2017-55-Minutes for Meeting March 05,1991 Recorded 2/23/2017DESCHUTES COUNTY OFFICIAL RECORDS r} 2017.55
NANCY BLANKENSHIP, COUNTY CLERK IiJ
COMMISSIONERS' JOURNAL 02/23/2017 11:56:37 AM
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Deschutes County Clerk
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TRANSCRIPT OF MEETING
DESCHUTES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
AWBREY BUTTE RADIO AND TELEVISION TRANSMISSION SITE
MARCH 5, 1991
7 p.m., Room A, JJC
MAUDLIN: I will call to order the meeting of the Awbrey Butte
Group to discuss the tower and transmission site on
Awbrey Butte. I think all of you received a notice,
probably why you're here, hopefully. And you also
received a copy of this and a small map and just for
purposes of this, I want to just get this into the
record. (Read attached introduction) Written testimony
will be received from a week from tonight which would be
the 12th at 5:00 p.m. We put this meeting together to
try to find out what we can do to resolve some of the
ongoing problems and to find out what the feeling is of
those persons either have towers or transmission sites
on the hill and/or the neighbors that are surrounding it.
With that in mind, is there any comment? Rick would you
like to add anything at this time? Either of the
Commissioners have any comments to make?
ISHAM: No.
THROOP: I might mention, we don't have our name plaques in front
of us, and I'm not sure everybody in the audience knows
us --maybe we ought to introduce ourselves.
MAUDLIN: Well actually we tried to keep it that way.
SCHLANGEN: I'm Nancy Schlangen.
MAUDLIN: Dick Maudlin.
THROOP: Tom Throop.
ISHAM: Rick Isham.
THROOP: Rick's our Legal Counsel, he's our attorney. The three
of us are the elected commission members.
MAUDLIN: So, I'm going to take this in order of the purpose of the
meeting and if you will...anyone who wishes to speak,
please ask to be recognized and leave your name and
address at the podium. There is a pen and paper up
there, and state your name and address for the record.
I'm going to ask you to...if you want to talk about
interference issues, that's number 6 on the agenda, and
that's where it's going to be. To get this thing
started, anyone who wishes to speak at this time
PAGE 1
regarding any of the other items on the agenda at this
time, we'd like to hear from you.
ISHAM: One suggestion I had in there was possibly hear from
lessees first and then sublessees, then neighbors, and
then any other interested persons. The idea being that
if the leases had some ideas then the neighbors might
have a chance to hear those and in light of the current
use of the sight, might have an opinion to give to the
Board regarding that. I understand that somebody from
the City of Bend Planning Department is also supposed to
be here who may wish to make some comments regarding the
use of the site also.
THROOP:
ISHAM:
MEIER:
Dave, I
realize
I heard
I don't
thought you were a police officer,
you were a planner now.
that Anita Powell was going to be here
see her though.
I'm here in her place.
I didn't
tonight,
ISHAM: Do any of the present lessees wish to make any comments
regarding actual site management or what we may do
differently?
HERMAN: Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Al Herman. I
represent SMR Network, one of your lessees, and I'd like
to read into the record a short comment representing our
views. It is our desire to benefit the community by
providing a multi -use community tower on which many
interests can co -locate there on the tower that would be
built on Awbrey Butte for multiple users now and in the
future. Decreasing the number of towers on the butte
will result in a much improved aesthetic profile of the
butte, decrease interference within the butte and nearby,
and comply with EPA health safety standards for radio
frequency emissions. We already have the tentative
positive interest of one radio station to remove their
tower and be a part of a community tower project. In
addition, we obtained positive confirmation from three
other business radio interests, Robinson Construction,
Oregon Paging, and SMR Network, to remove their towers.
At this moment then, we have commitments to remove four
towers and combine their activities on one community
tower. We feel that there are additional tower owners
that would be cooperative to such a concept once the
complete story is told. Pressures from both the public
and private sectors will continue to focus on the butte
to provide their legitimate communications needs. Now
is the time for intelligent planning by both the County
and the city. As you know, many of the butte's present
PAGE 2
users are, in fact, unhappy with their internal
interference caused by lack of responsible coordination
between users. Our firm is one of several being
seriously impacted and our activities due to lack of
physical spacing and coordination, the result of which
has deteriorated the quality of service to our clients.
We ask now that the County and the City address this
situation in a professional manner. There's a good deal
of work to be done and I suggest that it begin as soon
as possible.
THROOP: Mr. Chair I'd like to ask a couple of questions. You
indicated that current situation isn't workable, and you
think the solution is decreasing the number of towers,
that's the bottom line?
HERMAN: That's one of the solutions. I believe coordination
between the users, both from a location standpoint and
a frequency coordination standpoint would be exceedingly
useful to have the multiple uses work successfully on
Awbrey Butte.
THROOP: You indicated that one radio station and then three
private companies including your company have indicated
that they would desire to remove their towers. My
understanding is that your tower is not actually owned
by you, but its actually owned by the County.
HERMAN: It's leased from the County.
THROOP: So, you commit to remove our tower?
HERMAN: That's correct.
THROOP: If we did move to a multi -use community tower, why would
you be the ones to build and operate it?
HERMAN: We have, for the last three years, been a party of
discussions on this subject in Bend for some time. One
of the solutions we feel that would best benefit the
County, would be a "community tower." We have not seen
any interested parties step up and suggest that concept
other than ourselves. We floated several ideas, one of
which was, would the County produce a community tower to
the benefit, which didn't, at the time, seem of great
interest. So we took the lead and proposed that we
sponsor. We have not suggested that we be the sole
owner. We have, in our discussions, suggested this could
be a cooperative condominium et al type of facility. Our
interest, primarily, was to provide a facility where we
would be the catalyst organization if that's deemed
proper and practical. We have experience in doing this
PAGE 3
type of work. It wasn't entirely proprietary if the idea
was to have some one to get the idea, at least a
germination of the idea, before the public so that we
could try to get some community of thinking. Obviously,
all the separate interests going their independent ways,
I think has not resulted in a satisfactory long-term
solution, as it were, to the plan. That's the reason
that we have taken the lead position.
THROOP: I know at least three other firms that have expressed
interest in doing something similar so, just for the
record, I think there are some other interested parties
out there that would probably come up with a similar
opportunity.
HERMAN: That's good. I would encourage that kind of thing to
happen.
THROOP: Let me ask you one last question. Have you done any
projections on what the cost to do business on those
towers would be for the entities that you're having
discussions with compared to what they're paying for
their current circumstances now?
HERMAN: They'd pay no more, perhaps less than what their current
situations are.
THROOP: So you could remove towers, and build a new community
tower, and operate that for the same costs?
HERMAN: We believe so.
MAUDLIN: Anything further?
THROOP: Nothing at this time.
MAUDLIN: Nancy?
SCHLANGEN: Nothing at this time.
MAUDLIN: Thank you very much. Anyone else?
LARKIN: My name is John Larkin and I'm the vice president and
general manager of KTVZ, an attendant on that butte. Can
I ask a question first? How did this particular meeting
get...what was the motivation for calling it at this
time? I didn't get a notice of it.
ISHAM: We sent one to you John.
LARKIN: So anyway, how did we get to this point tonight?
PAGE 4
MAUDLIN: There has been a number of discussions regarding this.
With the ongoing costs and things that we've done up
there, we felt that it was time to try to find out
whether we were going to continue to operate this in the
manner that we have and continue to accept the complaints
and a few other things and find out whether we were also
going to either...trying to find out from the users what
we really should be doing on that site. Are we charging
enough for it, are we charging too much, is there a way
to have a cooperative agreement so that we can get past
some of the problems that are occurring up there on a
regular basis? We're looking for answers.
THROOP: Let me add a comment if I will. We probably, all three
of us, have had occasion to talk to people are users,
people who are patrons of the users, people who are
neighbors, and I think if you were probably to ask the
three of use what direction we'd like to go with that
tower in the future, you might have three different
solutions. I guess at this point, I would be interested
in hearing what people who are using the site, or people
who are in some fashion affected by the site, what your
view is of the state of the operations there, and if you
have any suggestions or ideas on how that site ought to
be handled/managed in the future. I guess we're arriving
at a point to where at some point we're going to have
some discussions among Board members with our publics on
what the future of that site is, and this is really a
listening session. As a user, do you have ideas,
impressions, and comments that you'd like to share at
this point?
LARKIN: I tried to sit with Sam Kirkaldie of KICE here, and we
just kind of brainstormed this thing and tried to figure
out where you guys were in relation to what your options
were, and we came up with three or four. The first one
obviously being the status quo which is, you continue to
own the butte. The second being, for a not-for-profit
corporation among the users, and if the users had the
control to fix it, figure out how many towers are needed
to do the job, and then bid out each of these. That
would be a third option. And the fourth would be to sell
it to the highest bidder. We would probably construe
that that would be the easy way out. You could take the
money and run and return it to the tax roles ...return the
property to the tax roles, but we're not sure that's
probably the most...other than being the most expedition
way, we're not sure that's the most practical nor may it
be in the public interest. So we sat down and there were
some questions we figured, among us all, needed to be
asked and among them would be: how big is the present
and future use of the butte? If we say that what we have
PAGE 5
today is 100% usage and in our crystal ball we could say
how many years down the line, twenty years would we say,
how many additional possible uses might there be for that
thing? Each of us who have tower space or close to it
have been asked by a couple of cellular users for
additional tower space and building space. We all said
what other kinds of things in the rapidly expanding
telecommunications industry are going to be visiting
Central Oregon. We're going to be just like the kids in
the west, we're going to be able to do all the things
that everybody else is. What does that crystal ball say?
