on that property that does not permit cell communication
So the town in the as there's a restrictive deed from the owner of that property
So I just want to clarify that with you well as I understand the restrictive deed was for emergency
purposes not restricting cellular per se
expressly prohibits private providers from being on there and
And it's a Westchester County is involved with that as well and there are other reasons I can explain why that site is not available for a private provider.
Okay, would it be okay to ask that you send a copy of the deed or your document?
I don't see that that would hurt. I don't think it's going to be particularly popular for
in town to suggest guard hill but if you would like to look at the deed you're welcome to.
I don't see it. Am I speaking out of turn, Eric?
I mean, look, there are multiple emergency services providers up there.
It's a Westchester County tower that is going up on there.
They control the tower and the town doesn't have a lot of say about what goes on that tower to be honest with you.
As far as providing that if you know.
So there are there are numerous issues that are involved with the guard hill site that really make it unavailable for a private provider and.
I understand that, you know, it works with the plan that's been presented tonight, but it is not an option, you know, for various reasons.
Yeah, that's not a sword we're following on. It's simply one of those proposals that could be feasible should all the other pieces align.
Yeah, I've thought about that once or twice too, usually figured out that it's not really there.
I think there are a lot of other alternatives.
So if we can get in touch with Verizon, I understand there's at least a Verizon contractor on the Zoom meeting,
and she should be able to put us in contact with the RF engineers at Verizon.
We may be able to make some headway on these things that you've been talking about.
Maybe you can really convince Verizon that this will be something that can be done quickly and efficiently.
what you say is true, it ought to be in their interest to do it as well.
So yeah, and a note on that front, I believe the town actually does have the ability to specify certain parameters around this.
So if the town were to say we require this type of a site or this type of an elevation, there may be a little bit more wiggle room than was being used.
I know that you've looked at a lot of different pieces of this.
So the next step for us would be to definitely sync up with Verizon and have a conversation.
And then we can come back and have further conversations on this.
But I think, you know, one of the reasons I mentioned doing this in a public forum is that if it just becomes another passing it around to another neighborhood kind of thing, it's going to be a problem.
So you have to, you have to figure on having people agree that this is something they are comfortable with in the areas that you end up suggesting.
You're going to have to find multiple sites instead of one.
I'm sorry, Diane.
I'm reiterating what you were saying.
20 million users as opposed to one is a high bar to get people to agree to.
And Diane, that's exactly what I was saying.
Let's be absolutely clear.
It's never been discussed as a 24 to one ratio.
Drop it.
Yeah.
There are multiple tower sites, so the one tower is not a non-starter because Verizon and the other wireless carriers will need more than one location.
Actually, we're not sure about that. If you're talking about some small cell things in Bedford Village, yes.
We've been told that with the Indian Hill one they will not need another macro tower.
Has that come from Verizon directly or did that come from an alternate source?
That's come from our consultants.
Okay. Verizon would need to be very clear and specify that and Verizon can't and wouldn't say they would never need another site.
We have not seen Verizon commit to that any time.
Well, they – I mean, they're not going to say it about any system, but if – the
point is, if we have a good argument to make for it, then they still have to prove that
they have a gap that they cannot fill any other way than putting in a tower.
It looks to us from what we've seen that with Indian Hill we will produce a situation
in which that's the case.
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, unfortunately.
And I respectfully disagree that our understanding of the federal guidelines say that you are
not allowed to require them to prove a gap because a gap is not the only determining factor.
There is capacity, there's coverage issues.
So we're really quite aware of that and one of the reasons why we're talking about
these small cells for the town centers, which is where the capacity issues are
likely to be to be greatest. So, you know, I quickly somewhere and I may have misunderstood
what was being said in the chat with somebody talked about what happens when satellite cell
service takes over. We better make sure we put a disassembling approval in every single
permit that we allow, because I would much rather see a satellite system doing it. I don't think that
we can suggest to Ryzen that they switch to satellites tomorrow in order to accommodate our
needs. Frankly, I think that the tower system was a dumb decision to make, which probably
which shows how little I know, but if somebody wants to suggest building a satellite cell
system in time to get us out of this, I'm more than welcome to the idea.
