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TOWN OF SOUTHOLD ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS
COUNTY OP SUPPOLK : STATE OF NEW YORK
TOWN 0 ~ S OUT HO L D
ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS
SPECIAL MEETING
Southold Town Hall
53095 Main Road
Southold, New York
February 3, 2005
9:30 a.m.
Board Members PresenE :
RUTH OLIVA, Chairwoman
VINCENT ORLANDO, Vice Chairman
MICHAEL SIMON,
JAMES DINIZIO,
LINDA KOWALSKI,
Absent:
Board Member
Board Member
Board Secretary
Gerard Goehringer, Board Member
'ORIGINA
COURT REPORTING AND TRANSCRIPTION SERVICE {631) 878--8047
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ORIENT FIRE DISTRICT ZB 5408
PUBLIC HEARING continued
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: We are here so we can
hear some technical testimony from Mr. Scheibel
and Hr. Furrier. I would appreciate that any
comments that are ,going te De made tonight are
only on the technical aspects only. We have heard
from most of you and we realll' appreciate your
comments and we will take everything in~o
consideration.
Tonight the Board has ~o hear the
technical merits on each side. Mr. Scheibel would
yen like te sYart tonight?
HR. BOYD: I want to provide the Board
with several studies that have been done by Mr.
Scheibel back in March, 2004. This was a study
that was presented and available at a meeting that
we had at the Orient firehouse. And we had a more
recent one, which really just brings that eno a
little DiE up to date.
Mr. Scheibel, maybe you can take a momen~
to give your qualifications to this Board.
MR. SCHEIBEL: I have a slide for you.
MR. BOYD: We will let the slide do the
talking.
MR. SCHEIBEL: I'm Bill Scheibel, I own
Eastern Long Island Electronics. We're located in
Quogue. We're a full line Motorola
dealership. That's not just selling radios. The
difference is tha~ yes, of course, anyone who is
in business to sell something wants to make money,
Out also we're what's called a national MSS, which
means we're authorized by Motorola to carry the
Motorola logo on my card, my ID, my stationery,
because Motorola empowers me to represent them. I
go to all uhe specialized training, I have all the
proper test equipment, all the proper software
packages, everything I need to be able to do
design maintenance installation for communications
systems, as per Motorola's guidelines, I'm also a
Kenwood dealer, a Midland and an Exxon dealer. So
with anything today, you go into car dealers, ycu
don't just have one car, you have many cars, well,
I have a lot of radios. This is all we do.
Part of my contract with Motorola is I'm
maintaining E9-11 for all the east end towns, sc,
when you pick up the phone out here, and you dial[
E9 11, you're using a system that I maintain far
Motorola. It gives you an idea of our technical
ability and our credenuials, I hope.
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Some of our clients are Southold Police
Department, Southampton Police, East Hampton
Police, Riverhead, the sheriff's and others
further to the west, which are probably of no
consequence to us here. I am their radio company.
Fire departments, some you may recognize, some you
don't, they span all the way from west of Exit 62
on the expressway, all the way to the far reaches
of the forks. When these fire departments need
communication systems, I'm the person who does the
work. Whether it's EMS, whether it's Riverhead,
Southampton, Flanders, all departments all run
individual ambulance, private ambulance company,
I'm also their radio company. This will give you
some idea of where my background comes from and
uhe work I do. This is what I ~o, this is ali I
do.
When the fire department spoke to me, and
where they got my name -- probably from another
fire departmen~ would make sense -- nhey asked me
to ~ake a look at what I could do to improve their
overall communications. They had dispatch
problems, they had problems in scene management,
uhere were fire safeUy issues, fire ground
opera~ions. As we move through the presentation,
I'm trying to explain what some of those ~hings
mean, so more ~han just words. Pare of my
training and the organizations I belong to is not
just wit~ Motorola, which is the technical side of
what has to be accomplished, but I'm also a member
of the NFPA, which is the Nauional Fire Protection
Association. I am also a New York State certified
incident commander, which means that I know how to
go to a scene and manage communications based on
New York SEa~e standards. So in's not just my
~echnical background speaking, Out in terms of how
to improve the overall communications, I call upon
the other things I've done, the training I have,
nhe other background I have.
Additionally, the fire department asked me
to look at mutual aid, which is where our fire
department has to assist another department. In
this day and age in a volunteer based
organization, there aren't enough resources ~o
comban every evil that a fire department is
presented with. So there's a thing called mutual
aid, so you can be called in by an adjoining
Oepartment to assist you or call adjoining
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Oepartments to assist you. Additionally, there's
~he fundamental resource called paging, which is
what the system is used for to get the fireman
alerted to the fact that his services are
required, so we took a look at all that.
So what were the goals? What I'd like to
do is kind of have everybody through the course of
this get a better understanding of fire
communications. This is not just pick up a
two-way radio and talk to somebody at the other
end. This is not what we do with our very handy
cell phones. This is more of a sommunication
system, and what the fire department would do is
find out what's available and how to make better
use of it to support the mission of fighting fires
and running ambulance calls, because obviously
across the years we've seen technology change a
lot whether it's our VCR in our home or whatever
iu is, we're not doing things the same way we did
them 10 years ago. Ten years ago there was no
such thing as an I-Pod for instance. Those same
technologies all come to play when it comes to
public safety. What they asked ine to Oo is use
those technologies to try to solve the
communications issues they had, but obviously they
wan~ed to keep their costs contained. There's a
lot of ways to design systems. We know thau from
computer systems. You have heard of super
compuners that can process millions and millions
of instructions per second, then we have the
desktop compuuer in our home or my laptop over
there, they can both add, subtracE, mulniply and
Oivide. Do I need a crazy super computer to add,
suOtract, multiply and divide? Well, obviously
no. My lapuop is very effecuive and of course
costs a fraction of that. So one of the things
the department asked me to look at was also to
~eep the cost contained in terms of what I was
g:}ing to deliver to them in uerms of a solution.
The current situation, and uhis was done
over an amount of time where I actually ~noni~ored
their fire communication, I have several
inonitoring stations around Long Island, I have
access no those sites where I can listen to the
things ~hat go on. Even if I'm not located a~
that particular geography. There were missed
calls, there were definitely firema~ safety issues
where a fireman's communication was not heard.
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Obviously in terms of fire safety, a missed call,
any missed call is a problem because that fireman,
that radio, that chief who needs to get in contaut
with someone who can provide him resources is
paramount to him Oeing able to manage that fire
scene and to those people's safety. So any missed
call is a problem. It's not a ~natter of it almost
got through. Almost isn't good enough. That's
what fire safety is all about.
