Mayor’s Minute: January 2021

Happy New Year to everyone! We welcome 2021 perhaps in a way we have never greeted a new year before in our lifetime.

No doubt, the coronavirus pandemic made 2020 a challenging year for all of us. Everyone has been touched in some way. But I believe this new year will bring new life and new opportunities that will restore us not to normalcy, but a way of life greater than before we ever heard of COVID-19.

As we go throughout 2021, you may notice some landscape changes taking place throughout the city. I’m speaking specifically about poles that are going up to support new 5G technology. Recently, such deployments have taken place in the Trace Crossings and Chace Lake neighborhoods. More are expected. I can tell you — the poles are not an aesthetically pleasing sight, and I have heard from many of you voicing your displeasure with them. That is why I wanted to let you know how the city is addressing the matter.

First, let me make it clear that as a local municipality, we cannot stop service providers from coming in and locating these facilities on our right of ways. Federal law allows them to do so. What we can do is put standards in place concerning how the poles look so they are uniformly fashioned across the city.

In November, I issued an executive order that states we will not accept applications for small cell deployments in our neighborhoods until Jan. 1 or until the City Council takes further action. This allows us to look at other cities and how they are handling deployments in their neighborhoods. If need be, we will extend that order until we feel we have processes in place to adequately address these matters. We are also reviewing our own city ordinances to see how far we can go in requiring companies to meet certain design specifications, such as location and height of these facilities.

I want you to know we have heard your concerns and are working hard to address them as best we can.