Are you folks going to make a determination or could we
come to an agreement? Al says you could put one major
tower, and let's just say for the sake of discussion, it
was 600 feet, and you had one tower, and you hang
everybody on it, and you'd be done with it. We have in
all these discussions in these past few years had a semi -
understated moratorium on anything over 300 feet, and I
think that...
THROOP: Because of the presence of a strobe light over 300 feet
or is there other reasons?
LARKIN: I forget what the reasoning is, but somebody came up with
the thing that they thought 300 feet was the limitation.
You have to light up to the PBS towers lit, it's at 299
feet, I think. So if you could say that was going to be
the limitation, then you'd say, if you took all the other
users and all the ones you could think of in your wildest
dreams in the future, how many additional towers would
it take to do the job? And if you could say that if the
PBS tower was a given, and you'd keep that one, and you'd
take all of the other ones down, how many additional
towers would it take, and if the answer was one or two
or whatever that would be, then you could figure out how
to deal with it. How much would a study cost to figure
this out? Some of you know that our parent company owns,
makes, manufactures television towers. It's the largest
in the world, and I called them up and said, I don't know
anything about this, tell me what this would cost? And
they said, it's not very expensive. We wouldn't be able
to help you with the engineering side of it, but we could
tell you structurally what kinds of situations you would
face. The factors you run into are the weight of
everything you hang on the tower and wind load of the
contraptions that are also on the tower. That's the
thing that impacts how sturdy, how strong a tower has to
be. Obviously we don't want to put something up there
that's got tinker toys that go down the first time we
get a 50 mph wind. Can you folks determine in a perfect
world what you'd like this butte to look like? Some of
these folks are homeowners, and they may not be thrilled
PAGE 6
with what it looks like today. Could we all come to an
agreement as to what would be the optimum, what does this
thing end up looking like in the year 2000, is it in the
public interest for the County to sell the butte? We,
the broadcasters in the area, are licensed by the Federal
Communications Commission to operate in the public
interest. We would like to think we do a pretty good
job. Terry here and Sam and Norman Louvau in the back
here, we're all in the radio and television business.
As recently as last August when we went through the
Awbrey Hall thing, I think the broadcasters acted in a
very proactive manner. You folks are involved right now
in how to figure out among us all how we could, if we get
to another Awbrey Hall or when we get to another Awbrey
Hall, how are we going to be able to deal with it? How
is the communications' industry in this area going to
assist in the process of aiding our citizens? What are
your obligations in this regard? If you sell it and it
goes to the highest bidder or bidders and you wash your
hands of it, how does the public benefit from that
particular decision? If you create a monopoly here by
selling it to the highest bidder, and I'm not sure that
I would agree with Al, if you're going to take a tower
or two towers, I'm not sure how we're going to be able
to do that for the same or lesser cost. Pretty expensive
proposition. Assuming we could possibly come up with
enough users and could spread the pie around, we'd have
to explore that further, but there is a possibility that
we might take some people who are currently able to
operate and suddenly put them out of business and I don't
think, I mean you folks put some money into economic
development. Economic development is not putting people
out of business. I'm not sure how PBS fits into the
discussion. If they were a part of this consortium, what
Al is talking about, or would they donate their tower to
this overall group? Maybe, maybe not. Do they want to
be off by themselves? They've go four or five users that
are hanging from their tower. We would need to get
together with them and see how they might be integrated
into the discussion. So as usual, I got a lot of
questions but I don't have many answers, but I think some
of those things, if we could sit down and discuss those
questions and obviously these folks are going to have
additional things that we can throw into the pot and
maybe among all this discussion, if we shook it, maybe
some kind of an answer would come out that would make
sense to all of us.
MAUDLIN: You mentioned a 600 foot tower, and then I think that you
kind of got away from it a little bit. In your opinion
would a...I don't think one 600 foot tower would be a
thing that we would be looking favorably on, but I don't
PAGE 7
know that. Would we be able to do the things that you
talked about, Mr. Herman talked about, if we had three
300 foot towers?
LARKIN: I think that's the question we need to probably need to
find out first. The FAA has a limitation. I'm not sure
whether it's 600 feet or 500 feet, somewhere in there.
They're going to dictate the tallest tower you can have
is X and there are increasing restrictions now as to what
you can do. It's gotta be painted, it's gotta be lit but
if you folks...we find that visually distasteful, we're
going to eliminate everything and we're going to take the
optimum number of towers and get the crystal ball out and
maybe it's four, I don't know. Dick, if you said that
in the year 2010 we could guess that there will be
another additional 20% request for occupancy on these
towers, we could come up with some kind of a figure where
we'd figure we'd be maxed out. Then based on that, with
some room to grow, and we've all seen what's happened in
Deschutes County and in this area, it going to continue
to grow. There's somebody here in town who's a
computerized demographer that said that Bend will be the
second largest city in the state of Oregon by the year
2030, which is a pretty scary statistic. Based on
something as wild as that, how much space do we need on
that mountain?
SCHLANGEN: The purpose of the meeting as you look at 1-6, we
were asking the same questions that you are, and
we're asking you for answers. We're not getting any
are we?
LARKIN: Well, I don't think that I would presume to give you the
answers. I'm just saying, if you have reached the point
where you're saying, we've had enough, we want this fixed
in some manner or another. My choice --#1 is unacceptable
and we have to go to two through however many we all
might come up with. And at least that says something and
we know we have to get off where we are and move to
someplace else.
ISHAM: John, each of the leases on the site up there have two
paragraphs in them that relate to community tower, and
I don't have a lease in front of me, but I'll paraphrase
it. Something to the extent that the Board could require
participation in the community tower. Let's say that
somewhere along the line the Board were to make that
decision, how would you envision the lessees receiving
that decision, would they work in concert to try to
accomplish combining onto a community tower, assuming
that the Board's involvement was no more than just making
that decision?
PAGE 8
LARKIN: I think that whether you select the private sector to
take care of it or we get some other entity to take care
of it, part of the problem is the control of what happens
on it. If we've got some peculiar things that have
happened via the commission and if it's Sam sitting here
at 100.7 megahertz and Norm Louvau from KQAQ sitting
there at 105.7 megahertz, that's exactly five megahertz
separation, does that cause some additional signal
problems down the line, do they piggy back? We've had
the situation where we've had one radio station piggy
backing with PBS and suddenly Dave has got rock and roll
in his emergency services band. Those kinds of things
would have to be dealt with and you'd have to have the
control to say, somebody is causing the problem, we
collectively have figured out that it's company A's
problem and that needs to be fixed. The problem is when
you have a problem, we just kind of argue back and forth
as to whose fault it is. Did I answer your question or
do I dodge it sufficiently.
ISHAM: Pretty good dodge to me. What I was wondering is would
you tend to look more, I guess, towards trying to put
together some kind of...your option 2 or would you tend
to think it might go more toward your option 3 if there
was a community tower requirement? We've not got a
requirement, is it going to be a coop venture or is it
going to be something where somebody's going to build it
and other people will then lease it.
LARKIN: I would like to think choice #2 is feasible, choice 3
also could be workable. I'm a little bothered by the
fact that one entity is gonna dictate what everybody else
is gonna do. I'm not sure that's in the best interest
of the tenants or the citizens of the County.
THROOP: I think that was getting to my point. I was looking for
probably a little cleaner value statement from you on
those four. In particularly curious, you seemed to be
a little soft on four and I was wondering...
LARKIN: I'm not soft at all --I think it's a dumb idea.
THROOP: I'm used to you speaking in your native tongue and I
wanted to hear it.
MAUDLIN: Anyone else.
COWAN: My name is Terry Cowan, General Manager of KNLR. I'm
also a lessee of the County's. The first thing that I
would like to address is Awbrey Butte itself. It's kind
of a unique land formation in town here. From that
PAGE 9
standpoint it's a fairly valuable resource in terms of
radio transmission and receiving. Some other stations
have tried other locations, for example Powell Butte was
tried by KXIQ when they first went on the air, and they
subsequently have moved to Awbrey Butte, because Awbrey
Butte shadows a portion of the town on the west side from
Powell Butte so it was difficult to get good reception.
Since they were on Awbrey Butte, they have moved out west
of town near Broken Top and while they have an adequate
signal in town, you'll notice on the east side of Awbrey
Butte, particularly down around Bend River Mall, you can
tell there's signal breakup in that area. So Awbrey
Butte is by far the best location for receiving and
transmitting in town. The other problem with the current
KXIQ site is in the winter time you gotta have some
pretty good equipment to be able to get out there and
servicing because of the snow. My feeling is that Awbrey
Butte is a rather unique piece of property. It's close
into town, its easy for maintenance and has superior
transmission capabilities. Currently I believe there's
approximately nine broadcasters on Awbrey Butte in
addition to a number of communication users. As John
mentioned, the FCC does licence us to operate in the
public interest, convenience and necessity. Whether we
as licensees like it or not the FCC has
as public trustees. There's an element that in a sense,
the County is enabling and enhancing our ability to serve
our constituents by providing this resource, and I think
that's really important. We could each do it on our own,
if we each buy the plot of ground that we're on right
now, we could continue to do that. The concern that I
have is if the County gets out of the real estate
business on Awbrey Butte, that the prices will be at such
an increase that it may make it very difficult
economically for some users to survive, even including
the communications folks. I think for the County to be
involved is crucial, and I would certainly hope the
County would see fit to continue their involvement. I'd
like to address a couple of things that Mr. Herman
mentioned and one is, he indicated that there'd likely
be a decrease in interference, and I think we can say
with some assurance that there's really no assurance that
that will happen, because I think we can look at some of
the co -located users now, for example KOAB and some of
the co -located stations there, and we'll find that
there's even some mixes there while they're not currently
harming anybody, they still exist. So co -location
doesn't solve all problems. He also mentioned compliance
with EPA and that's maybe a scare tactic, I'm not sure,
but as you may not know, the FCC does require
broadcasters to be in compliance with the EPA with regard
to an ionizing radiation. The broadcasters in
PAGE 10
Oregon have just gone through a cycle of relicensing and
one of the requirements when we go through the licensing
process is that we certify that we're in compliance, and
the broadcasters in Bend that are using Awbrey Butte
hired a consultant to come over and make those
measurements, and we are in compliance. The consultant
had some recommendations such as doing some fencing or
hanging some signs, but at the time the measurements were
made, Awbrey Butte is in compliance with EPA regulations
that were applicable at that time. As a broadcaster and
as a lessee, which there are some problems, and years ago
we had an Awbrey Butte committee, and I think back when
that committee was functioning that they did address some
of the problems and then we kind of got away from that,
and I think the Commissioners have fielded a lot of calls
and a lot of problems that that committee was sort of an
in between, and I think there were some other people in
this meeting that were involved or at least were here
when the committee was in existence and may wish to speak
to that. Those are my comments.