And we can all agree that you should put a decommissioning provision in the permits
that's something that's absolutely necessary.
Yeah.
And it's something that we have.
Yeah, Iridium already has a satellite system up and operating, and there is another one
with low-Earth orbiting satellites that is in military use right now, but I doubt if
you're going to see that as a replacement for the terrestrial-based systems in any
time soon.
I thoroughly agree.
I was just mentioning that it was mentioned in the chat as something of an alternative.
What we do see a great deal of is there's over about 800,000 sites that are going to be built over the next five years.
And almost all of those are going to be in the realm of what we've been suggesting, which is anywhere from 30 to 60 feet in height,
and put into the neighborhoods in order to get what we call nomadic service.
Nomadic service is the use of the phones in your homes, your residents, in your businesses,
in the roaming services, which are your highway and your streets and so on.
That's generally called roaming.
Almost all of the usage and requirements that wireless carriers are seeing is nomadic services.
guy, the 300-pound guy on his couch, likes his nomadic service.
No, I mean, we've often said to people who tell us that they don't want, you know,
they don't need the cell service, they're just fine at home.
If we ask them, are you willing to throw out your cell phone?
The answer is no.
And that's something else people have to realize.
But I have nothing inherent that there's a certain.
And home has you can do Wi-Fi cell calling so.
Absolutely.
You know, you don't need the cell powers for the home.
And the reason they have Wi-Fi calling is because the cell service is so bad in most homes nowadays.
It is fine.
It is not a necessity to supplement that.
I personally, I can't wait until the time when there is an alternative to cell phones.
And there is a part of me that has has argued that we're busy building 20th century technology
to serve a 21st century world, we're building our our electrical system on the basis of
19th century technology because all those telephone poles that we've actually been trying to get
rid of, by the way, by having them buried. Now, apparently, that's going by the wayside.
So we're putting all of our electrical systems on 19th century infrastructure. And that's
not working out real well for us these days, since storms are basically taking those
poles down on a regular basis, because they're so weighted down with other kind
of technology. So what I do like about your proposal is at least you're not,
we're talking about putting up new polls, not dangling it from the wooden polls that can.
Right. Indeed or out in our county, the Qualum County Public Utility District
has almost 100% changed out all of their polls from wood to fiberglass poles.
Just for that simple reason that wood poles age worse and clearly look worse and are less
pliable, if you will.
They break.
Yeah, they break.
They have problems.
So we've changed over to the fiberglass poles.
They look just like wood poles.
They have a hollow core.
We use them and it works.
But I agree with you.
It's the whole poll is a problem.
What we did find on one of the questions
that I think was asked was the fiber lines and stuff.
And we were successful at finding more than an abundance
of fiber along the routes and stuff
that we're looking at.
So we didn't find a lacking of connectivity
to our proposed plans.
Okay. Is there anything else that anyone has to say or add to this from my questions?
I don't think so.
Anything. So what you would like us to do is at least talk to Verizon. I can't guarantee anything because Verizon doesn't listen to us about a whole lot.
But we can approach approach them and ask them to talk to you.
I, Joe, are you comfortable having the gunners and people talk to the wireless committee.
As long as it's in an open session.
It's okay.
Good.
So if you want to set that up, I couldn't unmute myself and locked out here.
Yeah, we'd absolutely love to have an open discussion and open dialogue.
But again, I think it's very important that it that the public be able to not necessarily participate in the discussion because that will make it very difficult to get anything done I do understand that but yes, Joe.
He's moving again. Yeah, you've got to unmute him again.
Doing well with the sign language though.
Kim's working on it. He's still muted.
Thank you. Sorry, I keep getting muted. Absolutely. You know, you know, like I said to, you know, our committee's open minded. There's a lot of things that, you know, I wasn't going to go into technical stuff tonight about the voter receivers and comparing and our infrastructure.
So I think that, you know, we definitely welcome a conversation with you to, you know, for you to understand our system and kind of talk to you about the ins and outs and look at the comparisons of FirstNet.
