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145 . <br />Notes from the Thursday, January 26, 2006 Annual <br />Telecommunications Meeting <br />Meeting started at 2:00 p.m. in the Planning and Agricultural Center Food Lab. <br />Those in attendance include: <br />Glenn Bowles, Eddie Kirk, and Robert Davis — Orange County Planning and Inspections <br />Department <br />Rusty Monroe and Jackie Hicks — The Center for Municipal Solutions <br />Todd Jones — Orange County Information Technology <br />Stephon J. Bowens and Saju Kallolickal — Cingular Wireless <br />Robin Blanton and Wes Smith Piedmont EMC <br />Bryce Pickens, Tony. Queen, and Daryl Teed — Crown Castle <br />David Newton — Faulk & Foster — Clear Wire <br />After a short introduction, Robin Blanton discussed Piedmont's desire to construct a 350' <br />replacement tower on their property on NC 86 South. They want to improve radio coverage as <br />fall south as Chatham County. The tower is part of a service area improvement, which includes <br />new towers in Caswell and Person Counties. They want to be able to triangulate with the new <br />towers for better telemetry and communication services and data sharing between their various <br />offices and field personnel. They have been approach by the State Highway Patrol to co- locate <br />on the new tower. In addition, their old tower in the Hurdle Mills areas, just south of the Person <br />County line, will be available for co- locating public and private wireless antennas. <br />Cingular Wireless is presently looking at two sites. One, in the Buckhorn Road area for co- <br />location ( #368 -457), and the other for a new, 199' tower site ( #368 -400B in the Whitfield Road <br />area. There are other areas in Orange County where Cingular has poor coverage. Financial and <br />budgetary constraints limit their ability to construct in those areas during 2006. <br />Clear Wire would like to co- locate on a county -owned tower on Eno Mountain. They will <br />provide Orange County with a proposed lease document. The site is within the Town of <br />Hillsborough's Extra Territorial Zoning Jurisdiction. They will apply to the Town for an <br />Electrical permit and to Orange County for a lease arrangement. <br />Crown Castle is looking at up to eight sites in Orange County to build monopole towers from <br />175' to 199' high. They have no secured land leases at this time. They suppied us with a map <br />and other documents locating their general search radii. <br />Todd Jones discussed Orange County's interest in point -to -point microwave communication <br />opportunities, which could be leveraged as part of the permitting process. There will be many <br />considerations, particularly line of sight capabilities with other receiving county microwave <br />stations. We current pay around $18,000 a year for a single run of leased fiber, and we looking at <br />over $100K per year in interconneting our major compuses with lease fiber. Any microwave <br />opportunities would reduce or eliminate recurring charges, which would help stretch the County's <br />budgets considerably. The proposed Piedmont Electric Tower is particularly intriguing. <br />