Kansas, like several other nearby states, has passed a law to make the tower siting application process more efficient. The state law is set to go into effect October 1.
As a result, residents in Overland Park, part of the Kansas City, Kansas metro, could soon see wireless towers in their front yards. In response, the Overland Park City Council is preparing to vote on a change to its rules, an effort to limit wireless companies’ ability to locate towers within city rights-of-way, reports Shawneemissionpost.com.
The city council vote is scheduled for Monday, September 19. The latest version of the state bill 2131 gives wireless carriers and infrastructure companies permission to apply to site towers within city rights-of-way, generally the first 11 feet of someone’s front yard, from the street to their door. During a recent council meeting, City Attorney Steve Horner said his office advised council members to approve the city changes to restrict the effects of the upcoming state law. “What we have provided you is much better than not doing anything, because if we don’t do anything, the statute’s going to go into effect October 1, and we will have applications for 120-foot poles from one particular provider on October 1, in right of way.”
Councilman David White clarified to Shawneemissionpost.com while a wireless provider could put a pole in someone’s front yard, “they’d have to dig 18 feet underground,” to do that, which is unlikely. City officials want to put the changes in place to give citizens a right to object in the siting process. “I can just see the headlines now: ‘You can put a monopole in front of my house, as long as if it falls over it doesn’t hit my house.’”
Inside Towers has written about numerous “Not in My Front Yard” [NIMFY] cases. The most recent one concerned residents in a Gaithersburg, Maryland development up in arms over Crown Castle plans to site small cell towers in front yards.
The bill the city council plans to vote on maintains the current 150-foot height limit for towers not in city rights-of-way. Towers would be capped at 20 feet on residential streets within city rights-of-way, 40 feet on “collector” streets and 50 feet on highways.
The new state law prohibits the city from allowing multiple wireless providers from co-locating on the same pole, and bans the city from expressing a preference of siting towers for either industrial or residential areas, according to Horner.
Any “authority,” meaning a governing body, board, agency or office and city, county or state government that is authorized to make decisions on a tower siting application cannot exceed certain charges to applicants, reads the text of state bill 2131.
- “(A) $500 for a collocation application, that is not a substantial modification, small cell facility application or distributed antenna system application; or
- (B) $2,000 for an application for a new wireless support structure or for a collocation application that is a substantial modification of a wireless support structure.
The authority may not charge wireless services or infrastructure provider any rental, license or other fee to locate a wireless facility or wireless support structure on any public right-of-way controlled by the authority, if the authority does not charge other telecommunications or video service providers, alternative infrastructure or wireless services providers or any investor-owned utilities or municipally-owned commercial broadband providers for the use of public right-of-way.”
CTIA supports the new state law. In a statement earlier this year, the association said bill 2131 “facilitates efficient wireless siting practices throughout Kansas, and will provide needed uniformity in the process for installing the infrastructure essential for improving wireless communication.” It also clarifies the Kansas Universal Service Fund contribution methodology and caps high cost support to certain carriers.
Noting that demand for wireless services is soaring, CTIA said only 42 percent of Kansas households are wireless only. “Between 2012 and 2014 alone, transmission of wireless data grew by over 175 percent, according to CTIA. Research projections predict that by 2019, mobile data traffic will be nearly six times the 2014 amount.”
The soon to be state law “allows use of the rights-of-way to encourage the deployment of small cell and other wireless facilities that add crucial capacity for wireless video and data.” The measure is also similar to what nearby states, like Colorado, Missouri and Iowa, have already adopted, according to CTIA.
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