Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The meeting covered discussions on potential bylaws for 5G small cell wireless and abandoned buildings, along with several zoning amendment proposals including hotel room limits, overlay district extensions, and modifications to the Simon's Rock campus overlay district. The board scheduled future meetings to delve into these topics and also addressed public comments and permitting process concerns.
Just a quick recap. We've approved the minutes. We just started talking about IO3 bylaw and then in terms of 5G and small cell wireless. The town manager did find a sample bylaw that Barnes were as in effect. I'm not reviewed it yet, but I can share it with all of the essentially the issue with 5G wireless antennas and small cell wireless telecommunications networks. In a nutshell, the federal law allows these things to be essentially placed where needed, and there's there's little control that the municipalities have over where these go. Um and in most cases, these are in public right, for example, on telephone poles or standalone poles. So something with public right and what is not controlled by its model, and that's why the general in general code file, general pilots. Um what some towns have done, I believe Pittsfield may also have done this in relation to Barnstable. What some towns have done has been past regulations to say um try to try to say this is where we prefer them to be co-located on polls with other facilities or designed in a certain side where they should look a certain way, you know, they should just be big eyes every 50 feet down the main road towards the end of so the bylaws uh on 5G and small cell generals generally have to do with preferred placement and preferred um aesthetics if you want, and usually some sort of process for the telecommunications companies to seek those permits, but in general, those permits can't be unusable with held. I'm not sure if that's the specific language of the telecommunications act, but something like um, so these are antennas, yes. In general, I'm not like we have are they repeaters? These are like every 100 feet or something, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure the exact distance, but they're they're very frequent. And and do they I don't know the size of the transformer with any idea? My sense is that in some cases you may have um like equipment to power them, uh you put on the ground, could be on the ground, it could be co-located on a utility pole, maybe help the ball of the snow line like helping cleaned up, you can get like a transform and one, or maybe something small. The antenna may look like the sheet of tape, you know, that's uh um just for speculation. That's you can make but no, they're not big, uh they're not big towers. Right, right. Um, so that's not so that that 5G small cell wireless is something that these two goals have decided that it should be something um rated. What does it do for us? Gives you some control about where they go and what they look like. We ask your question again very specifically. What are you trying to do? What I'm trying to understand is what they first off, what is it? What ad is it performing for us and why we're happy to have them or we need them? That's my first question. And my major question. Yeah, that that's probably we probably need to do a little research. Um, I'm not an expert and wireless telecommunications, but my understanding is that the smaller, more frequent antennas allow data to travel more quickly and help enable things like autonomous vehicles and and it is a the direction the technology has is moving, and probably is already moved beyond 5G, and we're gonna be in a situation of playing catch-up, but maybe something like this sets up precedent that we do want to have some control as a community over how it's cited. But I mean, Chris is 100% right, the FCC regulates these sorts of installations as part of like you know, the common good, and so local communities have very little control over the technology agenda. So the question is do we want to just let it happen or do we want to try and guide it? But is it something that would normally just happen in the downtown area or in Musicronic or something? You're not gonna be doing rural landscapes with the site, but we don't know. I don't know, either. Um and my other experience is that when we have say we have a cell tower application come before us, right? We've had several of those. And when we look at the cell tower applications, there's like a frame system that holds pieces of equipment, right? And among those pieces of equipment are the antennas, and they're like, you know, small boxes that get mounted on.