tv [untitled] December 31, 2014 10:30am-11:01am PST
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the slide that you see here gives you a picture of what they look like physically in the environment. the antenna itself is the device that's circled in red at the top of the pole. this is just an example of the kinds of systems the carriers are proposing. so we are --. >> just a question on that. that to me is a very illustrative photo so is that something that we would expect to see or in reality they could be something very different from that? >> in reality it should look very similar to this. we're expecting to see things very similar to this. exactly, not necessarily because there's a number of carriers. some carriers have --. >> in terms of size. >> in terms of size and overall aesthetic. you know, this is what we're expecting to see. we have seen some other ideas come across our and planning's desk that looked bad relative to this but the
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carriers have been very responsive and sort of taken those options off the table. we expect to have that kind of collaborative conversation to make sure that we keep the installations looking close to this. >> and what made them look bad? >> a little clungier, more obtrusive. we've seen verptions where the antenna is mounted on a bracket so it doesn't have the same profile as the pole, for example, but those have been taken off the table. >> that's a big concern. >> yes, we understand the aesthetic aspects. >> whether you are voting or not. thank you. >> so then specifically why we're here, in october of this year we went to our commission and sought approval of this revenue generating street light program. and it includes the terms and conditions of the master license agreement and our request to our commission for authorization for the
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general manager to execute these master license agreements after approval from you. the master license agreement that are before you have a term of 12 years and we anticipate that they will generate revenue in excess of a million dollars and so that's why we are bringing them to you for approval. specifically the master license agreements include a $4,000 per year fee per pole with an escalation over the 12 year period of 4 percent per year. the licensee would be installing 4 strands of fiber for city use. they would provide for detailed procedures and fees for the equipment review, approval and installation process, the master license agreement streamlines the review for use of standard tape ered steel poles. when you are out on the streets of san francisco you see there's quite a variety of poles that have street lights
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for them. the poles for this program are just the tapered steel poles, no use of historic poles, and the puc would be the power provider for these facilities. these facilities would go through the standard dpw review process associated with permitting of wireless facilities and that includes dpw considering the aesthetic impacts of the proposed pole installation, the permit applicants being, submitting proof that they are in come appliance with the public health compliance standards, california environmental quality act review for equipment that exceeds certain dimensions and then that dpw process includes the applicant securing the owner's permission. the owner in this circumstance
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is the puc so that's why we're bringing this to you. >> just to be clear, i think there were some questions yesterday, i had one looking over this. installing this -- supervisor avalos had put forth legislation and passed it a while back regarding wireless facilities on our street poles here in san francisco and it predated my time, but i was the beneficiary as were my residents of that. does supervisor avalos's ordinance apply to this in terms of noticing and so forth? >> yes, the dpw process includes those requirements so all of that will occur. we will be in compliance with the wireless facilities permit process as they apply to street light poles, yes. >> that's great to hear. i'm -- actually i didn't see until just now page 4 you have a
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proposed antenna equipment simulation no. 2. >> yes. that's the one that's off the table. >> that's table. >> yes. >> that's what i thought you were saying. that would be completely unacceptable. okay, thanks. >> we anticipated that reaction as a group of city departments involved in this. we understand the aesthetics is important to you as supervisors and to the residents that we serve. within the puc's purview, then, as that permitee goes through the dpw process, they come to us as the owner of the asset and what we look at is what's described on slide 7 here. we are looking at the electrical impacts, we're looking at the loading on our street light poles, equipment placement, we're looking at identifying the most optimal location within our street light circuitry for connecting the electrical load on the circuits. we're consulting with planning the overall
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equipment aesthetics and we're double checking to make sure the california environmental quality act compliance has been met. so assuming that we go through all those steps and all of the departments are comfortable with a particular proposal and we're moving forward what kind of benefits does the city see? well, the city sees enhanced wireless coverage to meet our increasing public demand. the city owned fiber networks being expanded through this program, and we're seeing a public benefit for the city-owned fiber network as well. for power the puc issues in particular we're seeing projected revenues in excess of a million a year for the use of our street light poles for distributed antenna systems and that will really help us meet our financial challenges. when we came to the board of supervisors and to our commission this fiscal year we
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did not anticipate these revenues so this is a very welcome revenue increase that we're anticipating. and what i'm showing here on slide 9 is really what we're projecting to see with the two master license agreement counterparties, extra net and verizon, whose agreements are before you today. we're showing two columns here, a lowest mat and high estimate, just depending on how many poles they ask to use. we're seeing from, you know, 10 million up to 14 million over the 12 year mla period. that concludes my remarks. i'm happy to take any questions. thank you. >> supervisor mar. >> miss hill, i appreciate the presentation. let me clarify that the simulation 1 picture and simulation 2 picture, you