For fire-ground is what we refer to as one
radio having uo reach another one at the fire
scene. Fire-ground is what's referred to as the
senior managing. There can be multiple
fire ground scenes within ~he geography at the
same time. Poor fire-ground means that a fireman
on the back of the building who's been charged
with a rear attack, can't reach the chief who gave
him that responsibility. So the chief is sitting
out in front of the fire scene, he's trying to
speak with that person in the back who's in rear
attack and they cannot communicate effectively
with each other, and we'll get into the reasoning
why that's come to be. Difficult long range
communications, if there's a chief on scene I'm
trying to draw a picture of why we do t~is the way
we do -- when you have got a volunteer fire
department and you have multiple chiefs and
potentially multiple scenes an the same time, you
need a way to effectively communicate with that
chief who has other resources at another scene
that you may need. Or you may need to consult
with him because the scene you're on has now
become a haz-mat scene, and you' re not the haz-mat
trained guy. The haz-mat chief is on t~e ouher
side of town. You need to be quickly able to
interact and get information from him in order fsr
you to effectively get your job done, which onee
again, the fundamentalal job is to put out the
fire. With the amount of resources you need ts do
that in a volunteer-based fire department, they're
not readily available and communication's
paramount to getting your hands on those resources
in real time, and that's why real time
communication is so important. That's what we
mean by effective long range, w~o is currently on
mutual aid te the next town over that the chief on
scene and that chief can talk ts each other the
same way we do on a cell phone, with that
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immediate response of pushing the talk button and
speaking to that other person who has those other
resources.
The biggest issue we had to look aU was
the platform for improvement really wasn't there.
The iow band system that's in use today, which is
the simplex radio system, which means that you're
non using any wide area available machine no talk
on, you're strictly relying on ~he antennae
available uo the radio, and the power the raOio
makes to reach from radio to radio. Whether that
radio's cross town, whether that radio's next to
each other, ~he only thing you can do in the
existing platform or iow band is to use what the
FCC allows you to, which is that small amount of
tower, that small antennae and the 30 wants that
they license off the firehouse to talk on. And
we'll get Eo why that's importan~ as we move on.
Bottom line is that system's outdated. It's not
that nhis is a unique probleln to Orient Fire
District. This is a problem that every fire
district nationwide faces. It was a problem faced
at 9,'11. You've got to have a reliable
communications system ~hat gets you to talk
reliably from radio to radzo on demand, and if you
~on't have that, people can potentially lose their
lives. That's what this is all about. The
existing system that's in place, with iow band
simplex nechnology cannot reliably do than. As we
move on you'll see how the studies prove ~hat out.
There's a real fancy computer program that
I own, that Motorola insists tha~ I do, that you
put all this informanion into, and it can plot for
you how the radio system performs. Now, Uo try
an~ give you all the ariEhmatic how that system
works, I'm probably not qualified to do that.
would probably require like a Ph.D. in
mathematics, bun I understand how radio works sc I
know how ~o use the program. The simple
explanation on what the plot tells you is let's
start with the wording first, "talk out" means
from where you want to talk our Eo ~he person you
want to reach, ~hat's called talk out. If the
person au the fire department pushes down a~ the
microphone at the dispatch center, how well does
tMe person out in the fields hear him, that's
out. Talk out on the iow band system was never a
problem. It works pretty well, are there
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interference issues, yes, we'll get to that later.
Talk out, as you can see from the diagram, green
depicts okay, green is gooO, red is bad. In this
scenario, actually, green is no~ as good as red.
Red indicates hot, very hot, there's a lot of
radio energy for that radio to hear so the
signal's very clear. Green is still good. As you
move more towards blue, then navy blue and darker,
means there's less energy, ~neans the radio stops
hearing. As you can see from the map, the talk
out energy on low band was never really ail issue,
you can hear someone from the dispatch center lust
fine all the way out past Plum Island.
Low band talk in, however, is a completely
differen~ story. Talk in from a mobile radio in
the chief's car back to the dispatch center was
significantly impaired. You can see where there's
blue areas and dark blue areas right within the
fire district. Now, how many of them are ~here?
Doesn'~ look all that bad, does it? But that's
from a mobile radio which your chief has had in
his car, not from the chief standing at the fire
scene or from the guy at back in rear attack
trying no talk to the dispatcher. Now, le~'s look
at low Oand.
As represented from unit to unit, I
couldn't plot it because it's that bad. The whole
chart is blue. Because low band fundamentally one
in a simplex connection from radio no radio
doesn't work that well. You don't have any
height, you don't have any power, you have
whatever energy's in that battery and t~a~ li~le
rubber antennae. There's no back stage
infrastructure no help you complete than
communication. Also, there's an interference
issue, and we'll get to what causes those.
There's a legacy of issues associated with
low band communications. For one thing i~'s
what's called a no ~one system, and ~his problem's
been around since its inception but there's
nothing anyone's willing to do about it because
the system's already in place. But the radios
have ~o work in a mo~e w~ich is called carrier
squelch, which means there's no signal to block
Rnything in the radio. They leave the radio
inuentionally wide open so it can hear as best it
can. The down side to that is that every manmade
piece of interference out there also can open the
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radio. So those pieces of interference which can
be anything from Nextel telephones te personal
computers, microwave ovens all emit energy in the
low band space where the radios are today.
Because those radios operate and carry a squelch,
it's not unusual -- any fireman .san tell you
this - he'll be walking down the street and his
pager is squawking away. It's not a fire call,
it's a leaking microwave oven tws houses away.
That's the reality of low band. That's the
reality efa technology that is done. The
demonstration of that is than there's lack of
manufacturers for it. Most of the manufacturers
have dropped iow band equipment from their product
line completely. It's net there anymore. Why?
Because there's a limited market for it. There's
a realization that as a technology this isn't
going anywhere. We gotta ge someplace else, we
have to de other things. And since there are
better technology, because obviously people
haven't been sitting around doing nothing with
technology for the past 20 years, there are other
solutions. The ether thing you have to Oeal with
similarly, paging difficulties. The pagers
~hemselves that are manufactured on low band have
been re-engineered te try te deal with the face
thau all this interference is around us. On eno
hand that's a goo~ thing because it's less likely
for the pager to fault. The other side it's a had
thing because new it's mere likely the pager won't
hear what it's supposed te hear. And a simple
example I can give you, any fireman can tell you
this toe, if you put your low band pager and your
Ne×tel en the same side of your belt, Ewe guys can
be standing in the same room, one pager will go
off the other pager won't. Hove the Nextel to the
other side, the pager mysteriously starts working
again. Why is that? The FCC let that happen
because with this onslaught of technology and the
decreased value of our dollar, the FCC decided
that iu was a better idea to let everybody
self-regulate. So we'll create this sen of rules
where everybody gets to generaue interference and
we'll leave in up to the person that wears that
thing no mitigate interference. And any
electronic device you buy ~oday goes with that
little statement stamped in the front of the
owner's brochure, it's called Part 15. If you
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read a brochure on anything you have laying around
your house, your DVD player, it says if you cause
interference, it's your problem not the device's
problem. You have the ultimate responsibility to
unplug it. Of course, that makes it really hard
~o watch the DVD. But that's what we're dealiug
with today.
