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Approved 7/8/2013 OC Board of Adjustment – 6/10/2013 Page 11 of 92 1 Desiree Goldman: Yes. 2 3 James Carter: You strongly support this tower? 4 5 Desiree Goldman: Absolutely. It is not a good thing to not be able to have cell service at a house 6 and more and more people, our society is changing. Five years ago that would have never been a 7 question. Every time I go to a house people pull out their phone to see if they are getting service. 8 That is one of the first things they do when they consider looking at buying a house. 9 10 Larry Wright: Can you repeat your title and who you represent? 11 12 Desiree Goldman: My title is Legislative Affairs Liaison from the Greater Chapel Hill Association of 13 Realtors. 14 15 Michael Harvey: Next on the list is Aaron Nelson. 16 17 Aaron Nelson: My name is Aaron Nelson. I have been duly sworn. I am the President of the Chapel 18 Hill/Carrboro Chamber of Commerce. We represent 1,000 businesses in the Greater Orange County 19 area as well as 450 realtors. First I want to thank you for serving. This is an important issue and 20 many of us have left our family and home. My organization is a volunteer membership organization, 21 1,000 small businesses pay membership dues and so do 450 realtors. I am here to speak on their 22 behalf particularly we also have 100 sole proprietors in home based businesses among our members. 23 One of the things we have been hearing for a while is complaints about cell phone services in Orange 24 County. Some folks that move from other areas wonder how they could live in the mountains of North 25 Carolina with better coverage than in rural North Carolina than they can get in a county with the 26 highest per capita income in the state of North Carolina and they are disappointed with the services 27 so we have been petitioning and asking AT&T to improve their service as well as other providers. So I 28 want to say thank you to them for bringing forward a proposal to enhance the cell phone service and 29 answering the request of citizens of our community as well as businesses in our community to bring 30 this forward. Specifically, businesses need reliable cell phone services for both data and telephone 31 and text. Many businesses now communicate with their employees. There was a time when we 32 would touch to talk and we were using Nortel’s other systems but now we text in order to 33 communicate with employees. Businesses need that information to be able to take the order or find a 34 delivery location. I was talking to an auto mechanic. He has five locations and they had a brand new 35 Mercedes and they didn’t know how to reset the service light so his mechanic pulled out his phone, 36 Goggled it and watched a YouTube video on how to reset that high end Mercedes odometer so he 37 was using the data from the internet to conduct his business. I was talking with businesses in and 38 around Orange County and we just continue to hear that is what is important to them. For phone and 39 data, text to communicate with their clients and customers, to order, to find delivery in order to 40 communicate to the home office. We also hear from relocating and expanding businesses that this is 41 important. Desiree’s comments are ones we hear as well. Folks want to know before they locate 42 their business whether they have access to cell phone. They are choosing more and more not to use 43 land lines and are using wireless systems and for us we also carry the security. In the event that our 44 land line was cut at our office our security system has a cell phone mounted and that is the backup 45 system for loss of power. More and more business and homes do not need that so if we can improve 46 that cell phone coverage in the county we think that is really important. It is also important to us that 47 everyone has equitable access in the county. This should not be the case only if you live in certain 48 areas. We deserve equitable access and our rural areas have been left out too long and we are 49 grateful there is now a proposal and hope there are more coming in order to light up the entire county 50 so everyone has access to this important business resource, economic development tool and 51 communication too. 52 53