Orange County NC Website
DRAFT <br /> <br />OC Board of Adjustment – 11/9/15 Page 108 of 156 <br /> <br />Ben Levitan: This is from the application. Ok, and the left is the before of the existing condition 1 <br />and the right is what improvement the tower is going to provide. You can see the yellow line on 2 <br />the left chart, that’s Mount Carmel Church Road. And you can see red is really good coverage, 3 <br />green is pretty good coverage, blue and gray that’s pretty spotty coverage. That certainly could 4 <br />use some improvement. Alright now, on that same chart look, there’s another road to the left, just 5 <br />a black line. That’s 15-501. You can see when you’re driving off 15-501 that’s pretty good 6 <br />coverage up and down that road. Ok so, this is what’s existing. Go to the right side of the page 7 <br />and what you can see is this is what’s going to change. Alright, look at the yellow line. We would 8 <br />like that yellow line, we would like the coverage to look like it does on 15-501. We still have major 9 <br />gaps. This new cell tower that’s been added here provides so good coverage right around the 10 <br />tower itself, but you’re driving along Mount Carmel Church Road and you’ve still got big gaps in 11 <br />service. It’s not fulfilling the goal. The way to fulfill the goal here would be to put three 27-50-foot 12 <br />towers along this road. Especially where that big blue gap is and that would solve the problem 13 <br />from Mount Carmel Church Road. This tower’s obviously not solving the problem. You can see 14 <br />right from their own propagation survey. You’re in that spot with still that power. Ok so that’s the 15 <br />number one reason I don’t think this tower fulfills goal number one. Let’s go to goal number two: 16 <br />offload UNC’s cell tower. Ok look at the coverage on the left side. We’ve got this valley of 17 <br />coverage pretty much where Mount Carmel Church Road still is. You can see south of the UNC 18 <br />Campus it’s blue, it’s gray, it’s light blue. Kind of poor coverage there. Look at the right. You still 19 <br />have that valley of coverage. You basically… you can see the lower, you can see where the UNC 20 <br />Campus coverage starts in green. That does not change substantially. I mean, this is a big 21 <br />investment. Putting up a cell tower is a million bucks and it’s going to be $20,000-$30,000 a year 22 <br />to maintain. About $20,000 on leases and electricity is what? $500 a month, by itself. Broadband 23 <br />is going to be about $1,500 a year. If you’re going to invest in coverage you’re going to make sure 24 <br />it actually fulfills the goal. It does not fulfill either of these goals, and that’s my argument here. 25 <br /> 26 <br />John Price: (Inaudible) 27 <br /> 28 <br />Ben Levitan: Ok. So that’s… I can stop there. And those are my two major points I want to bring 29 <br />out. The technical design to solve these problems is completely different than what’s being 30 <br />proposed. 31 <br /> 32 <br />John Price: Which brings me to my next question, which is in this letter of August 11, 2016, again, 33 <br />Exhibit 4 to the application. Mr. Haughney states, “There are no alternative technologies available 34 <br />which could provide the needed increase to coverage and capacity offload in the Clearwater Lake 35 <br />area without the proposed new telecommunication tower”. Do you agree? 36 <br /> 37 <br />Ben Levitan: It’s absolutely wrong. That’s incorrect. You can see from this that it does not solve 38 <br />the problem. The alternatives, I’ve already stated: For UNC I would put small cells or enhanced 39 <br />coverage within the campus, and for Mount Carmel Church Road you want smaller, targeted cell 40 <br />towers. Cell towers, like I said, is like a radio station. Normally they put up the cell tower and it 41 <br />provides coverage in a circular area around it. So on highways where you have specific problems, 42 <br />like I-40, any highway, you don’t make a circular cell tower. You put up a cell tower and you focus 43 <br />it to go up and down the road because that’s where you need the coverage. If you’ve got a lawn 44 <br />sprinkler at home you understand this, you’ve got that strip at the front of your house that you 45 <br />want to cover. You don’t put a circular sprinkler on that because that water’s going to mostly go 46 <br />out in the street. On that strip you point these little sprinklers that point left and right that are going 47 <br />to cover just the strip. So what’s really needed for Mount Carmel Church Road is maybe one or 48 <br />two smaller cell towers. I’d say 27-foot to 50-foot maximum and they can be stealth that are just 49 <br />pointed straight up and down that road to provide focused coverage on that. On top of that can be 50 <br />110