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said the proposed wireless pole additions will be more like simulation 1 and you are not going to use simulation 2. that's more --. >> that's correct. >> more bulb protruding and bulbing out of the antenna. how much flexibility do these companies have in how they install these types of an 10 be if that if this goes forward. >> as part of the review process they will be bringing to us the intended equipment. we will, ourselves, dpw, planning, we will have an opportunity to review both the physical piece of equipment and how we think it will look in the environment, in the built in environment. so we will be coordinating as city departments on the approval process and we fully understand that what you see in simulation 1 is the kind of device you are more comfortable with. >> then from the question
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earlier from our chair farrell on the application of the avalos community notice and process for each of the antennas, every single one of the potential 270 antennas would go through some sort of community process allowing neighborhoods and people living around the poles to be able to have a say in every single one of the potential 270? >> yes, supervisor mar. >> i see the economic benefits page really highly focuses on the economic benefit of $1 million a year for the city for the installation of these poles. i guess i'm worrying a little bit about opening a flood gate for the use of public resources for private purposes by telecom companies and i know we have had a number of, when antennas are proposed on top of churches or hospitals or even residential and
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commercial buildings there's often an outcry for people feeling different for different reasons or feeling out of character with the neighborhood and not necessary and desirable as well. i see this as a potential opening for telecom companies to bypass this process and go forward with one that has less protections for naipbds to be able to have a say so i'm worrying a little bit about the flood gate effect of this. you said there's 16,800 poles in the city that the puc is responsible for. i'm just wondering how this particular 70 might be expanded in the future. could you talk about what other companies besides verizon might do with this type of technology? >> yes, we certainly have noticed the community about the fact we're moving forward with this program -- the community
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of wireless carriers. >> i've never heard them referred to as a community like neighborhoods and others but i understand your point. >> they are a stake holder in the process is all i meant to be saying. >> companies and corporations we're talking about, right? >> these are regulated wireless companies we're talking about, yes. and while we have just two agreements before you today we do expect to be bringing forward more. i think we have perhaps three additional -- two more is this two more that we're aware of. two more wireless carriers. >> what are those carriers? >> who are they? mobility and crown castle. could there be more than that? perhaps over the life of the program there could be. i do want to point out that we have made it clear in the master
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license agreement that to the extent our utility needs require us to remove any devices we have authority under the agreement to do that. so the city's needs take priority over the carriers. >> supervisor avalos. >> just a question. in san francisco we have utility poles that are only run by the puc >> yes. >> and other utility poles that are owned by pg&e. >> yes. >> do these carriers, do they have -- is there a process for them to get sited and permitted to be on pg&e poles? is there a public process for that? >> i imagine there is, supervisor, but i actually don't know. let me see if a quick consult will get you a quick answer. >> they are also on pg&e poles, is that correct? >> let me have planning answer
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that question because i think they are in a better position. thank you. >> supervisor avalos, planning department. currently wireless carriers would work with pg&e if they wanted to locate on their assets, which are wooden pole street lights for pg&e or (inaudible) that's usually what carriers go to now and goes through the public works process. >> so the majority of carriers are on these other poles, the pg&e poles. >> for example, sprint doesn't have sites on wooden poles but other carriers do. the small cells being proposed today are not intended to supplant the need by the carriers for macro sites that you see before the
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board, this is to fill in gaps in data capacity. you wouldn't expect to see this somehow sup plant the need for roof top sites in ue bic quit throughout the city. >> in fact if we're not approving these they are not going to go on the pg&e poles because the pg&e poles are in areas where there are gaps in what they want to transmit from. >> generally what we see is the carriers will go to pg&e
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poles where there aren't as many large rooftops to go on. it is the path of least resistance. they tend to pay less. we are more limited jurisdiction when it comes to assets being placed on the wooden poles because of public right of way rules. with macro sites on buildings we have more discretion and with our own assets, the poles sf puc owns, we have more discretion as a property owner to make sure aesthetics, noise, all those components, are more compatible. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> colleagues, any further questions? mr. rose, will you give us your report, please? >> mr. chairman, members of the committee, on the bottom of page 49 we note, as the department has already testified, estimated revenues range from 10.1 million for 200 light poles to 14.5 million for 300 light poles. that's based on an initial license fee of $4,000 per street light pole. on page 50 of our report, the licensees must also pay a one-time fee including application fees of $7500, administrative fees of 900 and service connection fee of 440, totaling $8,840 per applicant and that's noted in table 1 on