The story I'll tell you is that for a week
and a half, Southampton had a problem with one of
the ambulance companies. Their channel wasn't
available for use because there was always
something on it. It was like a whirring sound.
And we spent about a week with radio direction
equipments trying to track it ~own, anO that
whirring sound turned out to be the motor in a
person's DVD player holding their ambulance
channel open. To show you in the real world that
this happens, I mean, you could drum your fingers
on top of that DVD player and it will run all over
the ambulance channel in Southampton. This is the
reality of the age we live in.
There's also recourse well, somebody
else will fix it. There's this thing called 800,
Ehat's another band, just like iow band, 800
megahertz is where the county built their raOio
system back when there were frequencies
a~?ailable. Some of what the county and the local
fire departments do today, they do 800 megahertz,
there are radios there where they can talk to
county control, where they can talk to bedcom, but
the scope of that system is limited and ~he
o£verage of it is limited, and they're not going
to allow local fire departments ~o add their
~raffic to an already burdened system. That's
another factor.
There's a new kind of svstem coining, well,
that's a great possibility, the last county system
cost I think someplace upwards of 20 million
dollars. Yes, potentially there is going to be
another county system coming, but today, there's
no frequency to put the county system on because
they're all currently held by television statisns
which have not yet had to relinquish them because
of FCC rules. And of course, there's tMe issue of
funding because to build an 800 trunking system
that all the fire departments could use would cost
in excess of 20 million dollars, conservatively
speaking.
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So what do we have for options? Well, we
could leave it alone. Something tells me that
nhat's not what the fire department wanted because
when you get into life safety issues and firemen
safety issues and effective communications to help
the people that own homes that are potentially
going to have a fire, leaving in alone doesn't
sound like a reasonable solution. You can wait
for someone else to do it. And we talked abc. L~t
that already, there potentially will be some huge
wide area system like there is for Suffolk County
Police Department who all cohesively work on one
radio system, and any policeman in Suffolk County
could call any other policeman. Had thau police
level system that cost upwards of 20 million
dollars been rolled out to police departments on
eastern Long Island? No. They all still have
their independent radio systems just as the fire
service will. There's also the issue of funding.
A system of that magnitude costs 20 million
dollars, I wonder where that 20 million dollars is
going to come from, and that was actually in
1980's dollars, I don't know what it would be in
2000's dollars.
We could shore up the low Oand system,
}kay, let's talk about that for a minute. What
problems did we see with the iow band system?
Talk out was pretty good, talk back in from a
mobile was pretty good, so what is it that we're
going u.s do te impact these ether factors that
affect the very fact ~haE low band is ineffective?
We can't stop interference, in fact, it's only
going te go up. There's no doubt about that.
There are people in this reem that don't
yet own DVD players that will before the end of
this year. There's people that don't own the next
plasma television er whatever it is, and the more
consumer electronics we buy thau all classify ~s
part ef the FCC rules, the more likely it is there
will be more interference.
Hew do we stop the interference from one
low band user te another low band user? The way
the low band system was designed is each fire
division, not a district. A town is a fire
district; a fire division is a group ef towns,
share eno low band channel because that's all
there was, that's all there is, that's all the
licensed.
FCC
So if Southold, Mautituck, East Marion
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and Orient and Cutchogue all have a fire scene at
the same time, they're all trying to use the same
channel. Let's see hew effective that is. Having
stood at the wild fires en Sunrise Highway and
watched pine trees go up like toothpicks soaked in
gasoline, I cai1 tell you that more than one
department on one channel doesn't work very well.
And that is low band and that's not changing.
What we can do though is move someplace else where
you have your own channel, where you don't have ~o
share with anybody, and you get to bring people Oy
invitation to your party. So when you have a
mutual aid situation, you can say here's our
channel to use, click it en your radio. That's
where this is going, that's where it's gone, many
departments have this already. There are
departments in divisions where they have already
set up specific mutual aid frequency and what's
called protocols, which is how you use the
resources ~hat you have to fight a fire, effective
communications when you're mutualing with another
department. That's hew it's done new. The
combination of all that is where I think we need
to ~o. Low bard paging certainly isn't going {~o
ge anywhere for a while. Se some shoring up has
to happen.
Yes, there is an issue of the age ef some
of the equipment in the Orient Fire
Department. Like any orgauization, you do have te
take a look at what is the expected lifespan of a
piece ef equipment. I mean, hew long ~ees your
VCR last? Hew long does your personal computer
last? Why woula you think that a piece of
electronic equipment like a radio, which is
tesigned with much of the same components, with
much of the same engineering standard is going to
last any different? They don't. 8ut the object
sf the interference, adjacen~ channel and
co-channel from other districts, interference from
within your own fire division, there's nothing we
san do in terms of fixing that except move.
That's what fix is, that's why everyone's doing
i~. This isn't a problem just Orient has. We
jnst finished doing Mattituck. Riverhead's
already gone. Jamesport's already gone. It's not
li~e we're doing this just for ,Orient because it's
a fun thing to do. We're doing this because it
needs to be done and they asked me to look at it,
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and that's how we got to where we are today.
So what's involved in doing that? You
have to take a new approach and design a system to
deal with as best you can within what's reasonable
all those problems we covered in the previous
slides. The simplest thing to do is a high band
repeater which is that move to UHF frequency.
what a repeater does is takes tne very weak signal
that it hears from its antennae and amplifies it a
thousand times and sends it out again in real
time. It's concurrent, it's not like there's a
delay for that to happen. That's what makes ~he
repeater such an interesting device, because it's
actually doing two things at once. It's listening
and it's talking; that's why it actually takes two
frequencies to build a repeater not one. Bu~ now
I'm going down a road of technical jargon that nc.
one needs to hear about.
What does it mean to the fire department?