MAUDLIN: Any questions?
THROOP: I have a question. Terry, from your experience in the
leases, there is a resolution procedure, a dispute
resolution procedure to resolve interference and other
problems that may occur on the site. Has that procedure
been used? Is that something that..
COWAN: Sometimes that's effective and sometimes it's not.
Sometimes the interference is caused off the site too.
So I guess in my time being here, I think it probably has
been used but maybe not as effective as it might be.
THROOP: Is it that the procedure doesn't work or are people not
aware of it? Let's say not for the off-site conflicts
but is there inherent flaws in the procedure or is it
just that people are going independently and taking
different avenues.
COWAN: Sometimes I think people get a little bit restless, and
things don't happen as quick as they would like to see,
and so they short circuit it. I think sometimes it's
very difficult to resolve some of these problems. Some
of them may be impossible to resolve. Just the nature
of the beast.
THROOP: I don't have any further questions at this time....Let
me ask one other one. I am curious about something. The
value of that property could be, who knows, you could tag
a million dollar price tag plus on it. Are you private
nonprofit?
PAGE 11
COWAN:
THROOP:
COWAN:
SCHLANGEN:
COWAN:
SCHLANGEN:
COWAN:
MAUDLIN:
PAGE 12
No we're private for profit.
You're private for profit, okay, what kind of impact
would it have on your station and your patrons, or
constituents as you referred to them, if you were paying
substantially higher fees? Is that something that you
could probably absorb through some increases in your
rates? How close to the margin are most of the operators
up there?
I think substantial, you have to define that, I think I
have said to you in private, that if money's a problem,
I think that most of us could accept some kind of an
increase if money is an issue. Because I think that what
we're getting now is very fair and perhaps even beyond
that. I'm not standing here asking for a rate increase
tonight, but at the same time, Central Oregon has more
radio stations per capita than probably most towns in
Oregon, and I think if the truth were known, that most
of the stations are operating in a very tight manner, and
if we had to go in and pay $2,500 a month, that would be
an economic hardship on probably every station in the
community. That would be my assessment. Sam could speak
to that too.
Hypothetically with one tower or maybe the PBS tower
and another tower, you said that won't solve the
frequency problems, do you see that though as
solving many of the other disputes or problem up
there?
I guess I'd have to ask you to be more specific as to
what problems you're referring to.
The fact that there are so many buildings up there,
we're hearing now from citizens, I've gotten phone
calls that more and more things are up there, it's
getting cluttered looking, they're getting, some of
the citizens up there are saying its bothering them,
maybe it's microwaves, whatever they're using.
Would one tower solve any of those problems?
No, what you have is simply an overload because of the
close proximity to the transmitting facilities. You
simply have an overload. The consumer equipment is not
being built to withstand that kind of environment.
They're mass produced for environments away were there's
not that particular problem.
I'm going to ask you one more question. I'm going to get
back to this resolution of conflict. There is outlined
in every lease a program that you go through to resolve
a conflict, and you said that sometimes that worked,
sometimes it doesn't and people get impatient. This is
what we have to resolve a conflict. My assumption would
be that I would expect that people would follow this to
try to resolve conflict, but you're saying some of them
can't be resolved. Is that going to be our answer. So
what, we can't resolve it and then what?
COWAN: You'd have to give a specific problem and then it maybe
would require a specific engineering solution for that
problem. I think some of the problems maybe people have
been unwilling to spend the necessary funds, and I'm
thinking particularly when it comes into some of the
communication problems, the overload and that type of
thing. I shouldn't even be talking about communications
because that's not my particular area. But I think I've
heard very little in complaints from the broadcasting
community, and I'm not trying to divide broadcasting from
the communications folks. One of the reasons you haven't
heard much from broadcasters is that basically we're
transmitting folks and we're not receiving folks. It's
easy to transmit a clean signal, it difficult though to
keep that signal from combining in somebodies receiver
with another signal and producing some kind of
interference or from combining in a tin can or some other
nonlinear joint and that produces sometimes other stray
signal or types of things that happen. If that was
strictly a transmitting location up there, you probably
wouldn't be having any kind of complaints --very few I
would think.
MAUDLIN: Thank you. Anyone else.
SCRIVENS: I'm on the map here. My name's Terry Scrivens, I'm a
homeowner. PO Box 1720. I'm going to ramble through
here cause I got to leave. You guys already went past
your 1-6 anyway. The site management up there...I came
after all the stuff was here and it does look like an
indian burial ground up there. I mean there's little
platforms here and stuff and as a building, I think that
anybody that has a company that can afford to have a
company, should be able to manage some form of something
that's attractive whether it's 15, 2 or 900 foot high or
whatever.
THROOP: Are you referring to any specific.
SCRIVENS: Just the platforms and telephone poles, poles and sticks
sticking up with little things sticking on the end of
them. There's no rhyme or reason for any of that
particular miss mass if you look at the horizon up there.
PAGE 13
The City of Bend's supposed to be the place to come to
and somebody goes up there, they're looking at some
haberdashery from 20 years ago. I worked in Gilchrist
Timber Company and we used to stick a pole up and get
receivership but now we're at a different time, I mean,
you know they can take pictures of Iraqies from the
satellite. It's not impossible to do something nice,
even if you paint the pole, it would look good. The
management up there, one man mentioned the Awbrey Hall
fire, I own a house up there right on the road to the
access and I'm the one that called the police to stop the
kids, two of our kids from Bend high school from trying
to climb the damned poles to get microwaved at the top
of that PBS tower because we're all busy down at the
other end. There's no enforcement up there about
vandalism or anything. That's a kids hangout. There's
nothing wrong with that, kids have to have a place to go,
but there's a lot of dangerous stuff up there and it
bothers me. The habitat up there, one if your gonna deal
about reselling it to somebody, I don't know, I'm a
builder so I have to think about this. Wildlife, it's
a special place in Bend and only one of the few like the
top of Pilot Butte where you can see something, doesn't
need to be destroyed. It's been destroyed by the towers
and it's gonna be there but I can't believe the towers
can't be placed somewhere else, somewhere down the line
in the future. I just can't believe because there's a
shadow on that mountain that we can't do something about
that with all the technology we got. I know there's cost
analyses and TV program and things and stations and costs
but I just can't believe that can't be solved. We are
a growing community and sooner or later that's gonna be
gone, and that's something that this Board should
consider. That's all I can say.
THROOP: Let me ask you a question. Being a builder you obviously
understand how this dynamic works between local
governments who approve the siting of various
residential, commercial, industrial activities.
SCRIVENS: I may and I may not.
THROOP: And the public that might be affected, whether it's a
"not in my back yard" response or whatever. Can you in
your own mind conceive of a site that all this might be
able to be transported to.
SCRIVENS: I'm not familiar with all the buttes and their situations
but I'm sure that there should be.. maybe it's
impossible, I don't know, but I doubt it. I'm sure
there's another butte within the Forest Service
jurisdiction or somewhere that could do something. I'm
PAGE 14
THROOP:
SCRIVENS:
MAUDLIN:
not saying....it always happens, people grow up to a
certain spot and then they kick the guy that was out
first. I don't like that idea either, but it's
happening. It's like our trestle, I means it's gone,
it's going. Things gotta change and you have to adapt
to that kind of stuff. It's not Bend anymore like we
knew it or like I've known it, and it's changing, and the
butte's gonna change and I can see that place as maybe
a park. You don't know, these guys come up there,
they're up there during the workday, but the traffic with
bicyclers and tourists and stuff walk at the top of that
thing is unbelievable. They walk right by my door every
day and it's a phenomenal thing.
What would you think, west of Bend or south of Bend,
where a relocation might occur.
For these towers and stuff? I would assume it would be
west of Bend out there, the light are shining out there
now. There's some kind of tower out there. It's
probably the one that they're saying....It's got to move.
I mean, you know, they move oil derricks out of LA
because they're ugly, and they put housing on them, and
they change. I mean there's technology that can do that.
I'm not trying to make the radio stations go broke or
talk about that even, I mean there's got to be some
forethought about what's gonna happen later. The top of
the butte cannot...I mean I can say there's spotted owl
up there and you can't do anything, you know, everybody
stops you know, but it cannot be turned into a
development. It should be for us, the people, and
gradual change from radio communication and that's all
I can say.
Any questions? Thank you very much. Who else?
