"Small cell towers" are anything but small. They are 35 to 65 feet tall and over 1.5 feet wide, you can stand inside them. They will install these towers on your front lawn if you don't act now.

Take a look at this 68 foot tower already installed in the front yard of this home on Brickyard Road:
https://goo.gl/maps/d2UNscrZ6rm

Tell the city of Gaithersburg we need stricter rules which govern how, where, and when these towers may be erected. Sign this petition to let the city know you don't want mandated obstructions installed outside your bedroom window. Failure to do so will mean lower property values for you.

Kirk Wines is the lawyer who helped Spokane rewrite their ordinances to effectively stop residential deployments of cell towers without outright banning them. He tells us that we need to put a moratorium in place to give us time to rewrite our ordinances because right now, they are wide open.

Tell the City of Gaithersburg to put an immediate 6 month moratorium on all cell tower deployments in the city thus buying us time to correct our ordinances.

Tell the City of Gaithersburg to hire an experienced lawyer to make sure we are protected to the fullest extent of the law. 

The new language will make it extremely difficult to install cell towers in neighborhoods. It will explicitly state that when it does happen, the towers must be made to look exactly like the Bradford Pear tree. The most common tree planted in our rights of way genetically engineered by the University of Maryland. The language will also say that providers will change the color of the artificial leaves to match the seasons.

Most importantly it will read:

An application for a wireless communication facility exception shall be granted if-and-only-if the following criteria are met:

1) The exception is consistent with the purpose of the development standard for which the exception is sought.

2) Based on a visual analysis, the design minimizes the visual impacts to residential zones through mitigating measures, including, but not limited to, building heights, bulk, color, and landscaping.

3) The applicant demonstrates the following:

3a) A significant gap in the coverage, capacity, or technologies of the service network exists such that users are regularly unable to connect to the service network, or are regularly unable to maintain a connection, or are unable to achieve reliable wireless coverage within a building;

3b) The gap can only be filled through an exception to one or more of the standards in this chapter; and

3c) The exception is narrowly tailored to fill the service gap such that the wireless communication facility conforms to this chapter’s standards to the greatest extent possible.

4) Exceptions in Residential Zones. For a new tower proposed to be located in a residential zone or within 200 feet of a residential zone, unless the proposal qualifies as a preferred location on City-owned or operated property or facilities, the applicant must also demonstrate that the manner in which it proposes to fill the significant gap in coverage, capacity, or technologies of the service network is the least intrusive on the values that this chapter seeks to protect.

200 feet is a reflection of our city’s historical values. Our predecessors clearly stated that no reasonable person could be offended by the sound of rooster from 200 feet away. Do you expect us to believe cell towers can’t transmit further than a 4 lbs animal? It’s laughable.

Misuse of FCC ruling - that is what we are dealing with.

The spirit of the FCC mandate is to bring high speed internet into homes across America which are currently lacking it.

In homes with wired fiber optic already available, there is zero need for a wireless solution since it will be inferior.

If the FCC mandate was to be followed in its true spirit, these cell towers would be erected in communities that have no fiber optic internet available to them and the city would stipulate that those locations receive cell towers first and only those locations which cannot be better served by other means. Once fiber is available in those homes, the regulations should re-evaluate and dismantle cell towers that are no longer viable.

Learn more:

http://www.gaithersburgmd.gov/government/city-projects/small-cell-facilities

http://www.teamgaithersburg.org

https://www.facebook.com/westleighr28/