What it means is that that small radio now, and
face i~ no one wants to carry a radio very large
now, the technology's there to be more effective
and have it on you and not have it weigh 42 pounds
like the original radios did that small radio
with its small anuennae now instead of trying to
talk radio to radio, ~alks to that large antennae
where with that very hot receiver and that really
strong amplifier, so those o~her radios can all
hear what it says. That's the fundamennal
principal of how a repeater works. We also need
to embrace a fire ground channel where there isn't
any interference. As you move up in frequency,
the probability of interference is lower, so we
also have the PCC grant, a~ld the FCC application's
already in and approved, a~ld we have these
channels au our disposal to talk directly from
radio to radio. So now a chief on the scene with
a rotation of his channel selector can talk in a
bunch of different places without ever having uo
r~n back to his truck without having tc wonder
what he's doing. It says right on his radio, I'm
on ~he fire-ground channel, so if I need to talk
to the attack guy, I go to the attack channel. If
I ~ieed to get more resources out here, now I c~n
go to the dispaEch channel and ge~ more resources.
I can ~alk to that chief who's one mutual aid over
and find out do I need haz mat support here
because he's the eno ~ha~ has that answer, he's
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seven miles away, now I can talk to him. I
couldn't do that before.
The consele and the paging system are nice
to have. Would it be great te be able te mingle
all those channels on ene piece ef equipment so
it's easy to train the fireman getting to the
heuse as the first guy to be the dispatcher,
because that's how the volunteer fire service
works. A lot of velunteer fire departments den'E
have full time paid dispatchers. So what l, ou try
~o de is make the piece of equipment they have ts
lock at be as simple as pessible and uhere's ways
to de that. But that's more efa longer term geal
than a shorter term goal ef fixing the fact that
peeple can't talk te each other.
The paging system, once yeu puu a new high
band system in, and you have a better dispatch
console, we can effectively change the dispatch
system te either be more effective the way it
exists by putting a control statien fer high band
aE the PD dispatch center and moving everybedy to
high band or revisit via the new console
Eechnolegy hew we generate a more effective page
with ~he existing low band pager that everybody
has. We have te do this in stages, te try te do
this all at ence, it's like you're going no ~ry te
build a race car overnight with bushel baskets
full ef parts, yeu can't do ~ha~. Yeu have to
break iE into chunks, de what's important first,
and i~portant to the fire department, their
priority was get us a better ceverage, gee us
better fire-ground cemmunicationss. So that's how
we went after it.
The betuem line is when you geu dene you
have a systems-wide cemmunication approach.
Semething that works with these ether mutual aid
,departments that yeu need to talk to that are
already en their way to deing this. Buu yeu have
~o have a place te put it. That repeater doesn't
work very well if the antennae is at eye level.
Why is that?
There are some very simple facts ef radie.
Radie communications are basically line ef sight.
FH cemmunicatiens are ~he type of communications
that you can buy and wear on your belt. The
simple explanation of that is if I can'u shine a
flashlight or laser peint at the other ~uy I'm
talking re, if he can't see my light, i can'~ talk
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to him. That's the simplest explanation. So if I
have a chief on the East Marion/Orient borderline,
I have another guy out at the ferry, can they see
each other's laser pointer? No, of course not.
But if the antennae that represents the repeater
· s some number of feet in the air and I'm sitting
on top of that structure and I have two laser
~,ointers, can I shine a laser pointer at each of
the people I'm talking to? Of course I can.
That's ti~e basic principle upon which tile repeater
system and the line of sight radio communication
is effective. If the two laser pointers can see
each other, the repeater can take what this laser
pointer sees and feed it over to the otner guy.
But if you can't, if there's no path to create
that, you don't have effective communications.
Now, I'm giving you the simplisitic cartoon
version to keep it simple. Obviously there's a
1st of arithmatic behind this. There's a lot of
parameters you can set to -- well, how ~nany times
do I want the laser point to be able to clearly
see everybody; are there leaves on the trees; is
there a car going bt,; is there a building in the
way? That all effects how ~he communications is
affected. But what makes the difference is where
Vou put the antennae and tile parameters under
which Vou operate the radio system, that's how you
qet the maps. Height is might. We covered that,
right? The higher you go the further the laser
pointers can see. You're building an ulnbrella.
Think of the edges of an umbrella are reaching ou~
to the places you want to talk. Everybody within
that umbrella can now talk to each other, so
obviously the higher you put that point the more
effective it's going to work. But there's
arrangement to that. Does Orient Poin~ need to
talk to Selden? No. Does Orient Poinn need to
talk to East Marion? Yes, probably. That's why
we build things the way we do. That's why ~he
computer program tells us what we have no do.
There are also some fundamental rules
You can't talk through dirm. Get back to the
laser pointer. One of the worst insulators to FM
radio, line of sight radio is dirt. Yon can't
~alk through dirt, that's why w~ere do you see
most antennaes for big TV stations, radio
stations? You drive down the expressway there's
one in Hauppauge, you drive down Sunrise Highway,
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there's a big one in Manorville, that's because
they want their antennae on the dirt, so they find
the highest pile of dirt on Long IslanO and uhey
pun the antennae on the dire pile. But once
again, that's if you got somebody who wants to
talk, like the county, who wants to talk back to
Bay Shore from Amityville to Yaphank. You need
that coverage, bun if you want to talk from East
Marion to Orient or Orient to an adjoining
district, you don't need to be on Manorville, you
don't need to be cna dirt pile that's 350 feet.
You need what works. No one wants to carry a
ra~io much bigger than their wallet, that's just a
fact of life. That's the society we live in
today. No one wanes to carry a four pound brick
on their belt, especially in a fire scene in uheir
turnout gear. So we're all trying to deal with
what's reasonable technology. Can we get radios
the size of a pack of cigarettes? Sure we
can. Can we get radios that do everything from
tell me where the fireman is to talk to me when 1
change the channel? Sure you can, they're $5,000
each. Do some fire departments Ouy them? Yes,
they do. Is that a requirement of the type of
system t~at I was asked to put in place by Orient
Fire Department? No, it's not. BUt something
aOout the size of a wallet than fie on your belu
was reasonable. So uhat's the direction we took.
You also have to remember that interference is a
necessary evil, you can't escape it. No matter
what you do there's interference; what you wanu to
try to do is mitigate it. So the system you
design has to deal with whatever interference is
going to be presented to the users of the radio.
