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To protect the community’s natural beauty, visual quality and safety while facilitating the reasonable and balanced provision of wireless communication services. More specifically, it is the City’s goal to minimize the visual impact of wireless communication facilities on the community, particularly in and near residential zones;
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To promote and protect the public health, safety and welfare, preserve the aesthetic character of the Spokane community, and to reasonably regulate the development and operation of wireless communication facilities within the City to the extent permitted under State and federal law;
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To minimize the impact of WCFs by establishing standards for siting design and screening;
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To encourage the collocation of antennas on existing structures, thereby minimizing new visual impacts and reducing the potential need for new towers that are built in or near residential zones by encouraging that WCFs first be located on buildings, existing towers or utility poles in public rights-of-way;
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To protect residential zones from excessive development of WCFs;
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To ensure that towers in or near residential zones are only sited when alternative facility locations are not feasible;
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To preserve the quality of living in residential areas which are in close proximity to WCFs;
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To preserve the opportunity for continued and growing service from the wireless industry;
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To preserve neighborhood harmony and scenic viewsheds and corridors;
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To accommodate the growing need and demand for wireless communication services;
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To establish clear guidelines and standards and an orderly process for expedited permit application review intended to facilitate the deployment of wireless transmission equipment, to provide advanced communication services to the City, its residents, businesses and community at large;
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To ensure City zoning regulations are applied consistently with federal telecommunications laws, rules, regulations and controlling court decisions;
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To encourage the use of Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) and other small cell systems that use components that are a small fraction of the size of macrocell deployments, and can be installed with little or no impact on utility support structures, buildings, and other existing structures; and
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To provide regulations which are specifically not intended to, and shall not be interpreted or applied to, (1) prohibit or effectively prohibit the provision of personal wireless services, (2) unreasonably discriminate among functionally equivalent service providers, or (3) regulate WCFs and wireless transmission equipment on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such emissions comply with the standards established by the Federal Communications Commission.