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page 46 of our report. we state towards the bottom of page 50 that because the board of supervisors does not have a policy on the use of city street light poles for private commercial uses we consider approval of the proposed resolution to be a policy consideration for the board of supervisors. i would state that from a revenue standpoint this seems to be a reasonable, in fact good deal for the puc >> thank you, mr. rose. colleagues, any questions? okay, we will open this up to public comment. anybody wish to comment on item 18? >> good afternoon, chairman farrell, paul albritton, outside counsel for verizon wireless. verizon wireless is very enthusiastic about this potential partnership with the city. i have three of the top rf engineers with verizon are
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here if you have any questions about how this network works. we're enthusiastic because this process will allow verizon wireless to partner with the city to bring really the smallest, most innocuous facilities, the latest and greatest, to san francisco to provide the highest speed lte-xlte data and voice capacity to the citizens and visitors to san francisco. as you heard from the planning department, the problem in san francisco is not a problem at all but the demand for data and voice is doubling every year and this is challenging every carrier, not with respect to coverage but with respect to providing capacity for all those things we use our cell phones for, whether it's finding your daughter after work or whatever it may be, calls to an ambulance, whatever it may be. that's why verizon wireless is in desperate need to expand the capacity of the netd work in san francisco and why this network of small facilities will assist in doing that.
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you heard, there's a very rigorous review that will be 5 layers of review for every one of these facilities and i think you had very good questions in that regard. the public utility commission has to determine they want to lease us that pole. under the license agreement they have the ability to go to the planning department and ask them if they think it's a good idea for aesthetic reasons. after that we go through supervisor avalos's article 25, the department of public health review and then finally rego through a ceqa process. all of those processes allow for an appeal to the board of appeals and also allows for an appeal to you with respect to every pole so there would be a very open and public process with respect to these poles. >> thank you. anybody else wish to comment on item 18? >> good morning, supervisors, nicole mason on extranet systems. we are a distributed antenna system provider providing fiber networks to wireless carriers such as verizon. we do it throughout the country, we have experience here in san francisco, we have networks operational in various areas of the bay area as well as southern california. we have a network very much like the one that will be subject to this agreement in new york city where we have a very large deployment throughout all areas of new york city with installations very similar to what we're proposing here. and what we have found is not only does it create great revenue for the city as well as augment
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emergency services, response times, when people are using their cell phones like they do for emergency calls, but also it does augment the capacity which is demanded by the citizens here in san francisco as well as provides in building coverage because more and more people are using their wireless mobile phones inside buildings. and so we provide that coverage as well with these installations. we are fully subject to article 25 so we do, as paul albritton mentioned, we have a very full public process we go through in order to do these installations. we just want to mention that another benefit of us working on the puc poles is it's as if we're providing another maintenance crew for the puc because when our folks are out there installing and maintaining if we see anything in terms of damage or maintenance issue for the puc we're able to notify them of that and that's an additional
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sort of safety and maintenance benefit to the city that we provide. so we ask that you please support this and recommend it for approval. thank you. >> thanks very much. >> supervisor mar >> i just had a question about the technology. so for each of the antennas on the poles could you quantify how much wireless coverage that is compared to, like, panel antennas that we approve on buildings, for example? like how many more poles would you need to make up for, like, panel antennas on a building? >> if i may defer that to an engineer we have rf engineers here that can answer that better than i can. >> thank you. >> having answered that question before, up to 12 or 24 small cells would accommodate what would normally be a macro. we're actually doing a very different thing here, rather than providing coverage we're providing capacity. the range is only about 500 feet for
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these small facilities and the intent is to provide this high speed data capacity. >> so, for example, we just approved panel antennas on kaiser's french hospital building on gary and 6th and if that had not been approved then we might see 12 to 24 poles along different spots along that same area in the inner richmond, is that right? >> verizon wireless around 2005 or 2006 replaced one of their macro cells around veteran's hospital with 24 nodes and antennas that are actually placed on pg&e poles so that would be an example but it really depends on the topography and the area being covered. i want to add these capacity facilities will be put in areas where the network is experiencing high capacity demand. so the initial installations are going in, in the c3 districts, the commercial districts, downtown financial districts where we
