06.04 Small Wireless Facility Design Guidelines

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EMAIIS FROM CITY ATTORNEY CHRISTOPHER HOOD From:Chris Hood Sent: Friday, December 28,2018 4:32 PM Subject: RE: Deadline to Set Standards for Small Cell Wireless Facilities-Action Necessary by January 14, 2019 Good afternoon, In follow-up to the below email,please see attached for your review a draft policy/guidelines containing aesthetic standards for the deployment of small cell wireless antennas on power or light poles in rights-of- way in your community. We are recommending the attached aesthetic standards be adopted as a placeholder policy(not as an ordinance)by your City Council prior to January 14,2019. This will allow your city to protect its ability to manage the use of your rights-of-way in the short term after the FCC Order(discussed in more detail in the below email)takes effect,while providing us an opportunity to assess making other changes and to review the model recommendations from the League of Minnesota Cities once they are developed and prior to the April 15,2019 deadline. As a result, in order to proceed,please complete the attached template aesthetic standards document to be applicable to your specific city and have your City Council adopt the same at its first meeting in January. Please feel free to use portions of this and the below email to develop your staff report explaining to Council the need to adopt these aesthetic standards if that is the policy direction that Council desires. Please note that there is no requirement that your city adopt aesthetic standards for deployment of small cell wireless antennas in your community,but the FCC Order may eliminate your right to do so if the same are not adopted by April 15,2019. Please note that the attached aesthetic standards primarily relate to your city's rights-of-way ordinance governing the placement of facilities and the use of your municipal rights-of-way. We have advised previously that if you have not reviewed and amended your rights-of-way ordinance for the deployment of small cell wireless facilities, it is advisable that you also do that in addition to adopting the attached aesthetic standards policy. The League of Minnesota Cities has updated its model rights-of-way ordinance to coincide with recent (2017)changes to State law(but not based on the September 2018 FCC Order), and if you have not adopted this ordinance or a modified version of it,you should seriously consider doing so. The link to the League's guidelines for regulating rights-of-way with links to the model right-of-way ordinance is: https://www.lmc.org/media/document/1/re ug latingcityrightsofway.pdf?inline=true. Please note further that if you plan to adopt the League's model rights-of-way ordinance,there are portions of it that you may not want to include, and there may be some regulations from your existing ordinance that you may want to include. Finally, as mentioned above,the recent FCC Order throws additional confusion on this process in that the FCC Order appears to conflict with the State's 2017 small cell wireless facilities law(Minn. Stat. Secs. 237.162 -237.163). As a result,review of both your existing rights-of-way ordinance and the League's model is recommended noting that additional changes may be needed to your rights-of-way ordinance in the future based on the FCC Order. It is our understanding that