OBERDORFER: My name's Richard Oberdorfer. I'm with Western
Radio Services in Bend. I'd like to address what
Terry was saying. I don't think for a lot of things
there's not a lot of replacements for Awbrey Butte.
Forest Service won't let you do much of anything on
any of these hills around and like Terry said,
wherever you'd be in town, you'd still have a shadow
for a lot of users. A lot of the cleaning up and
consolidating of sites was addressed by the Awbrey
Butte committee and the County maybe four or five
years ago. And the County paid Century West
Engineering, one of the Engineering Companies to
come up with a master plan, and it was approved by
the Awbrey Butte committee and right now it's in the
hands of the City Planning Commission. They're
going to maybe massage it a little more and come up
PAGE 15
with an ordinance that's gonna govern how that
site's gonna be developed and cleaned up. As far
as coordination of uses up there, the County's still
taking that function but somebody else wants to put
another facility up there or add frequencies,
there's the County Counsel's office.... and whatever
happens we'd like to see that continue. But as far
as the interference, the damage has already been
done. The only solutions to the interference
problems are to remove some of the broadcast
stations from the site, and I'm not advocating that.
There's people that want those services just like
people that want public communications services like
our company provides. In any event, because of the
interference problems and the lack of conflict
resolution, we've already spent the money to come
up with alternatives to make our systems work.
Since we've already spent this money and solved our
problem, we don't see any need to spend a lot more
money to completely redo the site, and I think you
can spend a lot of money up there and you're still
gonna have the interference problems. The decisions
to solve the problems are too hard to make, and I'm
not really saying that they should be made. The
value of the property, if you sell it to somebody,
is what you can do with it. If you can't build
houses on it, about all you could get out of it is
what the traffic is gonna bear from the people that
need to be up there. I think it could probably bear
quit a lot, but it would be a burden, like Terry
Cowan says, I think there's a lot of these type of
broadcast and nonbroadcast services that are in
competition and not everybody is really that rich
in this community that could take a hit, and the
public benefits by having this diverse, different
kinds of radio and TV programming and
communication's services.
MAUDLIN: Questions?
SCHLANGEN: Mr. Oberdorfer, you say that you would like the
County to continue the role they're playing now,
that's what I understood you to say.
OBERDORFER: I find it acceptable.
ISHAM: Would you say that again? (laughter)
SCHLANGEN: I admit to being absolutely unaware of the Century
West Plan for the site. Does the County have copies
of this Rick, do we know about this?
PAGE 16
ISHAM: Yes, I could give you a little history on that.
Basically, the plan was never completed for a number of
reasons. The biggest reason it didn't get completed from
my perspective was that .. about the time that we needed
to go to a stage where we could actually work to adopt
it, there were a number of interference problems and at
that time, one of the solutions to some of the problems
was grounding in buildings that was not existing up there
at the time. We had a meeting in the conference room in
this building and the decision was that, you know, to try
to deal with these issues outside of the overall plan.
And it was relatively minor thing, I think in some cases
the users were looking at $300 in costs to retrofit their
building, and I'm going to say in at least a couple of
cases, don't pin me down on my memory, that there was
just no cooperation and that was kind of a pivotal
meeting and at that point, when we couldn't get closure
on a simple issue, and I know it wasn't Dick's building
it was other people's buildings, at that point, for some
reason, the plan didn't proceed, because when we didn't
get closure on a minor, non -issue, it seemed like we held
additional meetings, but we just didn't complete the
process. So basically it was an outline plan. There
were some other things that I'll say from my perspective
that the plan probably didn't go far enough. One thing
that appeared to be occurring is that the plan didn't
have the elimination of sites and wasn't going to end up
providing the separation of broadcast and communication.
In my opinion there was somewhat of a conflict in the
committee, in that it was clear that because of the
approval of broadcast which was creating a problem and
the absence of separation, the plan wasn't going to
probably accomplish what it was going to need to
accomplish. So it never went beyond that point. Now
other people who went through those meetings may have a
different opinion and maybe if they could comment on my
impression that might be helpful too.
MAUDLIN: I have one question. You said that the conflict
resolution in this thing is totally ineffective, and the
only way to solve the conflicts up there is just to
remove some of the people.
OBERDORFER: Yes.
MAUDLIN: There isn't any answer to ...two people have mentioned
putting up towers and things on at different heights and
removing some of the other program? That isn't a
solution either.
OBERDORFER: I don't think it would be effective. Some of the
interference problems were so strong that they
PAGE 17
affected, they caused interference in town here not
just up on Awbrey Butte. I spent some time with the
engineer from public broadcasting troubleshooting
that the FCC did too, and we came to the conclusion
it's coming from every place up there. So I mean
you just...theoretically maybe if you put one big
tower up there and figured some way to put on it
within the 600 foot limit that you have from the
FAA, that you could achieve some results, but I
think the amount of money you're gonna spend up
there and the risk of it not making any difference
at all, it's just not worth it, and I don't think
that at the present time, the use, the lessees, and
the users of the site up there can absorb that kind
of financial hit in the present market place.
THROOP: Let me make sure I understood what you said. You
indicated that you felt that if we go to community towers
like was suggested earlier this evening, that you think
the benefits may be at best marginal?
OBERDORFER: Yes, I don't think that would be helpful.
THROOP: If the current conflict resolution process doesn't work,
what would you suggest might work in its place? Nothing
other than removing users?
OBERDORFER: I think you have an inherent incompatibility between
high-powered broadcast and lower -powered receiving
users. Most of the people that were affected by the
interference, such as the City of Bend and our
operation, and the County too, they couldn't wait
five years for something to happen, and there are
alternative ways to do some of these things, they
just cost money and sometimes that's the cheapest
way to do it.
THROOP: One more question Mr. Chair. You indicated that the
status quo was an acceptable alternative. Do you have
a better alternative?
OBERDORFER: I can see that the County, I mean, I say the
management, from what the County's managing of the
site really hasn't been all that beneficial to the
users and certainly I think it's probably a burden
financially to the County. There's no real reason
that the County should be involved. If the County
wants to get out of the site, I'd like to see them
and in compliance with idea of the master plan, sell
those leases to the individual lessees.
PAGE 18
THROOP: Let me explore that just for a second Mr. Chair. We had
a couple of options, say the County retained the site so
presumably the service could be provided to the citizens
of the area at the least cost, but a professional
management company came in and handled the management of
the site. It that a preferable alternative over what we
have or do you think the best solution would be to, in
some fashion, try to dispose, subdivide the site and
dispose of it to all the individual users, and then how
in the hell would you ever resolve a conflict if you
basically subdivided the site and disposed of it all to
a variety of users?
OBERDORFER: Between users there's some cooperation. You gotta
understand, somebody who spends $300,000 to put up
a broadcast station isn't going to move it once they
get up there and they're not gonna turn it off for
any reason, but generally there's been some
cooperation between the two-way users. A lot of
those kind of problems can be solved with antenna
relocation or filters that are fairly inexpensive
and since that kind of interference is mutual,
there's an incentive for those parties in the
communications end of this business to resolve those
problems because you know you may need the other guy
to help you out sometime. I really don't think
that..the only thing that a professional manager
could do to the site is resolve the interference
problems, and I don't think those are resolvable.
As far as making the thing visually better,
consolidating some of those site, I think that's
something that can be done either by the County or
the City Planning staff with the input from the
users that are up there.
THROOP: If you figure out how to make thirteen different
interests be able to cooperate, be able to resolve all
the differences that come up without having, let's say,
a single party responsible, that kind of model might
transfer over to a lot of other business.
OBERDORFER: I think we did come to a fairly acceptable master
plan up there that addressed a lot of those issues
of visual and consolidating the sites and those
things, and I'd like to see it go forward.
MAUDLIN: Anyone else.
LIVERSIDGE: My name's Justin at 5404 SE or NE SW where do we
live? My response is that Portland seems to be in
a similar situation. They have a west hills. There
are a lot of upper end homes in the west hills area
PAGE 19
and on top of the west hills there are a number of
what could be considered unsightly towers,
especially the new KGON tower, and I think it's
again somewhat similar to what we have. There's a
lot a traffic going through the west hills going up
to the towers, and they've turned the surrounding
area, the property at the base of the towers into
really attractive park. I think that we should look
at the possibility, as the gentleman suggested
earlier, to continue with the site as it is because
I don't think there is a will on the part of the
current users and the County possibly to move the
towers. So we could continue with the site as it,
possibly raise the fees in order to generate more
income and then turn it into a park. I'm not
suggesting shaving all of the trees off and planting
grass but possibly there could be some grassy area.
And you would have more traffic. It would stimulate
more traffic through the area, but that would
possibly be the cost of living up in the Awbrey
Butte area. I think selling it to private
development would be a big, big mistake, because I
think, in light of the location, I think it would
be in the public interest to try and develop it as
much as possible in terms of public use. And
visually, it is ugly up there and I don't understand
why it is ugly. I can see out -of -sight out -of -mind,
and it would be easy for the County whoever
maintains it to let it go visually, aesthetically,
because again you're not up there looking at it.
THROOP: Guilty.
MAUDLIN: I can see it out of my window from right where I sit all
day long.
LIVERSIDGE: And as far as interference issues are concerned,
again I think that's the price that the people who
are living up there are going to have to pay unless
the towers are removed. Maybe the developer should
have warned the people before they built their
houses that you are possibly going to have
interference problems. These problems are typical
of people in Portland who own homes in that area
and again that's the price you have to pay if you're
gonna have a house with a wonderful view, you're
going to have to make some sacrifices. I think to
a certain extent maybe they're pretty small
sacrifices in light of the half million dollar homes
and the view they're getting. So Awbrey Butte for
the most part is gone in light of the development
there, there's a very, very small percentage of the
PAGE 20
people who can afford to live there, an elite group
and then if you cut off, you could in effect cut
them off completely from all Bend by isolating it
or turning the top of the Butte into further
development. So I suggest that we clean it up and
open up that area and make it more accessible to the
public such as Portland's done. Thanks very much.