And, you know, like I said, we already have sites we've had federal engineering working with us because again we have, you know, the goal of improving the police department site and making sure that they have, you know, in building coverage.
There's parts of the town right now that our police officers cannot communicate on their
two-way radio back to headquarters to request backup.
That's a problem.
So these are the things that we're trying to fill these gaps.
And that's, again, that police system is separate and apart from the system for the
first responders, FIRE, EMS, which is being built by the county.
So I think definitely, you know, an open dialogue, open discussion.
We welcome it, you know, again, because I think you'll understand a lot of the
problems that may be unique to this area with some of the systems that you've used
in other parts of the country that may not work here.
But again, our ultimate goal is protecting our first responders and making sure they
can make that call to get additional resources, to get back up, and that's a big thing.
That's a big priority.
And this is separate apart from a resident picking up the phone and dialing 911.
Absolutely.
Brian and Fred, if I may chime in when we do talk, and this is Kyle Carlton
and I'm one of the commissioners over in Bedford Village.
I would like to talk in detail with you
about your discussions of hardening the systems
and things of that nature,
because I know given up here in Bedford
where we deal with power poles being snapped all the time
from either cars driving into them
or more frequent and stronger storms uprooting them,
eight hours is not gonna be sufficient
to sustain the type of communications
that we have come to rely upon.
So when we have that discussion,
I really would look forward to talking to you about hardening those systems because,
as Joe just said, not only a resident where I represent the taxpayers and I'm a resident,
so I have my personal vested interest, I'm also sore to protect my first responders,
so I want to ensure that they have everything they need as well.
Absolutely, Kyle. And I'm a two-way guy first and foremost because I love this stuff.
But I can tell you that I've got a broad range of experience in keeping sites on the air.
All of my years with T-Mobile and AT&T, I would say that in my portfolio, I easily had 50,000 generators across my networks.
And that's not bragging. That just is fact. That's just a lot of generators.
And as we went through Katrina and the other places, I can tell you that easily 20% of the generators would fail on a regular basis, even though they're maintained.
So they don't always start, and you have to go through that kind of problem for a while.
I'm an absolute believer that you need to harden, and I just, again, a 911 facility, you need to harden it.
And there's a metrics to use that's also in the fire code metrics on hardening.
But what do you need to harden?
And what don't you need to harden is more important.
I can speak to that.
I'd be glad to help you guys out.
My first priority has got to be with this group that we're working with
and keeping them tempered to a point where we're talking about the solutions
that the wireless community can bring to solve this problem.
And that's what I do best.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate your help with it.
I just want to make you understand it a bit from our perspective as well,
and the realities of what we have been dealing with since for the last couple
years that we are seriously involved in trying to find a workable alternative. In fact, Joe,
forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but I think the notion of a tower in Indian Hill Park really
started with the fact that that's not that you had originally felt it was an ideal location
for the radio tower for the emergency?
Yes, there's already an existing tower there,
and this federal engineering did some mapping,
obviously as a part of our discussions,
and that's where this came from, was obviously,
our plan, like I said to you before, was running parallel.
Cellular was running one track, emergency communications,
two-way was running on a separate track,
but obviously it would make sense to co-locate the cell
and radio when applicable and when possible to do that.
So federal engineering did mapping for us
of various sites throughout the town.
Indian Hill already has a voter receiver up there.
There's a voter receiver obviously that you had in,
you know, at Katona,
there's a voter receiver in Mount Kisco
and there is the main transmitter that is on Guard Hill.
And that's the, for the police department system.
We're not talking about the fire control,
sorry, Worcester County emergency system.
So this is kind of how this discussion came up
And there was, you know, questions about it and the planning board had asked what, you know, what sites the emergency, you know, wireless is looking at for emergency radio communication.
And that's that's basically where the discussions came along.
Yeah, and Joseph, we even looked outside of the township borders for other facilities that were helpful.
So, you know, that are already built and we did find, we did find three facilities, at least three facilities that would add in and fix some of the coverage polygons that we saw in the 450.
