Kelly Marcotulli, a longtime proponent of restricting cellphone towers, told the council at a study session Monday that the city needs to do more to protect itself and its electronically sensitive residents through a strong ordinance that would limit where, how tall and how many wireless facilities could be built.
"Local governments need to exercise jurisdiction, you already have the authority, the federal government has already given you the authority," said Odette Wilkins, a telecommunications lawyer from New York who addressed the council via a livestream during the meeting.
Ashland officials have said their hands are tied by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Wilkins said, but that is only what the telecommunications companies would have municipalities believe. As long as a city constructs its ordinance appropriately before the companies come in and build the towers, the city can maintain control — especially in Oregon, she said, where the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld aesthetics as a matter of high importance.
This is the ultimate point of leverage for Ashland, she said. The city can determine whether towers or facilities violate the city's aesthetics, and relegate them to commercial districts or at least away from downtown and residential areas.
Many peer-reviewed studies have said that radiation from cell towers can make people sick, Wilkins claimed.
Wilkins critiqued an ordinance proposed to council by McGeary, which was obtained from the League of Oregon Cities as a pre-prepared response to cellphone towers for Oregon municipalities.
"This ordinance has so many holes you can drive a truck through them. If I were representing one of my multi-national clients and I produced something like this I would be fired," she said.
Marcotulli, a founding member of Oregon for Safer Technology, and others have requested the city hire lawyer Andrew Campanelli, who is known for drafting cellphone ordinances and taking telecommunications companies to court on behalf of municipalities. His services would cost the city $8,500, Marcotulli said.
After Wilkins finished her testimony and councilors questioned her, McGeary presented another expert witness, professor William Johnson, an engineering consultant and professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology who addressed the council remotely.
"It's really very easy to come up with misinformation and proclaim it as true," Johnson said.
While it is advantageous for a city to control where cellphone towers are placed, they cannot exercise the level of control Wilkins described without running afoul of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Johnson said.
"The problem is every household now has two to three phones, and everyone wants to use their cellular phone at once. Then there simply isn't enough bandwidth (from existing towers) to support that," he said.
The act dictates municipalities can't create a gap in service, and while the law was written before streaming, Johnson explained, if a city tries to restrict towers or exclude 5G, they can quickly create enough of a lag to be deemed by the courts to constitute a gap.
City Council was scheduled to vote on the ordinance proposed by the League of Oregon Cities at its regular meeting Tuesday. But councilors agreed Monday to postpone action on the ordinance until further research and discussion.
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