ISHAM: Justin, there was a master plan developed for Awbrey
Butte that showed hiking trails going over the top and
over the back side. Have you ever seen that?
LIVERSIDGE: If you really want to bring it up, I run up there
and bike up there, and Brad and I go up there quite
often and I'll be darned, they have the running
trails and biking trails right at the very base of
the butte, but I'll be darned if I can see anything
else. They just sort of end. I hope like heck, and
I'm sure they will fulfill their obligation and
continue the trails all the way through. They
mysteriously disappeared.
MAUDLIN: Thank you very much. Anyone else? With all the talk
about interference problems, who wants to talk about
interference?
THROOP: I think there's possibly some confusion. Are we just
done with lessees, how about neighbors, anyone who wants
to speak?
MAUDLIN: We haven't restricted it to anybody yet, we've had a
little bit of everything so we'll just continue that.
KIRKALDIE: Sam Kirkaldie with KICE. I may be a little bit
redundant on some of the things that I'll say this
evening too, but you're looking for answers and
everybody knows the problems and the questions, so
I'll just throw one out. There was another study
done after the one that was eluded to called
Hatfield/Dawson Report. Many of the things in that
report were pretty much the same as the earlier
report with regard to cleaning the site up. I don't
think I advocated it being a park -like place because
too many of those towers and or poles and fixtures
up there could be termed an attractive nuisance for
kids, and I think it's too dangerous a place to be
really accessible to the public on a regular basis.
To clean up the site means not only to police up the
area but also to remove any pieces of metal. It was
identified in the report that pieces of metal can
cause interference up there. Power lines could be
buried in the ground rather than being above ground.
PAGE 21
MAUDLIN:
KIRKALDIE:
A number of different things were recommended in the
study for cleaning the site up. Also to reduce any
kind of interference which does continue up there,
shielding, filtering, those things do help, and I
think if everyone did it, the site could be cleaned
up and probably would not be as much of a problem
in terms of complaints that the County is receiving
now. Beyond that I think a current user group could
be formed. It think an engineer could be retained.
I don't think we'd have to have a management company
per se. I think a competent engineer could be
retained to make recommendations, to identify
problems and maybe be part of a user committee to
arbitrate any kind of disputes that come up. There
would have to be an enforcement mechanism for that
group and maybe that would be no more than either
comply or move if the committee and the engineer
decides that you're at fault and you're not fixing
the problem. If we're going to look to the future
and anticipate a lot more use of Awbrey Butte, which
probably is going to happen, maybe beyond cleaning
it up, and I would advocate fencing it as well, with
that cleanup, that was part of the study that was
done too, and it was suggested that the site be
fenced.
Sam, I'm assuming when you say fencing, I guess I
normally think of metal, is that something else that's
going to create..
They recommended the vinyl coating on
which they said would not add to the
there. It's very expensive however.
THROOP: What is that, vinyl coated wood?
KIRKALDIE:
PAGE 22
the fencing
problem up
No it's vinyl coated metal, but it's the metal
rubbing together from movement that, as I understand
it, that causes a lot of the interference. It's
metal against metal moving that causes interference
not so much just metal being there. If we do have
a lot of future use up there, perhaps an answer
would be to allow one more tower and let them be the
people who accommodate, whether it's Al or some
other company like Al's, to accommodate future
users. I know he has equipment that he could put
on a tower now and there are people shopping for
tower space --the cellular folks as was mentioned
earlier. Perhaps a piece of property could be sold
to Al or some company like him, to accommodate those
future users and leave the current site as it is.
I wanted to comment also on Awbrey Butte being the
ideal site. There has been many other sites tried,
including Powell Butte, there are installations on
Grizzly, none is as satisfactory as Awbrey as far
as commercial radio is concerned because none
provides equal coverage and with the same kind of
access that Awbrey Butte has. A lot of cost would
be involved to develop another site. If it does
become a monopoly, I don't know if this was
mentioned, but if it does become a monopoly, the
City and County would suddenly be at the mercy of
that individual as well, since they also have
facilities on Awbrey Butte and the taxpayer might
suffer a little there. If it is to be sold, I also
advocate that some sort of reasonable price, based
on current usage, be established, and each user be
given the first opportunity to purchase their
individual site.
THROOP: I have a question. Would it be better to allow each user
to purchase their individual sites if it was to be sold
or would it be better to ask the users in some fashion
to form a consortium and manage it as...
KIRKALDIE: Probably that would be the best because then you do
still have the option of control where as if
individual users buy their individual sites. You're
right, it would be very difficult to control it.
If they were allowed to form a group to either buy
and/or manage the site or both, at least then you've
got a hammer.
THROOP: Let me ask Sam a question. We heard earlier from a
witness that bringing in a professional management
company for example if we were to keep it in County hands
and bring in a professional management company to
actually manage the site, whether that be for cleanup,
aesthetic, resolving interference problems or other kinds
of problems or just managing the thirteen different
entities that are up there and many of those entities
have up to..some of them up to I guess 10 different uses
and an individual tower, is that better than the status
quo, would you see that as .. if the County wasn't going
to sell the site, would you see professional management..
would that be advantageous, would that be better than the
status quo?
KIRKALDIE: I don't know if you'd need to bring in a "management
company" to establish, or maybe you would to
establish it, but beyond that I think retaining an
engineer, a single person to sort of police the
area, identify problems, make recommendations, would
be adequate. Perhaps at the outset, if you wanted
PAGE 23
to get a company to come in and over a two or three
month time period, do the clean up and if you did
opt to do the fencing, do the fencing, and get the
site operating as interference free as possible from
the word go, and then beyond that, I don't think you
would need to retain a management company.
ISHAM: Everybody that's on the site now has a current lease.
I remember some other things in addition to grounding
issues, there was issues of bonded towers. My
understanding of a bonded tower was one that instead of
being bolted, you don't actually weld the tower which can
be relatively expensive. There are also cabling issues
in terms of what standards of cabling are required for
the equipment. If you choose a higher grade of cabling
it can be very expensive to run those. How would the
County or, maybe better, how would the consortium or user
group enforce the kind of standards that have been
discussed given the fact that they would be standards
greater than the current leases. Would everybody just
have to agree to that in order for it to work?
KIRKALDIE: I don't know if the County has individual power to
establish rules and enforcement. The County could
perhaps do that and give the user group that kind
of authority to enforce as I said either...and in
an extreme case comply or leave. I'm not sure what
enforcement could be...what other hammer would be
adequate, I don't know, but it would take some sort
of an enforcement mechanism, there's no doubt about
that. When I talked about the cleanup of the site,
I think the clean up could be done in stages in
terms of how much benefit are you getting by
cleaning up all the junk and burying the power lines
etc. etc. and if it did come to bonding towers, we
may have to go that far, but I think it would be a
step-by-step thing, and if things improved as some
of these small cleanup items were done, we may not
have to go to the expense of bonding those towers.
I would hope not because it is very expensive.
THROOP: Let me ask a question, Dick. If you are asked if you are
interested in increasing the fees you pay to use the site
sufficient to pay for an engineer to bring some
professional management, as you've described the site,
is that something you would be willing to participate in?
KIRKALDIE:
PAGE 24
I would certainly advocate that as an alternative.
I don't know how much the County realizes from the
site or if it has a budget for the site. I would
hope that the users in conjunction with whatever the
County may have to put into it could be utilized
THROOP:
that way.
I'd venture to guess we don't even get enough to pay for
the staff time out of the legal counsel office...what is
it $4,000 a year/$5,000 a year.
ISHAM: It's probably more than that.
THROOP: $6,000?
KIRKALDIE: Then speaking for myself, we'd certainly be in favor
of participating monetarily to get somebody as a
retained engineer.
ISHAM:
MAUDLIN:
LOUVAU:
THROOP:
LOUVAU:
ISHAM:
PAGE 25
We had to pay two year's income to Brooks Resources for
paving the road up there.
Thank you Sam.
Norm Louvau, KQAK. I go along with Sam almost 100% and
with Mr. Larkin, and I think all participants on the
mountain should get into a new survey. The Dawson survey
is a little antiquated at this point. It's a good survey
but if we were to get into that, I think we all should
cooperate in putting money into a new survey with another
engineering firm just to get a second opinion. I say
that because I've been involved in three community tower
situations: one in South Carolina, the San Francisco
master tower, and one in Walling West Virginia. The
opinions we got from several consulting firms varied so
greatly that it was unbelievable, and I would like to
see, and I would participate and put money into a new
survey that may satisfy all of us, but I think we should
put the money up along with you to get a new opinion on
really what's happening up there. Thank you.
What kind of, using your term, survey...
Just a general engineering report on what's going up
there with the various carriers, television, radio.
There are some excellent firms. We used Hammet and
Edison out of San Francisco on the San Francisco Tower.
There are a couple of eastern firm, but I don't think
we'd want to get into them and bring them all the way out
here, but I would recommend a different survey, just to
get a second opinion.
The initial engineering survey that was done up there
before the Hatfield and Dawson was done by McClanifan out
of Portland, is there any validity to the McClanifan
study that was done up there?
