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OC Board of Adjustment – 6/8/2015 Page 13 of 68 1 Jeff Schmitt: Mr. Harvey, to the best of your knowledge, has there ever been any applications to Durham Coun ty to 2 eliminate the current height restriction on these monopole towers adding 20, 30 or 40 feet to an existing tower? 3 4 Michael Harvey: Not to my knowledge but I will point out to the board and we have captured this standard in our 5 Unified Development Ordinance and it is actually in part of the documentation Mr. Johnson submitted to you. State law 6 allows for increase in tower height where it doesn’t constitute a modification meaning you have to go back through a 7 process to get approval. If this tower was approved today at 125 feet, Mr. Johnson’s client could come back to the 8 county and propose an additional 15 feet of height two years from now and because it is under a certain threshold, it 9 would not have to go back through this board for review and appro val because it represents a minimal increase but I 10 can’t speak to Durham’s ordinance. 11 12 Tom Johnson: What you basically have under state law is a 15% increase in height or antenna if you go up to 20 feet 13 but I will have Mr. Kerlin address that, which is the most you can do on that America Tower without getting further 14 approval from Durham County. 15 16 Lee Kerlin: Generally, that is a practical amount. When a tower is designed, it is not designed to double its height by 17 attaching another tower on top of it so what would happen if you had a three carrier monopole may request one tier 18 above but when we are talking about 10 feet that is one thing, 70 feet would be a completely different tower. 19 20 Larry Wright: We are talking about co-locating on your tower and other towers. You have been in this industry for a 21 number of years, how does the industry look at a competitor other than T -Mobile coming in and co-locating on your 22 tower? How open are you to that? Not only you but a Verizon or AT&T? 23 24 Lee Kerlin: T-Mobile will not be the owner in this situation but we do own our o wn towers as well as Verizon, AT&T, 25 other towers. We readily share towers because it is not in our interest to build towers where we do no need to build 26 towers. We do not want to spend the money next to a Verizon tower if we could simply co-locate on a Verizon tower. 27 We extend that courtesy to them and they extend it to us. That reduces the number of towers in the community. 28 29 Tom Johnson: Even though T-Mobile is the initial carrier, the primary applicant is Skyway Towers and they are in the 30 business of leasing space on the tower so in this instance it is just like having an office building, what you may have 31 and you want to lease space in it. This tower is open for lease and to lease space to other carriers and that is not a 32 problem. T-Mobile wants the top spot on this tower. T-Mobile could need another spot at some point because they 33 need more room for antennas that could happen, but often times, once the tower is built it has more of an opportunity 34 for locations from other carriers. What Mr. Kerlin is saying is that even if you added the minimal amount you can add 35 on the tower assuming structurally it will handle it like the tower down Kerley Road, it will still not get high enough 36 because it is basically in a hole and it won’t get high enough to meet the objectives that T -Mobile has for this particular 37 site. 38 39 Mark Micol: If you co-locate on the Alltel tower, if you do two co-locations, would that dramatically improve the 40 coverage? 41 42 Tom Johnson: Your ordinance asked us to identify towers that are two miles away. That Alltel tower is 1.8 miles away 43 to the north, almost directly north. That is outside the search ring and under the state statute and even under your own 44 ordinance, it recognizes the fact that the search ring is of prime importance and under state law, we are not required to 45 look at anything outside the search ring and that is way outside the search ring. 46 47 Lee Kerlin: It definitely would not fill the requirement of the search ring. 48 49