So what benefits do you gee when you
actually pu~ a system like this together? First
of all ysur coverage problem going across the
district is solved because now anyone within tee
district can talk to anyone else within the
district striculy by picking the radio up anO
keying it up. With the reliability as the
teparnment asked me no design of 90 percent, which
is pretty much the Motorola standards, any radio
system, no matter how much resources you pump into
it, ~s not one hundred percent. Simplest example
I can give you is ~he cell phone. Millets and
millions of dollars are spent on the ceil phone
infrastructure, but you still can'E, even in a
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highly populated area like Manhattan, walk down
the streen and expect the cell phone to nave
coverage from one end of the town to the other
without losing it because money just doesn't
matter sometimes. You have nhe general rules of
communications you can't escape. You can't talk
through dirt, you can't talk through a ceruain
alnount of concrete. I'm working for a job in the
Suffolk County jail right now where even though
the repeater system is within five line of sight
miles of the jail, two radios inside the jail
can't talk to each other because two feet of
reenforced concrete is really hard to talk
through; that's the reality. But with the system
we put together, we did i~ as best we could with
what we had to work with to get them uhe 90
percent coverage they asked for. How many
occasions are there to talk through two feet ot
concrete in Orient fire district? Not many, we
aren't built for that.
There are other things a newer radio
system can do, obvious, because as technology
:~nanges, with it comes features and functionality
than you didn't have before, like what's getting
no be very important is a man down sysuem, which
means that a fireman in trouble only has to fall
over, is one example, or hit an emergency button
on his radio, and he acnivates a beacon nhau uells
the fire chief on the scene or the dispatch center
that radio number VC44 is in nrouble. So if
you're in a situation where you can't find anonher
firefighter, you've fallen through to a basement
of the building, that button can save your life.
The system we are talking abouu implementing is
capable of doing that. The system you have now
can't even dream about it. It's not doable, not
just from the fact that the functionality doesn't
exis~ in the radio, but if you have coverage
problems where you can't talk from one radio to
the chief's car, how can you expect the elnergency
beacon uo get through? You can't.
The other thing it solves is it eliminates
the crowding. Because as more and more fire
departments move towards doing this, we talked
before abouu uhere's mutual aid plan in place and
what's called by the FCC a memorandum of
understanding where departments can -- the
equivalent of licensing nhe channels so when they
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go from one department to another now to work wiEn
that department is a click on that radio, now
they're using that radio's resources for that
~epartment's system, can't do that today. Bottom
line is, you end up with a reliable communicauion
system, and that's what this is all about.
So what does it actually look like? This
is the high band talk in coverage. Now that we
have a lot of green, very little light Olue, that
map leeks familiar te everybody, you recognize
what we're looking at, right? Talk out, mere
effective, that's not unusual in a radio system.
T[~e FCC when they license you, they run something
called contour maps. What they want you te be
able to do is push as much RF down into your area
as you can se you get things like basement
coverage. Typically they say it's more ef an
alligator because it's loud and it pushes a lot of
energy downwards and into its district. So if you
do fall through a fleer, that radio has the
ability ~o be heard and penetrate, hisEening you
try to balance your system, try Eo get as much
coverage listening as you can talking but there's
solutions to that, you can actually add mere
receivers, you can do things, and I think actually
Mr. Turner had mentioned that earlier eh. We
sheuid put mere receivers in, that's true, high
Oand si, sEems sometimes what you end up Ooing, if
you find a coverage hole, what you de is you add a
receiver se you can take mere inbound information
and feed it to the repeater instead of just using
the singular repeater antennae itself. But ~alk
out is typically accomplished with a singular
antennae, and that's what this depicts.
Another thing we need and has been found,
and I think Chief Cechran was in here one night
and mentioned it, there's an lack of inOeund
portable coverage on the peiice department system.
One of the things we were going te de at the same
time we did the Orient system was collocate on
that same structure a new inbounO police antennae.
LiKe I said, you {:an have more receivers than you
have a transmitter. The police department, ~hey
actually have what is called a voted si, sEem, se
there's multiple paths for inbound audio coming
from different places. And there's a computer
that decides in real time which signal is heard
the best. It's not inexpensive but it's very
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effective, but they need a receiver out here.
The receiver, they need te have a new
receiver at the site in Orient at the height we
selected, would improve their coverage
significantly from what they have today. They
have a lot of dead spots. I didn't actually bring
a map ef the existing system but they have a lot
of dead spots out on the eastern end of the
Island. And they would be well-filled, as you can
see it's all green.
We have just pretty inuch covered that. I
put the map up first but it's pretty easy to
understand if we have that structure available we
would also wane to let them use it. It would make
a big difference in their radio system coverage.
That's the end. Have I left any stone
unturned?
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: I don't think so.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: The height?
MR. SCHEIBEL: The height of the antennae?
It's pretty simple, how I came up with all this,
is I used a computer program to model it, and the
uumber I came up with to attain those figures and
fulfill that goal was 120 feet. It's just a
matter of the arithmatic and honestly, could it he
higher? Yes. The ultimate plot I ran to get ne
9b, 96 percent coverage took it to 180, ]90, and
actually if you look at ether radio systems like
Southampton, Selden, Flanders, uhey're all at 180
te 195 height. But once again, what's reasonable.
· looked at -- this is what I do, I looked at what
I had ~o accomplish, I looked at what my goals
were. I looked at what was doable. I looked at
120 feet. One of the requirements was Orient Fire
Department is the first mutual aid from the
mainlan~ to Plum Island. The Plum Island radio
system is a federal system, which they do ne~
share. It's actually going up brand new, and it's
not in yet, and really we de ncr even know how
it's going to work. But the federal radio system
is being put in by ~he Department of Homeland
Security. I actually did some work on the jeO for
Motorola. That's not what the fire department
uses for mutual aid. The fire departmen~ uses
their system to talk te their men for their men ~e
get assistance from their department. That's why
in the mutual aid plans on the chief counsel here
on the north fork, ~here's a plan for this. Like
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I said, this isn't someshing Orient's doing. It's
something everyone's doing, anO the 120 foot
number is what worked. That's what I could mee5
the goals with. Could it be higher? Sure. BL~t
do they need to talk to Selden? No.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: How far will they be
able to talk, just to Mattituck, to Laurel?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Map shows hand held to hand
held, ~hey'll be able to go from almost the end of
Plum Island at 90 percent into East Marion. So
they'll be able to cover one fire from musual
district 5o each site, that's how I engineered i~,
tnaE's what they asked me to do. Last summer I
engineered a system for 5he Town of Southampson.