LOUVAU:
THROOP:
ISHAM:
THROOP:
ISHAM:
THROOP:
LOUVAU:
THROOP:
LOUVAU:
THROOP:
LOUVAU:
THROOP:
LOUVAU:
MAUDLIN:
LOUVAU:
MAUDLIN:
LOUVAU:
THROOP:
LOUVAU:
PAGE 26
I really don't know. I've read the Dawson report and
it's a good report, but I'm a nut for second opinions.
Are you saying that we have a first and second already?
There was early study done by an engineer called Bob
McClanifan.
How early?
'84 maybe.
'84 and then when was the other one completed?
I think '86.
Would that constitute as a first and a second or would
you like a third?
I'd like a third, I'd like to know what's going on now.
Let me ask this, how often do you think that kind of
analysis needs to be done?
Well at this point, I just think for your satisfaction
and for the satisfaction of the broadcasters and carriers
here, a fresh survey from a different organization would
be appropriate.
Because of where we stand with the issues today or is
that something that needs to occur every two years, or
five years?
Really it's something that I think you need, right at the
moment.
You mentioned that you had been involved with community
towers previously. Were those workable?
Very much so.
They worked good, bad, indifferent?
Well, the San Francisco tower common to everybody, but
it's the ugliest thing that ever happened. If you've
seen it sticking up in the clouds there, but it did
accommodate.
How tall is it?
Oh my God that thing must be 2,000 feet tall and that's
unnecessary here really.
MAUDLIN:
LOUVAU:
MAUDLIN:
LOUVAU:
MAUDLIN:
LAMER:
PAGE 27
Do you think in your opinion that a series of towers up
there, three 299 foot towers would be a feasible
situation?
I would leave that up to an expert.
That's what we were hoping for tonight, I guess.
Well I think it's something we have to put our money
into.
Thank you very much.
My name is Rodger Lamer I'm Communications Manager at St.
Charles Medical Center and my address is 61950 Dobin Road
here in Bend. I'd like to address a couple of the
numbers on the agenda. One of the things is we don't
operate anything of any large consequence off of Awbrey
Butte, but we do have our paging system off of Awbrey
Butte. We have been experiencing, for the past couple
of years, a degradation in that service. Part of that
was due to the fact that we needed to upgrade some of our
equipment. That's our problem. Some of that is because
the hospital is growing and being constructed on in such
a way that it was not designed to receive the signals
through part of the building as it is now having to do.
That again is our problem. But part of the problem is
interference off of that site. One of the problems
that's bothered us, and I've only been communications
manager for going on four years now, is the fact that
nobody can pinpoint that interference. It's kind of like
that's the way the world is and you just live with it.
We are currently getting ready to move our site for that
very reason, because we have people who use our services,
physicians, nurses, the helicopter crews, and they are
scattering throughout Deschutes County because we're
growing and that's another part of the problem. Our
service area is getting larger. The signals off of
Awbrey Butte are getting weaker for us, and we cannot
serve the public presently the way it is so we're having
to change. Now after saying all of that, what I want to
talk about is #2 on the purpose of this meeting. Lease
the property to a person or entity to manage the site on
behalf of the County. I don't see any reason why the
County can't manage that site. The County has enough
people with experience and expertise and has enough
people that they can draw on that I don't see any reason
at all that the County cannot do the job. I see no
reason to have to farm it out. You will find millions
of experts but probably in most cases they will disagree
with each other, so I don't see any reason why the County
can't do just as good a job as anybody else if they put
their minds to it. On #3 enter into the master lease for
the property for one or more community towers and remove
all other facilities, again some other gentleman here
said the same thing, I have a little problem with having
one tower or two towers with somebody owning those and
then being dictated to because it is very easy to say up
front that yes we can do it for a certain price, but two
years down the road all of a sudden all the figures
change, and we can't do that any longer, and I'm sorry
if you want to play the game and play on our site, you
will pay our price. #4 selling the property for private
development --no, absolutely not. Again, I think that
needs to stay within the County, it's as simple as that.
And #5, visual health and safety issues. I was shocked
when I went up to that site when I first became
communications manager. When I was a child and we used
to make little forts out in the field and dig holes and
play war games --that's what that site up there looks
like. It looks like a bunch of kids have gone up and
some of the areas, not all of them, some are very nicely
kept up, but some of those areas look like a group of
kids had gone up and made themselves little buildings and
stuck poles in the grounds and dug holes and strung wire.
I don't understand why that can't be changed. One of the
problems and I'll tell you this, before I came to Central
Oregon in 1983, I was a police office in LA County. The
County can make rules and the County can enforce those
rules. It may be unpopular, it may create some waves,
but I've heard it said here by several of the people that
if you have a user who is interfering, I don't see any
reason why the County can not set forth the rules of
operation to say fix your site or move. I mean are we
worried about alienating some people? You're alienating
a lot users by telling them that this user's bigger or
this user pays more money or whatever so therefore we
won't mess with them and you just have to live with it.
I don't see any reason why the County can not take the
bull by the horns and take care of the problem. The
other thing is, I had no idea that we've had two studies
now, and they're how old? Five years. I know the
government works slow but are these meetings going to be
talked about five years from now saying well we had a
meeting and nothing was done again, I mean something's
gotta be done. I don't have a lot of answers. I can
tell you what the problems are. Some of the problems are
our own. I have to admit that everybody in here who is
a lessee or sublessee, I'm sure that some of the problems
are their own. They need to put a little bit more money
in their equipment. They need to put a filter in, they
need to put a wire cage around their site, they may need
to do a lot of things, and that's their problem and they
PAGE 28
need to fix that. Just like we need to fix our problem,
but the idea that that's just doing business up there and
you're just not going to get away from all the
interference, I have a little difficulty with and maybe
that's the real world and maybe that's my problem, but
I have trouble with that. And that's all I have to say.
MAUDLIN: You mentioned that you or St. Charles was going to move
from that location. Have you found one that will serve
you as well?
LAMER: Actually we had to go to two sites, and part of that is
because of the hospital construction. We are moving the
site that's currently up on Awbrey to the top of our
building because we have to be able to saturate our
building because of the new construction. We're putting
a lot of concrete in that building with very few windows
on one end and the line of site and the penetration is
bad, we're also running some leaky coax. The other
transmitter is going to go up on Bear Wallo and we're
going to simulcast between the two. The reason for that
is so that we can start reaching into LaPine and some
other areas where we have teams of medical people that
have to travel. The problem is not so much from range
off from there except for our building. It's not so much
interference off that site, it's the fact that we can't
go with a more powerful transmitter off that site, and
we need to start getting range and that's because the
area's growing. I mean by the year 2000, I don't know
where our boundaries are gonna be, but as a medical
community, we serve all the way from Burns, all the way
up to Madras, and all the way down to Chemult, but we
can't cover that area, but we do cover into a great deal
of LaPine, and we've definitely had that as a dead space
for years because we can't communicate with our teams and
we're starting to try and rectify that. We will probably
in three years have to go to another simulcast site just
to continue growth and that's not necessarily a problem
with Awbrey Butte, that's just the nature of the beast.
But the signal coming off of Awbrey Butte has been
degraded, the strength of that signature, because we do
get interference. I can go and pull my paging records
and we can go for maybe three hours in a night where we
only pull 33% of the pages we put out actually hit a
pager. That's in the Bend city limits but yet we can go
six hours later and 100% of them hit. That's the site
getting out now some of that is our problem but some of
it is random interference.
MAUDLIN: Thank you.
PAGE 29
STOLES:
THROOP:
STOLES:
MAUDLIN:
CHALFANT:
PAGE 30
I'm John Stoles, I'm the General Manager of the Twins.
We are a sublessee from OPB. Probably one of the newer
people up on Awbrey Butte. Norm I think is actually the
newest but he had a frequency that was there once before.
We spent considerable money using Bob McClanahan through
the rigid leasing parameters from OPB to get our site up
there. My question to the Commissioners as I'm sitting
and listening, apparently there is a great deal of
interference. I counted up 96 different frequencies in
what is listed. With the Twins we're using five of
those. I kind of go along with what Norm said and I
think that you need to do another survey and maybe freeze
everything up there for awhile so that you don't
complicate the situation that's already there.
But what if we had done that a year ago?
We'd have been up a creek without a paddle, exactly. If
you've got 96 up there and you're talking about putting
more things up there, cellular, so on and so forth, you
should get your house in order now before you complicate
the situation. That's basically all I had to say.
Thank you.
Brad Chalfant, your property manager. I'm not here in
my professional capacity, I'm here as a property owner
up on the butte. We've obviously got real problems up
on the butte with the signal quality up there and that's
something that we need to rectify. It sounds like..the
consensus that I'm hearing from the gentlemen here, seems
to be that we need to do another survey. There's another
issue and that's the one I want to address: the long-
term use of that 20 acres up on top of the butte. This
area really doesn't have parks, open areas that have that
kind of panoramas, the views. Awbrey Butte is a very
special place and the gentleman earlier spoke of a lot
of people coming up for view, for recreation, that's
true, that's happening now. I think it would be a big
mistake and that's why I'm here speaking to you tonight.
It would be a big mistake to sell that property at this
point. Down the road 10 years, 20 years, the technology
may have advanced to the point where we don't need these
massive towers. We may be able to consolidate everything
into one tower that's within the FAA regulations, but I
think it's premature to sell that property at this point.
Undoubtedly, we could realize significant income from
selling that property. We certainly didn't pay much to
gain that property in 1952, but I think that's taking a
very short-term view of the property. I think it's
something we need to look at in a longer perspective and
give some thought to what we may want to do with that
property down the road. Once it's sold, whether houses
are put up there, or once it's out of public hands, we've
lost control of it, and we won't have a whole lot of say
as to what goes on up there, and we've missed a real
opportunity. That's about all I have to say.