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have extremely high capacity demands. subsequently might row many of the residential neighborhoods are being covered by the macro sites and this demand requirement that would require this addition of these small cell facilities to build in capacity requirements. so it really depends in the future in terms of what happens with technology, what happens with demand and with the devices. but right now the capacity demands we are experiencing are in financial district, union square areas where there are a lot of people, basically. so that's where you will see these facilities installed. >> then just to ask another question, i know miss hale pointed out the benefits of increased wireless coverage so we can have more data and faster stuff, but also the fiber network. i know that we're looking at undergrounding of fiber but we know how costly that is. could you quantify how much fiber network capacity, like one pole would have? so if you had 12 to 24
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to replace panel antennas how much fiber network benefits are we looking at? >> the four strands that extranet will be providing the city will give you more than you would ever be able to use. it's very large. >> thank you. okay, anybody else wish to comment on item 18? seeing none, public comment is closed. supervisor avalos. >> just one more question perhaps for mr. masery. we have 150 for extra net and 50 for verizon and then we heard two other carriers, mobility and ground castle. do we expect to see many, many more companies coming in as well to make installations, to extend their networks, is this the tip of the iceberg, what do we expect moving forward? >> we are receiving a lot of interest from different carriers and i would also note
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there is discussion of maybe using small cells to boost public safety coverage as part of the program known as burst net to improve public capacity not just using older analog radios especially in areas like downtown san francisco. so we could also see public networks using these facilities as well. >> what's governing, say, on the same block there's a dos carrier and a verizon carrier and a mobility carrier and a ground castle carrier, they could all be on the same block if they had different carriers. >> yes, if they have good design features. when we have areas where we have decorative lights we want them to attach on the inside rather than on the outside over a long period
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of time. >> colleagues, if no further questions or comments, we have this item in front of us. moving forward? >> i have a name brand smart phone and i don't necessarily think that i'm a part of a community that's under that brand name but i do use it a lot. and i think what's important is that we've actually covered notification and the aesthetics and followed the legislation that we worked on, the board of supervisors i believe approved unanimously or close to unanimously in 2010 and i think it's being done. so i feel comfortable with this moving forward. i appreciate the budget analyst's report as well about the kind of revenue we get from the city as well and so i am fine to motion to approve. do we have an amendment from the budget analyst? >> no. >> i'm fine to approve this resolution. >> okay, supervisor mar. >> yeah, i just wanted to
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thank miss hale and people for testifying. i still don't see calling corporations a community. i think that's a semantic because it's unfair to neighborhoods that have, need more of a voice and i know that that's a been date on political contributions going on in this country. but i'll just say that i see the benefits of having poles used versus on tops of churches, schools and residential places and as an alternative to other means of satisfying our appetite for technology. this may be a better alternative than the other ones that we're looking at neighborhood by neighborhood. so i'm going to be supportive of this. i worry about the floodgate being opened for public resources, poles and other public spaces being used for private commercial use but i see this, the benefits of this outweighing those concerns right now so i'll be supportive as well.
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>> okay, so we have a motion by supervisor avalos, seconded by supervisor mar, take it without objection. okay, madam clerk, call items 4 and 5 together. >> item 4, ordinance amending ordinance 14714 reflecting assessor office specialist provisions one class assessor recorder senior specialist position and two real property appraiser position in the ofrs of the assessor recording for implementation of the state county assessor's property agreement grant. item no. 5, resolution authorizing the assessor and recorder's office to accept and expend a state county assessor partnership agreement program grant from the california state department of finance in the amount of approximately 1.3 million for the period of october 15, 2014 to june 30, 2017. >> thank you. we have (inaudible) from our assessor recorder's office. if you recall, colleagues, we approved a resolution earlier this year
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authorizing the department to apply for this grant that we are now accepting. congratulations if you want to speak on this item. >> thank you, mr. chairman, good morning, mr. chairman, members of the committee, i am gigi whitly with the assessor recorder. i am pleased to be presenting two items for your consideration. the first is a 1.25 million three year state grant along with a salary ordinance agreement adding 5 salaried positions to focus on new construction property assessments. san francisco was one of 9 california counties selected to receive this competitive grant. as you are well aware, san francisco is experiencing a high level of real estate development activity. the result for our office has been an upward trend in new construction properties requiring assessment. however, our office has about a 7900 case backlog of new
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construction cases requiring assessment. as such we divided to focus this grant exclusively on working down that backlog. the funds and new positions will be directed to in progress new construction properties as well as those completing construction and give us the opportunity to pilot more efficient business processes. the goal, of course, is to effectively and in a timely basis capture property tax revenues for the city and county as well as providing more certainty to property tax owners about their value. we project over a 3 year period we will be able to add 155 to 280 million dollars in assess values to the property roll. the accept and expend funds are already appropriated
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