They wanted hand held to hand held coverage in the
whole Town of Soushampton, 20 something miles
long. They wanted to know that this ambulance guy
can Ealk to this fire gu!, if one guy is in Speonk
and the oster guy is out si55ing on the Eas5
Hampton ~order, does it work? Yes, it works
really good.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: How high is their
ant ennae ?
HR. SCHEIBEL: They have three of them all
over 200 feet. It's a matter of mathematics and
engineering.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Even at 120 feet if you
needed mutual aid you could non contact Greenporn
er even Southold?
MR. SCHEIBEL: No. Let's put it this way,
ena mobile radio, not a hand held, they will
probably be able to reach beyond the -- when you
feed parameters of the program, we use what we
call worst case, so you used a hand held radio at
three watts with the standard rubber duck annennae
a~ waist level, because that's where the firemen
carry the radio on their turn out gear, then
there's another set of arithmatic that says the
signal from that radio has to have a certain
amount of intelligibility 5o be a useable radio
signal, and that's also the paramezers of the
program, that's how you know I can do 90 percent.
The simple explanation of 5he 90 percent rule is
nine times out of 10 when you key the microphone
yc<~ can get the person on the firs5 try, that's
measured on a three by three foot cell ~asis.
That's why you see ~he maps, little squares. One
square would change colors and one wouldn't,
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that's the cell. You can acnually define the cell
size too, but I nried to de it like three feet by
three feet.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Has Plum Island asked
for munual aid from Orient7
MR. SCHEIBEL: That's not something I
could tell you. That would be a fire department
question.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Members, Vincent, any
questions?
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: One quesnien I have
is, is zhe 90 feen geed for the police deparEment?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Yes, because the police is
only a receiver, net a transmitter. They have a
very big nransminter in Pecenic on nheir tower.
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: The one commenn you
had was yet can't talk through dirt, but you're
saying than eno fire departmenn button has an
emergency button, if you're in the basement, isn't
that talking through dirn?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Remember I showed you how
you have a lot more concentranion of RF in your
local district? That's because you want that
radio no be able to in those parameters you feed
the program, use the worsn case scenario, so yes,
you can predicn with a high probabiliny, 90 plus
percent nhat when he hits that button, t~e radio's
going to be heard.
MR. SIMON: Whan can you do winh 90 feet?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Something less than what
that map says.
MR. SIMON: You can't get to Pluln Island,
hut can you get te Orient Point?
MR. SCHEIBEL: I would assume you could
probably gen to some of it, ~un what's going te
happen is the umbrella of the red and yellow where
you want the cencentranion will shrink, so nnere
you're directly affecting the probabiliny that
that radio's reaching when it is in the basement.
Because nhere's a lot of things built into the
program, there's a thing called feznol effect,
there's a thing called tree canopy, where even
based en ~he ~ime ef year it's net just a matter
of the radio being in the basement, if in's June
sr July, it's in the basement talking through all
the foliage that's in nhe nrees. So the more
energy that you can pump into that local geography
where you need the coverage is obviously the
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betEer the system's going Eo work. AnO once
again, what is the rule, what is the fundamental
rule? Height is might. And you can't talk
through dirt.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Jim?
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: No, I understand it
perfecEly. Thank you.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Kieran?
HR. CORCOR~/~: No, thank you.
CHAIRWOMAlg OLIVA: A~i right, let me ask
Mr. Turner if he would like to make his
presentation.
MR. TURNER: I don't have any equipment,
I'm sorry. John Turner, I live in Orient. I'm a
professor at New York Universiuy of information
uechnology. I've been there some 30 years.
Before that I designed military command and
control systems for Airborne Instrumenus
LaboraUory out on uhe Island. I am an electrical
engineer and a computer scientist. My current
work now is mostly in various aspects of
somputing. I did do a study for the New York City
Police Department on nheir 911 system a number of
years ago which resulted in changes in Ehe
procedures for that system that made it more
effective.
I thought Mr. Scheibel's presentation was
excellent, and I have one point I'll make abo~t
in, but I thought it was extremely educational.
I~ was accurate, and he set foruh the issues very
clearly. I wish iu were easier to work
cooperately with the commissioners of the Orient
Fire District because I think we could have saved
ourselves maybe a half an hour. I ~hink there is
no disagreement than it would be in the bose
interest of the community to move the
communications to the high band. Ail of the
problems Ehat the low band has make it more
problemauic to use, and the technology that is
available at the high band allows you uo do many
more things. Just having channels that are
~vailable for different types of communications is
extremely important. So I think there is no
tisagreement on the question of moving as many of
the fire districts here as possible uo the high
band.
I think the issue, however, is that
don't think Orient's currenE communication is any
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poorer than Greenport's or Bast Marions or the
surrounding fire districts. In other words, this
is a problem that's shared and we're just getting
to the end of the useful life of the low band
systems, and we are going to have to move. So
this is a problem that I think you are going Eo
have to deal with for all the communities here.
And I think the question that you're going ~o have
te deal with is do you really want to see a series
,Df 120 feet antennaes spring up every four er five
miles er might there be some technologies that
would make sense te explore for the Southold
community which might in turn allow you to dc. ~he
same thing Out not have a series ef antennaes.
And the second issue I think is, that
should you decide to ge forward with 120 feet
antennae for Orient, I thin~ it's extremely
important that that antennae be used for emergency
communication and that it net be a vehicle to
include cell communications and other types of
communications, and that you get into a situation
where there are many other difficulties. Se I
think the issue is hew te constrain an antennae if
.?ne were to go forward.
Let me deal a little bib with some of the
technical side of things because I know that that
is what you want to focus on, and I'll be very
happy to take any questions you may have. I think
I agree with everything that Bill said except for
the answer on the question of the 90 foot
antennae, which I compliment you on, sir, for your
asking it. For two months we have asked Bill
thrcugh Ed, Mr. Boyd, to do plots an the Orient
firehouse for talk in and talk out at 120 feet, 90
feet, 75 feet, and 60 feet. We did that because
we wanted to understand the extent to which the
performance was degraded. Now the talk out is not
going to be an issue. The question is the talk in
and the question is as you lower the height of the
antennae, how are you lowering the line of sight.
What aren't you going to see? Now Bill has a
computer program to do this. My understanding of
this is that that's changing essentially a couple
of parameters in that program. It probably takes
a half an hour ~o run and plot out. I uhin~ that
information should be available so that you can
see for yourself the extent to which the signal is
degraded, and that is really what I disagree with
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him on .