MAUDLIN: Next.
BYERS: I'm Mike Byers of the city of Bend Planning Department,
standing in for Anita Powell, who's at another hearing.
I think someone mentioned that the City has been looking
at an ordinance to regulate the Awbrey Butte towers and
that is true. We started doing some work on that about
eight or nine months ago, and there is a lot of
complicated questions that were beyond the expertise we
had and a lot of unanswered questions about interference
and health hazards and all kinds of other things that we
just put it on the back burner and it's been there ever
since. I will point out that we were interested in all
of the tower owners up there on the butte. In addition
to the County, US West has some property where they have
some towers, and I think Coats has some towers on their
property too. Our perspective is a little bigger than
yours although the County has the majority of the towers
on the County property, we are interested at looking at
a comprehensive look at all of the owners up there that
have towers. I like the idea of an engineering survey,
and I think it would be good to include not only the
County's property but US West property and Coats'
property, and any of the other properties in that too
because there may be interference going across the County
property line there. We have had requests or interests
over the last five months from several cellular
phone It's not exactly a tower, they want to hang
a dish between two towers and have some type of guy wires
tied off to support, I think, one of the towers one of
the poles. So we continue to get applications in. We
don't know what all the impact a gonna be of those, but
there I'm sure there will be continuing demand for the
use of the high points around the community for towers,
whether it's Awbrey Butte or someplace else, and I think
it is a problem that's gonna get worse and more
complicated over time. Anything we can do now
collectively to try and set some limits and set some
standards for the future, I think will be very useful for
the community.
THROOP: If I was aware that you were going through an ordinance
process, I've forgotten. As we sit here at this moment,
I am not aware or was not aware. What stimulated,
motivated the city in putting together an ordinance, I
guess number one. Number two, are you really aware of
PAGE 31
what it takes to bite off this big of a bullet if you
will? You've got a lot of users out there and are you
dealing with all the parties, and what is it you are
hoping to accomplish, and what do you see as
realistically accomplishable in terms of a city
ordinance?
BYERS: I think, to go back to the first part of your question,
I think probably when we started talking about it, we
didn't realize the magnitude of it. The concerns were
about visual concerns and some interference concerns as
we've had some complaints and questions about
interference and the proliferation of the number of
towers, and we were looking at the idea of common towers,
but mainly from the standpoint of reducing the number of
things up there on the tower on the butte, and height was
a concern although we didn't have any real sense about
how much was too much, and I think Anita had talked some
to Rick about what you had in your leases and so on. We
sent some early drafts around to attorneys for some of
the users. I'm not sure who was involved. We never got
to the hearing stage. It never got very far past initial
draft stage, because there became just too many issues
that we didn't have a good sense of what a good answer
was for you.
THROOP: So you actually have a draft ordinance?
BYERS: It's in about five or six fat folders because every time
there was new information or a new twist, we called
Portland, we did some checks with other jurisdictions to
see how they were handling towers, trying to get some
background information. So we do have some information,
we do have a draft ordinance. It tried to look at
combining towers, some management aspects.
THROOP: Let me ask this question. On the combined towers, could
the city of Bend by ordinance go back and require this
site to consolidate the uses into combined towers? Could
that requirement be made upon the County and made upon
the 96 frequencies or users or whatever up there --kink
of a retroactive policy if you will.
BYERS: That was our approach. Now I don't....I can...since that
was prepared, I don't know what legal counsel checks we
had. The way it was written was that when new users
wanted to come onto the site that they tie into an
existing site, an existing tower, and looking at the cost
for a master plan to ultimately reduce the number of
towers and replace them with fewer towers and not allow
new users to construct a new tower just for their own
use. So we took the approach that we could do that as
PAGE 32
a regulatory condition under the zoning for future
users....current users into a combined tower situation.
THROOP: The phase in of current users, would that be based on
their cooperation or is that something that, for lack of
a better description, the police powers of the city could
accomplish?
BYERS: I think we were hoping that when the leases came due,
that it could be tied in the County's lease agreements
and lease requirements. I think it could conceivably
work that way with both the city and the County having
a role to play in getting the ultimate result.
THROOP: Let me ask another question Mr. Chair. You indicated
that you felt it was advisable that if an engineering
survey was to go forward, that the Coats site and the US
West sites be included. Is that, I don't know, you may
not be the proper one for the question, maybe somebody
else in the audience would need to answer that, do we
have a level of cooperation from all three site owners
to where if we did go for an engineering survey, it's a
slam dunk, everybody would participate and pay for it
cooperatively or is that something that the city can in
some fashion require? How do we ensure cooperation by
those other two site owners?
BYERS: Mr. Throop, I don't know what the relationship is between
the people up there. I thought that since there are
other towers that it might good to try and survey all of
the users up there.
ISHAM: Clell Gibson indicated to me that they may have other
ideas about their site in the future, and that they would
be willing to cooperate with the County. I didn't talk
to Bob Coats about it.
THROOP: Let me ask this one. There seems to be some, I guess,
concern or some perspective that maybe that Coats' track
might be the most unsightly of the lot. Is there any
code enforcement provisions that the city has to bring
compliance for aesthetics or anything else up there, on
the Coats' track or on our track, if our track is not up
to snuff either?
BYERS: I think realistically the answer is no. We don't have
any standards in the ordinance now regarding what a tower
site should look like and that was part of the thinking
about an overlay zone or something, that there'd be some
standards in there about the condition of the site, maybe
safety more if there's other things that may be of
concern if there's gonna be public, more exposure to the
PAGE 33
ISHAM:
BYERS:
MAUDLIN:
BUCHANAN:
PAGE 34
site. But we don't have a separate tower ordinance now.
We don't have any separate CUP provisions for towers.
What's a CUP.
Excuse me, conditional use permit.
Thank you very much.
I'll try and be brief. My name is Paul Buchanan and I
work for Brooks Resources Corporation, 416 NE Greenwood
Avenue. The main reason I'm here tonight is because the
cable's out in my television. I don't claim to be an
expert on anything, but I do have a few comments. It's
my understanding, and I qualified this that I'm not an
expert, an alternate site is not workable or doable
today, it may be in the future, so I think the criteria
we need to work with is, we have to develop the needs on
Awbrey Butte. Our concern, our Brooks Resources concern,
has been and always will be, and you wore our Jim Zarts
so now I've taken over for Jim, so I'm still portraying
the same concerns. Visual impact mostly and health
concerns have always been a question to us. We know
about the visual, that's not a question, and we've always
been assured there are not health concerns coming from
any of the activities on the County's land, and we have
not disclosed to any owners that they should be concerned
about that. It was mentioned earlier today, and I told
you I'd be brief so I'm going to...I think if you take
a look at the draft Deschutes County Awbrey Butte
Transmission and Receiving Site Master Plan, there's been
a lot of work done for you. It's probably 90% here. I
think if you could work with, and you've got to work with
these people on that other 10%, and I think you can do
that. You can't do it today. It's better today than it
was when we first were doing that, because the economy
was horrible and some of these people, as I understood
it, and we don't want anybody to go out of business and
not give us the communications that we want, but things
are better now. I think you could come up with a master
plan over a time period that any one of them should be
able to live up to and pay their fair share to clean up
that site and have these studies done. My understanding
was the biggest problem before and probably still is,
they have a legal lease. They can do whatever they want
to do up there with their legal lease. You can make
ordinances and laws and whatever you want to, but I think
that's gonna have priority. When those leases terminate,
then you have a clout. When they start terminating, you
should at least have a decision that you must do
something. You must do this to get that solved and not
to extend any of those leases until we have a master
THROOP:
BUCHANAN:
ISHAM:
BUCHANAN:
ISHAM:
BUCHANAN:
MAUDLIN:
PAGE 35
plan. I hope I've...I'm a morning person, not a night
person, and I'm tired and I'm not sure I've communicated
that it is an ugly site. The site's nice, what's been
placed on it is not very attractive, and we want to make
sure, and I encourage the study to make sure there are
no hazardous activities coming from those antennas.
Paul, let me say when I made my war comment I didn't
realize that you had two sons on ships in the Gulf. Rick
whispered in may ear "Paul's got two son over there."
I have one son in a ship, the other one's a navigator in
a C -1-41s normally. The County asked that they wanted
to have their road paved. That's why they paid to have
that road paved --they asked for it.
Paul, we appreciate you paving it for us.
Well, you did pay for it.
I tried to get out of the bill for about six months, but
you made me pay for it. And we appreciate you putting
the gate up again, that was nice.
We knew you were good for it eventually.
Anyone else now wishing to speak this evening. It's been
two hours and we've heard a lot of good stuff. I guess
that I may be as guilty as anyone for having this meeting
because we've got a lot of problems. We're spending more
money than we're taking in, and we do need to do
something. I've been pushing on doing something for
sometime up to and including canceling all the leases,
quadrupling the rates per hour, or whatever, or selling
the damn thing and getting out of it. So we've heard
some good things, and I have to agree with the gentleman
from the hospital, I hope that we're not talking about
this five years from now. I won't be talking about it
five years from now. I think that we have received
enough information that we may be able to take some steps
to go forward with some kind of a plan to resolve some
of the problems because we are not..because there are
problems up there. We could sit back and every time
somebody calls, we could just say "that's the way it
goes." I guess basically that's what we've been doing,
and I don't think that's the right attitude, and I don't
want to get any more phone calls, so I think we will take
the steps that are necessary, and when we take those
steps, it's gonna cost you people some money. I think
we ought to be clear on that. To get this thing resolved
and to get something done up there, I've never advocated,
as this things says, selling the site to a private
developer. I've advocated selling the site to somebody
who will maintain it as a radio operation up there. That
would be one way for us to get out of it, because we are
not going to spend more than we take in. I don't think
it's good business, and I don't think it's good business
for you guys. So I think we have some things that we
will be discussing in the very near future within the
next two weeks, so that we can make some kind of a plan
so we can go forward with this thing because we need to
get going.
