TELECOMMUNICATIONS – City exerts more control over cell towers
The City Council on Tuesday night passed a set of ordinances intended to better regulate cell phone tower installations in city right-of-ways. In doing so, the council began the process of addressing an issue that has drawn complaints from residents irate over newly installed towers near homes — and several more that are planned to be installed — by cell phone carrier AT&T. The ordinances defer to federal laws that give carriers the right to install towers but give residents the right of free appeal on aesthetic grounds and the city more power to control those aesthetics. Mayor Steve Napolitano, who had requested the item be agendized, said that the city’s approach is to respect federal laws while still exerting what ability the city has to minimize impacts of cell phone equipment on its streets. “The idea here is to adopt [the ordinance] so we retain control to the extent possible,” Napolitano said. The new ordinances, one of which was adopted as an urgency ordinance, were also crafted so that the city maintains the ability to quickly change its approach, in light of what City Attorney Quinn Barrow described as a “fluid” area of legal policy. The California Supreme Court on April…
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