All right, is everybody ready?

All right, thank you.

Once again, good evening, everyone.

Thank you for being here with us tonight.

The regular session of the Queen Creek Planning and Zoning will now come to order.

Victoria, will you please call roll?

Chair Gillette?

Here.

Vice Chair Ballard?

Here.

Commissioner Baldwin.

Here.

Commissioner Bordez?

Here.

Commissioner Hale.

Here.

Commissioner Matheson.

Commissioner Young?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you, Victoria.

Will everyone stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Thank you, everyone, for that.

Members of the public may address the planning commission on items not on the printed agenda.

Members of the commission may not discuss, consider, or act on any matter raised during public comment.

Requests to speak must be submitted through the clerk.

Please observe the time limit of three minutes.

Are there any members of the public that wish to speak on items not printed on the agenda?

Seeing that there are none, we will move to the consent agenda.

Matters listed under the consent agenda are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion and one vote.

Do we have a motion on the consent agenda?

Thank you for that, Commissioner.

Do I have a second?

Evening, Les.

Commissioners, happy holidays to you.

Uh so has the need for uh wireless communications, not only in coverage but also in uh technology and the fact that more and more people are used utilizing wireless communication beyond just cell phones.

Uh the uh town council in their 2025-2030 corporate strategic plan specifically identified uh the need for the town to work with uh technology providers and to provide uh services town wide to ensure that we have uh technology service throughout our community serving all of our residents and our businesses.

Um our existing code was established uh excuse me about five years ago, and uh since then there have been a few uh legislative changes uh that need to be addressed in our code as well as the fact that technology has just evolved and uh again as I mentioned earlier, the service demand is increasing.

So the service needs today for this this type of technology is even different than just a few years ago.

So with our amendments, we're really looking at uh the main objective of trying to streamline the entitlement review process.

Uh that is probably one of the key things that we hear repeatedly from folks is as they want to establish uh uh wireless communication facilities, primarily the larger towers in our community is is the process that they have to go through.

Um as you're likely aware at this point in time uh the code requires a hearing before the commit uh the planning commission, and you're recommending body to town council uh for all conditional use permit uh related uh items.

And in this instance, what we're proposing is that uh for those uh towers, those if the infrastructure items that do require conditional use permit, that the planning commission would be the side deciding body.

It would not require council action.

We are also uh proposing a number of other changes.

Uh one having to do with small uh cell antennas.

Uh you'll probably see if you haven't seen them popping up, you'll see a lot of those coming into our community uh in the near term.

We have approximately 20 right now in the permit or our development process, and probably the latest one.

If you haven't seen it, uh you'll see it after I tell you is right on Ellsworth Loop near Olive Garden.

There's a brand new uh small cell antenna that just was installed that's in association with one of our street lights.

And so those are going up throughout our community.

Um but those uh uh are now uh outright allowed within the public right away.

So there was both federal and state law uh that uh now has taken away the discretionary permit process at the local level, and as long as they are established in the public right, it's an outright uh allowed use uh going through at the ministerial permit process, so basically a building permit.

So we would be proposing to amend the code to represent that.

We're also proposing that should there be the need for the small cell antennas to be established on private property that that would be an administrative review process.

It would not require a conditional use permit, it would just go through that administrative review.

Uh the other uh change that is identified within the text amendment is the allowance for administrative review to be done for what we're terming stealth infrastructure.

So those antennas that are incorporated into the into buildings that you don't even know they're there.

They're uh without any visibility whatsoever.

Um there are some examples in our community.