THROOP: Mr. Chair. Taking it a step further, we are going to
have some discussions. Might we want to schedule a time
when the Board is gonna have some discussions, and then
all the people that are here this evening would have the
opportunity to come and listen recognizing that it would
be our turn to talk and their turn to listen. Should we
schedule a time so that if we sit down, and we probably
all three of us are going to draw conclusions of what we
heard this evening, and we're probably all gonna weigh
the information and come up with some points that we'd
like to discuss, maybe some recommendations that we'd
like to make and the challenge is gonna be to merge that,
let's say, among the four of us when we get into that
kind of a cathartic session. Should we make sure that
everybody here knows when it is so they can be there and
even be there as a resource if we have questions to ask?
MAUDLIN: Well I'm not willing to have a meeting just to have a
meeting. I mean if we can't come up with some
alternatives to what we've got up there and get it out
to them, then bring them together and say we're gonna go
this way, this way, or this way, and then bring them back
together.
THROOP: The open meetings law says that no two of us can talk on
a subject where we're deliberating toward a decision
without providing public notice. So if we are going to
site sit down and have those discussions, by law we've
gotta provide public notice, so we might as well schedule
a time and let them know where it is, so if they're
interested in listening, they can.
MAUDLIN: We have a commission meeting every Wednesday. We have
a work session every Monday. If it's on the agenda we
talk about it, but we need to ask our counsel to give us
some background on what we've got here, to set up his
viewpoint on what we've received here, and then we can
get together and talk about it in an open meeting, but
to set a meeting today is an impossible situation.
PAGE 36
THROOP:
SCHLANGEN:
MAUDLIN:
SCHLANGEN:
MAUDLIN:
ISHAM:
SCHLANGEN:
MAUDLIN:
MEIER:
PAGE 37
Okay. I'd clearly rather set a date so people have some
expectation of where we're going. I think I'm personally
not comfortable with how open ended we're leaving it.
Maybe we can get together and chat if it's on the agenda
and everybody can get on our notice list so if it appears
on our agenda, and we're gonna discuss it, you'll know
it, but I would prefer to leave it a little less open
ended.
We don't have any leases or anything --we have no
tight time lines?
We don't have.
Well I want to review the reports that have already
been done. I want to review the Dawson and the
other report and see what there is out there
already.
I'd like to see what we got out of this and out of the
tapes.
If we go through a site visit, if you wanted to walk the
site and take a look at physically, it might show you a
little bit better than what's on this map, exactly what
they look like.
Well Dick, do you think we could do it, say put a
work session one month, three weeks, four week? Do
you think we can do all that between now...
Well I'd rather do it at a Commission meeting not a work
session, we seem to have more time.
I'm Dave Meier from the City of Bend Police Department.
I wear two hats. I also live up in the west hills. A
lot of good comments here tonight, and it's very
difficult for me to take exception to any of them. I
think they all have a lot of merit. The reason I wanted
to address you, I think this issue needs some attention
and rightfully so as has been heard, but about five years
ago, and somebody said the conflict resolution doesn't
seem to work, and I can attest to that. About five years
ago, I made a formal complaint about interference, and
it didn't go anywhere. It just died a natural death
somehow. I think the problem has gotten substantially
worse since that complaint was made five years ago,
there's not many new towers, as pointed out in your
brochure, but there are certainly a lot more users up
there. Our problems at the City of Bend and particularly
at the police Department have gotten substantial. We
have officers asking for help, being physically attacked
in one case, having a gun pointed at him and so forth,
and nobody heard them because of interference. And I can
go on for two hours probably with horror stories, but I'm
not gonna do that. But I urge you to give attention to
this especially as it correlates to how many applications
may be laying out there in the wings now. There are, as
I understood, there are a lot of people that desire to
go up on the butte and are making application and asking
questions. If we allow any more to go up there, and
somebody suggested a moratorium until we do something.
Personally I can see some merit to that, but that's a
political decision, and I'm glad I don't have to make
that. But that's why I urge you to give as rapid
attention to this as possible, because if we allow more
and more and more people to get up there, it just gets
further and further out of hand, and I think that's
happened to some degree over the last five years.
THROOP: Let me ask a question Rick. Do you know of any other
live prospects out there that you're aware of as the
person who's managing the site at this point?
ISHAM: Yeah, there's one. It's US Cellular, either has an
agreement or is negotiating an agreement with OPB. US
Cellular is like 100 watt power ERP I guess. They're
the only one that I'm aware of. There is another
cellular that's licensed for the site. I haven't heard
that they've made any contact with anybody, and I saw a
hand go up there so there must be somebody else out there
that I'm not aware of.
MANTER: My name is Ed Manter, I'm with McClaw Communication,
Cellular One is our operating company and we're the folks
that are talking with a number of individuals up on the
site to, perhaps at some point in the future, locate up
there. Again our, as you mentioned Mr. Isham, our
effective radiated power is only 100 watts. It's a very
low power operation.
ISHAM: My impression is that you had entered into an agreement
possibly with OPB, it that not correct?
MANTER: We have not completed an agreement at this point in time.
THROOP: How would you like a moratorium?
MANTER: Frankly, we'd be in the same shoes as the other fellow
that answered the question about if the moratorium had
taken place a year ago. No, we would not like a
moratorium, that's pretty clear. I didn't come prepared
to address the committee.
PAGE 38
THROOP:
MANTER:
BUCHANAN:
MAUDLIN:
MAUDLIN:
PAGE 39
Just a small panic at the rostrum.
A moratorium does cause concern for us. If there are any
other questions I could answer, I'd be happy to.
I forgot one other point that I should clarify and Mr.
Isham mentioned it. There is a master plan on Awbrey
Butte for the trail park system and the City has required
us and we have dedicated...I think if you drive through
there you'll see two little pocket park areas with tennis
courts on them that people are playing on right now.
That land has been dedicated to the City as well as
connecting paths from those parks to this County land on
both sides. So if you make decisions regarding the
leasing or any other areas, I'd guess probably should
take into consideration that we have a system that's
designed to go through there and would dead end if we
don't keep that in mind.
Thank you Paul, we have our regularly scheduled meeting
tomorrow and I think that we will be fairly well finished
with that by 11:00. We will take the time to discuss
what we still need to look at, a site visit or whatever,
but we will set a meeting for not later than a month from
tomorrow, and you will all be notified in plenty of time
so you can be around, so you can know what we're talking
about.
Is there anything further? The meeting is adjourned.
ESS
Board of Commissioners
NOTICE
Administration Building
1 130 N.W. Harriman / Bend, Oregon 97701
(503) 388-6570
Dick Maudlin
Tom Throop
Nancy Pope Schlangen
AWBREY BUTTE MEETING
On Tuesday, March 5, 1991, the Board of County Commissioners
of Deschutes County, Oregon, will hold a meeting at 7:00 p.m. in
Hearing Room A, Juvenile Justice Building,
Bend, Oregon, to discuss the future of the
1128 N. W. Harriman,
County's Awbrey Butte
Radio and Television Transmission Site. All interested persons
may attend and comment.
BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF
DESC 1 TES 0 .TY, OREG
L' CK ''r UDLIN, Chairman
Publish in Bulletin: February 27, 1991
March 3, 1991
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5
AWBREY BUTTE MEETING
INTRODUCTION
Deschutes County has owned a twenty -acre parcel on top of Awbrey Butte since 1952. Since then
the County property has been continuously used as a radio transmission and receiving site. A
number of public and commercial entities are located on the site providing communications, FM
radio and television broadcasts. The map attached hereto shows the current active sites.
All users on the site, with the exception of the U.S. Forest Service, operate under a lease from
Deschutes County. All lessees of the County are authorized to enter into subleases in accordance
with their lease. With two exceptions, all leases had a initial 5 -year term from July 1, 1983, to June
30, 1988, with three five-year renewal options. Annual rent may be changed by the County at the
beginning of each renewal period.
The access to the property is paved. All structures on the site are either grandfathered or were
permitted by the City of Bend. No new towers have been located on the site since Oregon Public
Broadcasting constructed a new tower in 1983. The site is now managed by County staff.
PURPOSE OF MEETING
The Board is interested in obtaining public input on the future uses and management of the site. Any
person may provide information or opinions to the Board at this meeting. The fact that this meeting
is being held should not be construed to be an approval of any suggested change in the site or its
management. Areas of interest the Board would like to have addressed are:
1. Continuation of site and management in current form.
2. Lease the property to a person or entity to management the site on behalf of the County.
3. Enter into a master lease for the property for one or more community towers and remove all
other facilities.
4. Sell the property for private development.
5. Visual, health and safety issues.
6. lnterferrence issues.
COMMENTS
In taking comments, the Board welcomes written testimony and will hold the record open for one
week from tonight to receive such testimony. It would be appreciated if each person speaking would
limit their oral presentation to five minutes, not including time responding to questions from the
Board. Comments will be received in the following order:
1. Lessees
2. Sublessees
3. Neighbors
4. Other interested persons
Please deliver additional written comments to Richard L. /sham, Deschutes County Legal Counsel,
1130 N.W. Harriman, Bend, Oregon 97701. A written report will be prepared for the Board after the
close of the record.
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