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Approved 7/8/2013 OC Board of Adjustment – 6/10/2013 Page 12 of 92 Michael Harvey: There are two more people actually…. Karen Kemerait who has spoken and Rusty 1 Monroe. Mr. Monroe (our telecommunications consultant) can answer questions. Next on the list is 2 David Lacava. 3 4 David Lacava: I have no additional comments. 5 6 Michael Harvey: Steven M. Howard. 7 8 Steven M. Howard: No additional comments. 9 10 Michael Harvey: Jeremy Browner. 11 12 Jeremy Browner: I have been duly sworn. I rise in support of this application. I am a sole practice 13 attorney in Chapel Hill and also the Vice-Chair for the Economic Development and Public Policy 14 Committee for the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Chamber of Commerce. I first want to draw your attention to 15 a couple of public policy interest of the county that are at stake here. One is the versification of the 16 tax base. One of the most important things we need to do is develop business in our community. 17 One of the most important….one of the more important areas now, in modern business, is 18 telecommunication and access to that. You have a couple of alternatives; of course we have satellite, 19 we have cable and we have terrestrial antennas that we are talking about today. Cable won’t extend 20 to rural areas because they can’t recover their investment. Satellite is very slow. It is available in 21 rural areas but it is slow and not useful for business applications so the only real way to bring 22 broadband in an effective manner is the use of terrestrial antennas which require them to be erected 23 and data services be put on top of them. Another public policy area that we are trying to do is 24 bridging the digital divide. The digital divide is from the ones that have access to broadband and 25 ones that do not. This is a very important tool, the internet, in education now. Also, not just business 26 but educating our children, need to have access to the various topics that teachers want them to have 27 access then enhance their learning ability. The entertainment is switching a lot to entertainment 28 through the internet. A lot used to be getting signals from broadcast TV, it switched to cable and now 29 it will be switching to entertainment through the internet. They did not testify whether or not 3G or 4G 30 would be more accessible. I am assuming 4G would be more accessible on these antennas. 3G and 31 4G, for your information, 4G is a faster data capability that allows faster communication with the data 32 traffic. Now, obviously voice is important but mainly what we are considering is data. Other 33 applications that are considered are agricultural applications. Agricultural applications use cellular 34 broadband to report moisture, to report sun, to report all sorts of data points that are available to gain 35 higher yield on agricultural fields. I wanted to stress that although some towers may be unsightly this 36 particular application the applicant has stressed greatly about the lack of harm, cosmetic or actual 37 harm. They have had an expert testify about property and the impact of property prices. They have 38 had blue tests that talked about the visibility of the antenna after it is erected. All of which that these 39 have minimal on the surrounding community and we talked about the impact versus what we are 40 trying to achieve through a public policy, diversify our economic tax base, bridge the digital divide and 41 bring in more businesses to the county. These are the things you should think about when you vote 42 on this application. 43 44 Larry Wright: You are talking about the various types of communications and how you can bring 45 telecommunications; you talk about satellite or terrestrial antenna. I live in northern Orange County 46 and I live 200 feet from the tower but I have Century Link and they have high speed access and I 47 think that is one vehicle or way for people in rural Orange County. I used to rely on the antenna 48 about 200 feet from my house but Century Link is better for us and I get better speed. Of course it 49 has been a number of years but it is one more vehicle that people have. 50 51 Jeremy Browner: I believe that technology you are referring to is DSL. DSL speed decreases away 52 from the node station so as you go away, the speed decreases dramatically so with cell towers, that 53