Yeah, we have as well. So obviously the PDS and VHF system, we've looked at other sites
because we can obviously co-locate and work with that. We have agreements with other towns
to work together. Westchester County has other towers that are getting put up. So we obviously
looked outside of the town because the size of our town and their quarters, we boarded
the town of Lewisboro, the town of Pound Ridge, the village of Mount Kisco. So
So we did look at that stuff, you know, we're not done, you know, we're, you know, far from
done, but this was initial again.
We were trying to meet the goal of, you know, solidifying and fixing the police department's network,
while also making sure we had a townwide, you know, our goals have a townwide 400 frequency
for the whole town of Bedford only separate and apart from Westchester County's radio system. So
that way every single town agency, police, fire, DPW, EMS could all be on one channel during a storm
or other town town-wide event.
Okay I think that we can probably bring you to
a close at the moment with the understanding that we will Eric I guess
we have we have to talk about how to approach Verizon about this about at least
asking them to to talk to you I will say I don't know if they will but I
I hope they do,
to see if there's something from their point of view that they could accept
looking into.
But I think one thing that they probably would look for is some indication of an acceptance
of this approach by someone who's impacted by it.
In other words, a petition with hundreds of signatures on it, again, against something
is powerful, but without a petition saying that they're for something else, I don't
know.
We need to find sites that are feasible, so if anybody out there has a suggestion
of a site that is feasible but can even be a starting place for one of these smaller ones.
Watch what I say, because I know that Bedford Village are probably doable, the ones we're talking
about, but the ones in Bedford Village aren't the ones that are the problem for this. The
Playhouse site, I don't believe anybody's talked to the Playhouse people, but I think that,
But from my perspective, that's an excellent idea.
I think something smaller and more hidden behind the water
tower is certainly something looking at.
I just don't think it belongs where
it will go over Sunnyfield Farm.
But that's something we could test out with a balloon
test or something to see what the impact would be.
But the problematic sites are the ones out in the rural area where the smaller
types
of antennas may not fit in quite as well because it's not an urban enough area.
But if we can find something like that, then we should look for it, but we have a time
constraint and people have to understand that.
And to clarify, the time constraint is deciding whether the town would accept one of the other
two current proposed towers, correct?
Yes.
Okay, so it's kind of an up-and-down situation, a yes-or-no situation that has to be made
come March.
To make a decision, correct?
Correct.
Make a decision.
I mean, we are free to make whatever decision we feel that we can defend in court, but
But
we have to make a decision.
On that note, I think if no one has any objection, we'll end this part of the meeting.
The one other thing I did want to address, and the only reason that I have kept it close
to public input is that I don't think the people will object to what I'm going to
say about it.
And we did get a letter from the Indian Hill group talking – actually, I believe it was
from – the letter was from the attorney for Indian – for the friends of Indian
Hill Park, but I believe the report was actually from the Gunnison Corporation about
the balloon test we did.
I'm going to say up front, it wasn't everything we hoped it would be.
And so we believe we do – if we do go forward with the – with exploring the possibility
of Indian Hill, we will need to do another balloon test.
So that's the starting point.
There are a couple of things about the article that I'd like – the report that I'd
like to clarify.
so let me get my notes here.
The first point you made was the photos provided by IHPC show
the balloons tethered to be caught in the trees. That was one of the problems and one of the
reasons that I do think that we would be wise to, I think, really require to redo the test
it wasn't with you.
However, it is true that the engineer did add 10 feet to it to try to make up
for that. That was a difficult way of doing it. The comment was made in your letter that shortly
there after they took the 10 feet away. I was one of the people who was doing the photography
for the balloons and we, after another comment, we were in fact in touch via text with each other.
I was told when the 10 feet was added and I was told when it was taken off. I had actually
finished taking all of my photos by the time the 10 feet was taken off. It wasn't shortly,
But it was actually well over an hour later
that the 10 feet came off.
Nonetheless, I think it still is a less than precise way
of determining the proper height.
It was a serious attempt to give as honest a measure
as possible.
And I will say that what I heard,
you know, when we went around for this balloon test for myself and for the
member of the town boy that was with me doing the photography in the places I
did it, we were treated very cordially and I appreciated that. I was very
disturbed to hear the extent to which those who were doing the balloon test
were treated with anything but courtesy. The behavior of some of the
neighbors was so poor that some of the neighbors actually thought out some of the town volunteers
who were doing this later and apologized for the behavior of their friends.
