12/23/2003 Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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would be right in her backyard. She has the bleachers to look at every day and the tower should be somewhere else, perhaps the back of the school. She agreed with Mrs. Puinno as far as children playing near the proposed site. Mr. Scarl came forward again and asked who will be servicing the path, and plowing the snow. He wondered if it would be the School Board or Sprint. Mr. Greg Pizzuli came forward and asked what this proposal would do to their property values. If the tower is put up and people perceive it as a health hazard, he will have to take less on his home if he goes to sell it. Mr. Charles Oley came forward and said he has been a resident for about 30 years. He said he is all for progress but he heard Sprint say this would be the best place to put the tower and a representative from the school say it would be financially profitable for them. He said with all of Lorain being commercial, he wondered why they have to invade the school grounds strictly for revenue. They have a sub-par stadium and other communities are building new schools. He mentioned the amount of traffic on,the walkway with kids going to and from school. He asked if there could be more viable spots for the tower. He brought up the issue of servicing the site and fire trucks. Mr. Rymarczyk said there will be 2 variances the applicant would need unless the board would waiver it. It would be for the lighting and the landscaping buffer, which is required to be 15 feet by the code. He also pointed out if they relocate the site or decrease the size of the driveway it would have to go back to the Safety Department for another review. Mrs. Jane Parker came forward and said she has lived on Burns for 50 years and she does not like the way the city is going. She said the board mentioned putting the tower down by I-480 and she said there have been 4 vehicles that have come off on to Burns and the last one was a tanker truck. She has taken a petition around and Dennis Kucinich has tried to help them. She asked what would happen if they put the tower by the highway and a tanker knocks it down. She said it is not the right location. Anulicant's Remarks Mr. Richards said there was a question regarding the road base, service and maintenance. The road will have to be designed to accoinmodate truck traffic. The width would be increased by 2 feet and assuming the road base is not capable of handling truck traffic, then the entire path will have to be redone. Mr. Koeth indicated that would have to be addressed by the city safety forces. Mr. Richards said with regard to the 2 variances mentioned, the lighting is self-explanatory. The intent of the code when it was written was that no unnecessary lighting be placed on a tower. They are not doing that. It will not be lit at the top. They are simply relocating the existing lighting array onto the new structure. With the landscaping, in order to keep the pole in compliance with a 300 foot setback and to try to keep it as close as possible to the existing light pole, there is not enough room to put 15 feet of landscaping between that and the path. They are going with the maximum that they can make it at this point. The parking has been accommodated on the plan. He said with regard to the staging area for the band, Sprint designs a site with co-locations in mind so the maximum amount of carriers can use the tower eliminating a need for new structures in an area. In this instance, they can shrink the compound down into a configuration that would just enclose Sprint's monopole and the bay station equipment and leave the future co-locators the task of coming back and essentially expanding the compound and coming back and going through that exercise in order to minimize the amount of area that they occupy with the fence in landscaped area. Closinz Remarks Chairman Koeth said he would like to table the proposal. He would like the engineer to come back and show a couple of different sites. He said he is not opposed to them going off the school board site if they think there is a different place that will work. He suggested they look at the site closer to I-480. They heard the residents and some of their concerns so Sprint should take that into consideration. Mr. Yager said when one of these towers goes before one of the boards, in this city or any other city, there is a question of safety and the question of security comes up. He said he wonders how they as a body can understand this, as it is not their area of expertise. There are no reports in their hands that specify whether this is good, bad, or in between. That suggests to him there is some hearsay out there, otherwise they would have some kind of report in their hands. He would like some assurances, perhaps from the law department. He said the last tower that came through had a number of studies done within the report about heights, and various levels, and it all met up with the federal guidelines. This is in a larger social area than 6