A second point I'd like te make is tha~ we
have been trying to work cooperatively with the
Orient Fire District through Hr. 8oyd. I have
made repeated requests, and I believe I have
2spied you en them for a variety of information
that would have allowed us te explore the antennee
height question and also a couple ef alternatives
which may not work, but were au least worthwhile
to investigate prior te going forward, net
afterwards, and what I feel a little -- how can I
say this what I don't understand is why tha~
information hasn't been forthcoming. When I see
nhis in a student, I usually figure the student's
trying us hide something from me. I mean, we are
in a cooperative situation here. Ail of us want
to see the absolutely best emergency communication
for sur fire districts and I would leave
immediately if you believe tha~ we wanted anything
less, bu~ also, when you're working and you're
~rying to understand a problem and the community
has a right to undersnand what it is that is being
proposed, and whether various alternatives have
been explored and, in fact, I believe the rules
that govern this require a written submission of
alternative schemes, so that they can be
~nderstood by others, and that Es m!, knowledge has
just not been done Dy the Orient Fire Districu, so
I find that a little difficult to understand and I
am at a loss. I think that there are some
alternates thau are worth exploring. The
Greenport police I know use an antennae in
Greenport, and they have run tests out at Orient
point, and that they are satisfied with that
performance. I think there is a 300 foot public
service antennae in Greenport. It may very well
~e that ~here needs te be a medium height repeater
located at the Orient Firehouse te be able to pick
up the signals, the hand holds coming in because
you need to have at least one repeater site to be
able te take the signal in for the hand holds, and
I think going to a repeater system makes ail the
sense. You don't want two l~and holds to
communicate to each other, you want to communicate
es a repeater site then transmit out. There seems
~o me there's ne problem on the talk out, if you
lower the height, and i~ mat, very well be that
since it's the hand held power that gorges and as
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long as you can see the antennae, it would only be
at the fringes on the East Marion side ~hat yon
would lose signal strength as you lower the
height.
So I would just like to see what happens
with a repeater of lower height at Orien~ but use
of the public service antennae here in Greenpert.
i don't knew whether there is space available, I
knew nothing ef the cost, but it is an option ~hat
should be investigated prior te going forward and
it should be seriously investigated. It shouldn't
be, well, look, we know this s~uff, take my word
for i~, we have investigated it. I think that is
net how you de things in an open and in a public
situation. We're actually trying te de the same
uhings here.
The other thing thaE is further ou~ and
mere difficult Ee investigate is what's called a
distributed antennae system, and such a system
makes use ef fiber optic cabling to existing
telegraph poles. The antennae sits en the top of
the telegraph pole, all of the electronics are at
the top of the pole, so you use your existing
poles, you have to put in fiber optic cable, but
i~ gives you a large number of anEennaes located
throughout the district se you get the advantage
of being much closer to a building where you're
going te lose signal strength because you're in
Ehe basement of a building, and you're much more
likely to have good cemmunicaEions than having
only eno antennae centrally located that may be
three or four miles from a transmitter that's in
the basement of a building which is probably naE
going to have sufficien~ signal strength.
So, such a system should be looked at
because my understanding is thaE East Marion now
is planning, proposing a system, and I think some
of the other communities here could easily do
that, and I think Southold needs to think through
whaE an infrastructure like a distributed anEennae
system that could handle boEh cell and emergency
communication for all of Southold. The costs
could be shared bI, the various communities and it
might be a possibility, a way out of just seeing
these antennaes springing up every four or five
miles. So at a minimum I think it would be
worthwhile going far enough down the line to show
that such a system was hOE feasible. I would be
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glad to take any questions.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Vincent?
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: Has the
conversation come up with alternative sites or is
it locked in stone it has to be on nhis
topography? What about putting it on the nornh
shore where it's higher?
MR. TURNER: I think we originally nhoughn
that in the Orient area you wanted to put
something on Brown's Hills because you get 100
feet up immediately. Orient's pretty flat and if
you had a distributor system, you could have
something out at the point, you could have
something at Brown's Hills. When I learned about
these sort of lower height broadly distributed
systems, I would tend no look at both. I would
look at one with maybe four or five locanions
around Orient and making sure you were at the East
Marion border and maybe even East Marion and
making sure you covered Orient with maybe four or
five sites, and I'd also look at this mesh sysuem
which makes use of a lot of very small antennaes
that are just put on top of poles. My
understanding of the brief that was given to
Mr. Scheibel by the Orient Fire District was
first, that they had to cover fire districts to
the easU, one district to the east and one
district to the west, and that the equipment had
to be on the Orient Fire District property, which
essentially means at the Orient firehouse, and
that was, I believe what he was given. I don't
know if Bill has investigated any of these other
nhings.
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: No, you can'n be an
another site or no, you haven't looked into it?
MR. SCHEIBEL: No, I haven't looked at
in. That's non what the fire department asked me
~o do. And I can tell you also that based on my
experience you're talking systems just on a cost
Oasis far in excess, and I mean far, in capital
letters, of what we're proposing a~ ~he firehouse.
MR. TURNER: I think you wan~ ~o look at
economics and you want to do a small study, and
you need to have the people come in and you need a
proposal in hand.
MR. SCHEIBEL: You knew what thaE would
cost?
MR. TURNBR: I know the systems Out there
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are other communities, Bill, that are going down
that route.
AUDIENCE HEMBER: East Hampton.
MR. SCHEIBEL: I'm doing their system
right now. It's not designed that way.
MR. TURNER: I think it is potentially
interesting. I don't think i~ should be ruled eu~
because somebody says it's economically
infeasible. I know that East Hampton is in the
process ef very serious discussions about such a
system, and it just behooves Southold Eo take a
look at it and gee the data. I think, you Knew,
Ene problem I have is that I'm used te studying
things in advance ef deciding what to do, and if
reasonable alternatives are not studied seriously
~hen I get very concerned. And I feel te some
extent that that is the situation here. And I
jus~ would feel better if we could get the
information, rule some of these things out, but I
do believe you have te go very shortly to a high
band system for emergency communications.
CHAIRWONL~N OLIVA: Michael?
MR. SIMON: No further questions.
CHAIRWOMAN O~IVA: Jim?
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: I have comments.
Number eno I den'~ believe the application before
us is necessarily what you're speaking about,
Mr. Turner, ii1 that we have before us a fire
district that owns a piece of land that the
district chose to put a firehouse on. And they
have come before us with an application to put up
an antennae. Now, they are not required in my
opinion to prove that it will work better
someplace else other than the fire department.
This is their purview, this is their
rasponsibility, and this is what they're
proposing. Certainly, if someone within that
district wanted to request of uhe district to do
the study, mhen those people have every right to
make that decision, but to then require this Board
to require a fire district to do what you aske.~
them to do, which is to do a study, that's not ~he
reason this Board is here, and uhat's not the
reason we're here tonight.