This is, everybody who's doing this is a volunteer for the town and I wish people would at least
recognize that. You don't have to, well, I'm going to leave it at that.
that. The next item is that you were not aware of any communication between parties controlling
the balloon test, photographing the balloons. We were in communication. I assume everybody
else got the messages. I got the message when the balloon was at full height. It was
texted to me and I was in communication by text for most of the day. I was told
when the tent feet came down, that's the only personal assurance I can give, but I don't believe
I was the only one who was told about it.
It says it appears the balloon tether was not accurately
pre-measured, but was measured incrementally by hand while releasing the balloons. Actually,
what I'm told, and I believe there's photographic evidence of this,
but what I was told is that it was pre-measured and that we have photographs of it laid out
in the parking lot we measured. It was measured when it was taken down. And if I'm right, Michael,
Michael Tierney, were you the one who actually measured it coming down with the tether?
I
was with Tom when we all measured it. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So it was measured coming down.
And then as the observer, before the supervisor and engineer, increased the length and then
shortly thereafter returned it, it didn't seem like a very short period of time to me.
I managed to visit most of the places that were on my list.
The next one, the size of the balloons used was significantly smaller than the specifications
announced by the town. This week, we really need to apologize for, there was a typo. There
was never any intention of doing it with a 15-foot balloon because we had been told, this
was the first time we did the balloon test on our own. We had been told that a 15-foot
balloon would not work for a balloon test. You seem to indicate that it would. Have you
ever used a 15-foot balloon for a balloon test? We were told the wind would take it,
but if it's possible, we had asked for that earlier, one had been told that the balloon
would simply float all over the sky at 15 feet.
Just to quickly answer that question, yes, it is possible. In fact, there are firms
and there's one nearby to your vicinity that could provide a professional test and they
have a balloon of that size that they would raise. They actually use a winch to get it
up and down so that it provides that visual representation. And then they follow it up
with a photo simulation of the proposed tower overlaid on that so you get a full representation
of how that would look. If you could give us the information about how to contact
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, it's not the first time we've been given bad information.
I'm not talking about your information.
I'm talking about the information that you can't use a 15-foot balloon.
Understood.
But we had never intended to use a 15-foot balloon.
That was a typo on all the other material that went on.
It was always a 5-foot balloon.
Now, it didn't end up being a 5-foot balloon either,
and that's also another reason why I think we do need to redo it
Because of the difficulty of getting the material in and to some extent because of the distraction created by
Questions about whether they could enter the property properly and that kind of thing
They did not manage to they couldn't get enough helium into the balloons to
to fill it. And so they were undersized, I think probably about three feet. And frankly,
I don't think that was enough. We didn't think it was enough when Verizon did it for the first
tickery lane balloon test. But we've done multiple balloon tests at almost every one
of these sites, so I don't know why this one should be any different, and I think it's
incumbent on us to do another balloon test.
So I don't argue at all with the comments about it being less visible.
One of the reasons we didn't worry as much about that is because you were quite right,
the balloon test should be followed up with photosimulations of the tower.
And so what's really most important about it is that the balloon gives you the height
of the tower, which we all did see, but again, it makes more sense to do a fresh test that
everybody is actually considering.
I see somebody saying, why not send a correction?
We didn't catch the typo until we got this letter.
When we first saw the notion that
we had said that it was 15 feet somewhere. We all said, what do you mean? We never meant
15 feet. And then we looked back at the correspondence and saw that there was a type that we hadn't
caught. All I can do is apologize for that. I can't change it. Well, that's not all I
can do. I can also say that we're going to do another balloon test.
So that's,
I think
I
think that's about all that we can do at this point.
Oh, I guess the one other thing is that if you have any other suggestions,
if your consulting firm has other suggestions about the way to do the balloon test,
we would welcome them.
We don't know if they have to be reasonable.
We can't spend half the town's money on it, but within, in reason.
