Orange County NC Website
Approved 3113117 <br />1 Ben Levitan: This is from the application. Ok, and the left is the before of the existing condition <br />2 and the right is what improvement the tower is going to provide. You can see the yellow line on <br />3 the left chart, that's Mount Carmel Church Road. And you can see red is really good coverage, <br />4 green is pretty good coverage, blue and gray that's pretty spotty coverage. That certainly could <br />5 use some improvement. Alright now, on that same chart look, there's another road to the left, just <br />6 a black line. That's 15 -501. You can see when you're driving off 15 -501 that's pretty good <br />7 coverage up and down that road. Ok so, this is what's existing. Go to the right side of the page <br />8 and what you can see is this is what's going to change. Alright, look at the yellow line. We would <br />9 like that yellow line, we would like the coverage to look like it does on 15 -501. We still have major <br />10 gaps. This new cell tower that's been added here provides so good coverage right around the <br />11 tower itself, but you're driving along Mount Carmel Church Road and you've still got big gaps in <br />12 service. It's not fulfilling the goal. The way to fulfill the goal here would be to put three 27 -50 -foot <br />13 towers along this road. Especially where that big blue gap is and that would solve the problem <br />14 from Mount Carmel Church Road. This tower's obviously not solving the problem. You can see <br />15 right from their own propagation survey. You're in that spot with still that power. Ok so that's the <br />16 number one reason I don't think this tower fulfills goal number one. Let's go to goal number two: <br />17 offload UNC's cell tower. Ok look at the coverage on the left side. We've got this valley of <br />18 coverage pretty much where Mount Carmel Church Road still is. You can see south of the UNC <br />19 Campus it's blue, it's gray, it's light blue. Kind of poor coverage there. Look at the right. You still <br />20 have that valley of coverage. You basically... you can see the lower, you can see where the UNC <br />21 Campus coverage starts in green. That does not change substantially. I mean, this is a big <br />22 investment. Putting up a cell tower is a million bucks and it's going to be $20,000 - $30,000 a year <br />23 to maintain. About $20,000 on leases and electricity is what? $500 a month, by itself. Broadband <br />24 is going to be about $1,500 a year. If you're going to invest in coverage you're going to make sure <br />25 it actually fulfills the goal. It does not fulfill either of these goals, and that's my argument here. <br />26 <br />27 John Price: (Inaudible) <br />28 <br />29 Ben Levitan: Ok. So that's... I can stop there. And those are my two major points I want to bring <br />30 out. The technical design to solve these problems is completely different than what's being <br />31 proposed. <br />32 <br />33 John Price: Which brings me to my next question, which is in this letter of August 11, 2016, again, <br />34 Exhibit 4 to the application. Mr. Haughney states, "There are no alternative technologies available <br />35 which could provide the needed increase to coverage and capacity offload in the Clearwater Lake <br />36 area without the proposed new telecommunication tower ". Do you agree? <br />37 <br />38 Ben Levitan: It's absolutely wrong. That's incorrect. You can see from this that it does not solve <br />39 the problem. The alternatives, I've already stated: For UNC I would put small cells or enhanced <br />40 coverage within the campus, and for Mount Carmel Church Road you want smaller, targeted cell <br />41 towers. Cell towers, like I said, is like a radio station. Normally they put up the cell tower and it <br />42 provides coverage in a circular area around it. So on highways where you have specific problems, <br />43 like 1 -40, any highway, you don't make a circular cell tower. You put up a cell tower and you focus <br />44 it to go up and down the road because that's where you need the coverage. If you've got a lawn <br />45 sprinkler at home you understand this, you've got that strip at the front of your house that you <br />46 want to cover. You don't put a circular sprinkler on that because that water's going to mostly go <br />47 out in the street. On that strip you point these little sprinklers that point left and right that are going <br />48 to cover just the strip. So what's really needed for Mount Carmel Church Road is maybe one or <br />49 two smaller cell towers. I'd say 27 -foot to 50 -foot maximum and they can be stealth that are just <br />50 pointed straight up and down that road to provide focused coverage on that. On top of that can be <br />OC Board of Adjustment — 12/12/16 Page 108 of 156 <br />