Agenda - Council - 08/28/2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

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-338- City of Ramsey July 17, 2001 Page 2 MOSS & BARNETT A Professional Association Equipment Shelter and Landscaping. Th~' equipment building that is proposed will house radio, computer and climate control equipment for this site. We will utilize a prefabricated equipment shelter in which t'he equipment can be installed prior to its final installation at the site to minimize the disruption caused by our construction activities at the site. The building will have a maintenance-free finish that will, of course, meet or exceed all building and fire code requirements. This will be an unmanned building to be operated remotely and cormected to the rest of Verizon Wireless's cellular system via buried telephone lines. The building meets ail setbacks. We have proposed landscaping that is similar to that required on our client's earlier application. However, you may well determine that'this extensive landscaping is unnecessary and out of place in this particular zoning district. If that is the case, we will alter the landscaping accordingly. Antennas. Installations of this type are located on water towers throughout Minnesota and the rest of the U.S. because the use of such facilities allows the systems to be built without the need to build another vertical structure. Once mounted on the water tower and painted-to match the current color, the antennas will go unnoticed by casual observers. The Cellular Phone System. Users of'~ellular telephone services include farmers, doctors, contractors and other members of the business community, as well as various areas of the public sector. Fire, sheriff and police departments as well as other public safety agencies use cellular telephones extensively, too. The system allows police and other emergency response agencies to conduct private communication in the field. This can be important from the scene of a crime, serious car accident, Fire or other emergency. Irnmediate, direct communication with other specialized agencies is often made using cellular phones when a relay through a dispatcher would be cumbersome and cause dangerous delays. Cellular telephones continue to function in areas where telephone wires are down because of ice storms, floods, high winds or tornadoes, and aid in emergencies. Each cell site also has a back- up power source that operates automatically if outside power fails. The cellular mobile phone system operates on a specific set of channels set aside by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The filtering of spurious signals is very tightly controlled. Cellular telephones operate within a stt:ictly regulated set of allotted frequencies between 824 and 894 megahertz. These channels were formerly allocated to certain "UH~" television frequencies. Verizon Wireless is operating thousands of cellular base stations around the country with no case of unresolved television or radio inte~erence reported. Search Area Criteria. The area in which cellular coverage is needed largely defines the required antenna height. We have been working for several months to locate an antenna site in I ! I I I I I ! I I I ! I I I