Residents argue city staff removed key language that would make the tower rule more effective.<\/p>\n
ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The city of St. Pete beach is moving forward with a new ordinance that impacts wireless infrastructure, but some residents argue city staff removed key language that would make the tower rule more effective.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like the residents got bamboozled,\u201d Lauren Mones, a St. Pete Beach resident, said.<\/p>\n
Mones said she and other residents spent more than a year developing an ordinance to limit where 5G towers can be installed in St. Pete Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need at least a fall zone. So, this tower in front of my friend Roger’s home is at least 50 feet, and it’s set back only 30 feet from his house. I mean this egregious,\u201d Mones said.<\/p>\n
She said residents pushed for a mandatory 40-foot setback in residential rights-of-way to protect homes if towers fall during storms. The city passed an ordinance, but not in the way neighbors and some commissioners expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI needed clarification as to what the motion was and what was drawn, because I feel what’s written is not what was voted for,\u201d Betty Rzewnicki, former commissioner of District 3, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was for the mandatory for the citizen’s language as well,” Commissioner Lisa Robinson, District 2, said.<\/p>\n
The ordinance said registrants are encouraged to meet a setback of at least 40 feet from any existing residential dwelling unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe staff proposal always had encourage for both sections. The citizen\u2019s proposal was mandatory. Both Verizon and AT&T wrote letters and stated that mandatory is preempted by state statutes,\u201d city attorney Ralf Brooks said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is being suggested would be in direct violation of state statute of what we are allowed to do in right of ways,\u201d Matt Mucci, AT&T representative, said.<\/p>\n
Mones said there were several conversations saying that wasn’t the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBy him saying we’re 100% preempted, let’s insert the word encourage, he is completely wrong to do that. Because we do have a choice. The local government has a choice of where these towers can go,” Mones said.<\/p>\n
For now, the ordinance remains unchanged as officials await guidance from the attorney before final adoption.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m not happy about it. I think we all messed up,\u201d Robinson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
10 Tampa Bay News has not yet heard back from the city of St Pete beach about these concerns. If she has to, Mones said she’s okay with repealing the ordinance and starting over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents argue city staff removed key language that would make the tower rule more effective. ST. PETE BEACH,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-207636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}