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OC Board of Adjustment – 6/8/2015 Page 40 of 68 1 Johnathan Blitz: For the record, I would like to make a record of that, there is a hearsay exception. I read North 2 Carolina Rules of Evidence which would apply in this case and that hearsay exception provides that when a party 3 opponent makes a statement that statement can be entered into evidence in opposition to that party’s position in a 4 proceeding. 5 6 Tom Johnson: I know you are saying party opponent, she is not an applicant. 7 8 Johnathan Blitz: I’ll move on although she is listed as an applicant in the application package. 9 10 Tom Johnson: She is listed as the property owner and the property owner has to sign the application consenting to us 11 pursing as applicant but she is not the applicant. 12 13 Johnathan Blitz: So you don’t have a single Orange County resident in support of this proposed activity and in fact, 14 there has been an attempt to change up the application during the course of this hearing which I would also object to. 15 That change up is changing the application itself by changing the visual appearance of the tower. That is not allowed 16 and it shouldn’t be allowed. You shouldn’t make exceptions on the day of the hearing to allow them to introduce a 17 different proposal and I heard the charge by the member, David Blankfard, I am going to blow down your charge to a 18 couple simple words. You are the consenious of this community. It is your job to consider other factors that just the 19 pure economics of this. Other factors that just the pure bus iness decision that everyone in this room is concerned with 20 because they get to build this and walk away. The expert gets to charge his fee and probably already been paid. And 21 he gets to walk…. 22 23 Tom Johnson: Objection. That was addressed earlier. 24 25 Johnathan Blitz: You have the grounds under the UDO to deny this application. You are under no mandate to approve 26 it just because they come and propose it just because they come and propose it and say well, we can get a slightly 27 better signal from a much earlier uglier location. You don’t have to do that. You have a statutory to deny this and you 28 have the ordinance behind you to deny this and you also have two really critical pieces of evidence. Plus we have 29 heard Mr. Smith that adjoining property owners in the Lake Hogan subdivision actually had a more than one percent 30 lower property value. He tried to dismiss this by saying it is within a margin of error but the fact is that you can look at 31 the base facts and look at the property sales and form your own co nclusions and take into account his bias. Ms. Olive 32 just testified to the degradation of property and there was no objection. 33 34 Tom Johnson: I did object to it and continue objecting to that, she is not an expert and I object to any further argument 35 on that without expert testimony. 36 37 Johnathan Blitz: What this all shows, as somebody who has been around the courthouse for a while, is contempt. And 38 I don’t mean contempt in a way, let’s clap them in iron, we are going to come in here with some experts and we are 39 going to come in here with some outsiders and not have a single person who says I want better cell service. They don’t 40 even have that. They don’t have a single Orange County resident to support this. 41 42 Tom Johnson: I object to that because it violates the statute regarding questioning the business decisions. 43 44 Larry Wright: Sustained. 45 46 Johnathan Blitz: You don’t have to approve every monstrosity. What you have to do is apply the ordinance and you 47 have consider the opinions of the people who are g oing to live with this every day because they are the real experts on 48 an important factor in the ordinance and that is visual impact. The people who know what this area looks like. The 49 people who drive through it every day who live there who come and whe el nursing residents out of the home so they 50