On December 13, 2015, after 12 months of silence, Dynamic
Towers, Inc. (DTI) filed a revised application for construction of the 120 foot
high cell tower at the Sailfish Marina. Like Sleeping Beauty, the cell tower project
awakens.
Background
On December 15, 2015 after five postponements, the Martin County Board of County
Commissioners (BOCC) decided to send the second application for a cell tower back to the Local
Planning Agency (LPA) because of a “scriveners” error in the newspaper
announcement regarding the size of the proposed re-zoning (postage stamp
zoning). See earlier posts on this zoning tactic. The postage-stamp zoning has gone away so this makes the return to the LPA based on zoning a bit Kafkaesque.
The BOCC gave DTI one year to come back to the LPA for a new
hearing. This is not in the record – it
is the interpretation of the (now former) County Attorney Michael Durham, in a separate memo
that he filed with the BOCC on March 31, 2016.
He determined that if the applicant came back with a new application by
Dec 15, 2016, then it could proceed back thru the process, because of the
“scriveners error”.
The Revised Application
DTI filed a new application on Dec 13, 2016. You can see it here
(warning – very large file).
This new application is very different from the original but
retains some important similarities
(1) The same
tower design is proposed to be constructed in same location.
(2) The tower
will NOT initially be a cell phone tower.
AT&T, who said it needed the tower for cell phone coverage has severed its business connections with DTI, and DTI does not
have any cell phone company lined up as a lead tenant on the tower. Therefore,
there is no longer any demonstration of need for a tower as required by Martin County rules for cell phone towers.
(3) The tower
will be used to provide “wireless internet service” to local residents. DTI
claims that Comcast, AT&T, DISH, and DIRECT-TV do not provide adequate Internet
Service (ISP) and it will meet this need from antennas on this tower.
(4) The tower
will also be used to provide important emergency 911 service for Martin County residents
and for local emergency service providers.
(5) The tower
will also be used to provide communications for Sailfish Marina.
(6) Eventually,
the tower will be used for cell phone service, and will be integrated into
“Firstnet”, which is a proposed nationwide network of emergency communications
facilities sponsored by Federal Government.
(8) The
request for re-zoning the "postage stamp" has been withdrawn.
No explanation is provided in the application other than “county staff
says this is not needed”.
Schedule
We have already engaged the County staff again. We have asked them about the schedule, and
they said that they plan to issue their staff report sometime in the next two
weeks. A meeting with the LPA will be
scheduled once the staff report has been issued. The County rules for
notification of the neighbors have changed since 2015, so many more neighbors
should be getting letters notifying them about the tower, their entitlement to intervene in the hearing, and the meeting date and time. However, because this is NOT an application
to construct a tower for cell phone service, the County is not bound by the FCC
rules regarding the time it can take to review the application.
We will be providing additional details about our concerns
and the issues in new blog postings. Please review earlier postings for detailed information about the project process to date.
Stay tuned and stay engaged. We have done a lot of research over the past
year. There are many issues that the
developer needs to address before the County can approve this project, if they
follow all of the Federal, State, and Local regulations. To date, they
have not followed the rules, but we intend to point them out to all interested
parties.