And the one other thing that people should be aware of is that the parks and recreation
is going to be clearing a footpath, just a footpath so that we can get into the park
without going on private property because there have been complaints about the town,
including during the balloon test, the town having to go on private property because
of the underbrush on our access. So there will be some trimming done as minimal as
Not possible, but having a path put up through what has always been intended to be the access route to the park.
So you will see sometime in the next week or two that that will happen.
Now, we still should discuss the balloon test results that we have and we will do that at a later date.
We didn't want to do both of them together.
I understand that you have – in fact, I've seen the presentation that the neighbors have
put together, and I think it's legitimate for you to show that.
But we haven't finished putting ours together as well, and I think it makes sense to do that
all in one go-round.
So we will be doing that, but we'll be doing it when we're all fresh and not
at the end of the meeting.
That's fine. Brian did request that he could get unmuted again. He had a comment on the
balloon test.
Sure. Kim, you can do it.
Sorry, Kim. Not trying to drive carpal tunnel your way.
There we go.
Okay. Sorry. So balloon tests are very difficult at best. And getting a large balloon adds
adds the extra pull. I disagree with whoever said that they catch wind. Obviously there's more surface area for the wind,
but the pull on the balloon chain itself should be about 60 pounds or so, and then it can be fairly straight at that point.
And the critical element to me on a balloon test is the exact spacing between the upper
and the second balloon so that we can use calipers and actually use that measurement
as an exactness for all of the other dimensions.
And we use a picture of caliper in order to gauge that.
But without that, then you're just guessing at heights and other measurements.
Okay, well, that actually is an excellent suggestion.
If you could get us the information, the people you're recommending to work with,
and we'll look into that and probably consult with you before we do something,
do a second go-round with it.
If it's okay, we'll email that over to you.
That would be great.
Okay.
So at this point, I think I'm going to bring this out of the evening to a close.
Jeff, is there anything else that we need to do tonight on this matter?
No.
Okay.
I appreciate everyone's coming.
I know you didn't hear what you wanted to hear.
We are still going to look into these things. I guess maybe I was hoping too much for a magic
bullet. This isn't a magic bullet, but it still is something worth looking into. And I ask you
to take seriously the challenge I laid out, which is that part of finding solutions is
finding people who believe in the solutions enough to be part of those solutions themselves.
And I will be very interested to see if that becomes a reality.
I look forward to the challenge, but I want to remind everybody that it's not our job
define sites for Bedford. It's not our obligation to do that. Yeah, but we're willing to do
what we can. And I think you ought to let Susan Hoffman just give a couple of comments
on her presentation, not necessarily to give the presentation, but she put a lot of effort
into that, into that work.
And I know she did and she's going to be given an opportunity to do the entire
presentation, but we made it clear quite early on that we were not going to do the actual
discussion of the balloon test today. We were told that that was perfectly acceptable and
nobody told us anything about Mrs. Hoffman's presentation until I believe it was late
morning or early afternoon. And we have not had any time to put together hours. It does
not make sense to have two separate meetings on the presentation. I assure Mrs. Hoffman
that she will have the opportunity to present her work. And I do appreciate the time she
has spent on it, but we're not going to do it tonight. We're not going to change our policies
at the last minute when we hadn't what we thought was an agreement. So thank you, and
I appreciate it, and I apologize, Mrs. Hoffman, but I think you – I promise you you will
have the opportunity to do it, and probably to an audience that's more awake than
this one probably is at the moment.
Thank you.
Okay.
The next item on our agenda then is to simply consider our next three meeting dates, I believe.
And if somebody can get the agenda out, you can tell me what they are.
The next date is February 8th.
the 22nd of February and March 8th.
They're all Mondays and we all discuss 7 p.m.
And that's okay with all of you, Diane, is that they all work for you?
And Michael, you can get here at 7 p.m. on a Monday. It works for me.
I think that's the last thing on our agenda.
could I have a motion to close the meeting?
So moved.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you.
Everybody in favor?
Aye.
Anybody opposed?
The meeting is now closed.
Thank you all for coming.
I suspect we will all meet together again
in the not too decent future.
Take care.
Thank you. Good night,
everybody. Good night. Take care.