MR. TURNER: Could I respond to nhat?
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Sure.
MR. TURNER: I am in the district anO we
have requested verbally and in writing that uhey
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~o these studies, but ic doesn't make any
difference. The second thing is that my
understanding is that they have asked for a waiver
in height, and when you ask for a waiver in
ileight, there are certain requirements that need
to be followed. My understanding of that is that
you need to look at alternatives to that height,
to that antennae and that chat is part of the
process of presenting information for the waiver.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: I agree with you,
now the alternative is within what they can
control. They can control that piece of land and
cnly that piece of land, and they're proposing
what they're proposing is what they think is best
for them. Now, putting one on Brown's Hill,
building a mesh sysnem, I can tell you right now,
sir, I have installed probably upwards of 200
miles of fiber cable. If you add up each fiber
installed, I would say it would go into hundreds
cf ~housands of miles I was responsible for as I
work for Cablevision. My current company I
probably have eight or nine miles of fiber
installed, and I can tell you it's about $2,000
for 100 foot to install and maintain it, $2,000
for about 100 feet, 300 feet, $6,000. It's a lot
of money. I don't know what a hand held radio
costs, but I'll tell you if you're going to build
a mesh system, you're going to be quite a few
miles of that at that cost.
MR. TURNER: Look, tt~e economics, I'm just
saying we need to take a look at it.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Sir, that seems
chat that is just a stalling tactic. Tile
comparissn of building a 120 foct tower and
handing out some hands held radios and building a
mesh system, there is no comparison to that.
~nderstand New York City, they got plenty of money
there and, of course, they have their own
problems, they have co go up and down and
under. These people don't. They just need
build an umbrella that they can transmit co ~rom a
radio.
Now, I venture co say that if this man did
Eloc out a 90 foot pipe you would not see very
much less rod in the center, I would venture to
say that. I'm talking from the perspective of
being in the fire department for 30 years, I lost
two friends that would have, had they had the
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technology he's talking about, would be alive
today. I can tell you these gentlemen go to work
each day, and when they go to bed at night and
that fire bell goes in at 2:00 in the morning,
uhey answer that call. They really don't want to
have to deal with whether or not because they
built a 90 foot tower they can't get on a certain
street. They want the best that their community
can afford to give them. I'm going to go back to
what I just said before, if you want to hash this
out, the best place te hash this out is at the
commissioner's meetings. This should have been
done three years age, not now. New we're trying
Ee deal with one piece of property that wants a
120 foot tower and honestly, they have convinced
me that height is might anO the higher ~t can go
the better.
Now, if it's 120 feet they're asking for
then maybe that's what they get. If you can show
that it can be done at 90 feet, then let us know
that, you get your expert in here, and let us know
uhat. But your expert, honestly, is that man,
he's your district. Your fire district from
Orient hired this man as an expert.
MR. TURNER: In effect what you're saying
is don't ask intelligent questions, don't ask tc
see any information.
BOARD HEHBER DINIZIO: No, sir. I'm
saying te you, sir, is ask them in the right
place.
MR. TURNER: I have asked them in writing,
I have asked uhem verbally.
BOARD HEMBER DINIZIO: Your remedy is Ec,
vote them out.
MR. SIMON: I would actually agree. What
we have here is a situation in which we have two
experts. One ef them is in the employ ef an
interested party, obviously, that's their job, and
when asked is there a problem, his answer, a very
articulate, well-argued answer is, ne
problem. The outside expert has said, we think
there are still some questions that need te be
answered, not arguing that Mr. Scheibel's
recommendation is wrong, but just that we need te
answer some further questions, and we are the
8oard who have the obligation tz~ decide net wha~
is and wha~ is net a good idea, Out whether a
variance should be granted, and that decision
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could De made intelligently only with answers ~o
the types of questions that Mr. Turner has raiset.
So to me it seems to be a no brainer to say than
we cannot proceed until further information is
given in answer to the questions Mr. Turner
raised.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: I would agree with
you if I thought this was the proper venue for
~his discussion. But this is not. This gentleman
is suggesting that they do something, that ~he
fire department do something that they have no
control over. They have no control over Greenport
tower, they have ne control over Brown's Hills,
they have no control over a mesh system.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: I understand that but I
de understand what Mr. Turner is saying that you
could just look into
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: You den'~ need to.
That's net part of our application.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: I'm net saying that we
have to direct them, but I think they have some
validity to ask their questions.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Their venue is the
commissioners ef their district.
HR. TURNER: Is there a commissioner here
of the district?
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Mr. Scheibel wanted to
MR. SCHEIBEL: The only comment is I'm
involved in implementation of East Hampton's
quote/unquote mesh system right now. That is a
nine million dollar implementation. I just wanted
~o give you an idea ef the order ef magnitude. It
is a mesh system in that it uses multiple sites,
but they're all high sites, the shortest eno is
about 170 feet, ie's at the Amagansett firehouse,
and that's how the system's being built.
MS. MCNEELEY: I'm a resident of Orient.
I'm in total agreement with John that we really
want the fire department to have the high band
communications for all of the reasons that Bill
talked about. It's absolutely correct. I was on
the phone today with the communications manager of
the Planning Board of the Town ef East Hampton and
she told me that they had invited a company called
Clear Lengths to design and distribute an antennae
system in mesh for cellular communications. And
we know from our researchers that such a system
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can easily be used for emergency communications
because what they do is the signal that's
broadcast over the fiber optic, that's carried
over the fiber optic line, goes to the antennae
and is reconverted tea radio frequency signal;
which means then that you can use a telephone pole
or an existing tower er several lower, 60 foot
towers for instance te be a Eetal system. And
they decide te do this and to make the invitation
because they really didn't want East Hampton to
look like a porcupine, and that in her research as
communications director she found this particular
company who, unlike others, which would erect
utility poles and have a utility cabinets at the
base ef the pole, which is net a very secure
situation, this company uses existing telephone
poles and existing towers and mounts their utility
cabinet on the pole. Se it's very much like a
Eelephene uhing we see in some of these big things
on the poles as they exist now. Because it has
been initiated by the planning department and
because of their particular zoning regulations, it
does not require zoning or building departments
issues at all. It's something ~hey can de very
~uickly if ~hey can come up with the money. Now,
East Hampton, like Southold, has a number of
hamlets in it. I'm net sure what their
governmental structure is, but East HampEon is a
township in the same way tha~ Southold is.
The proposal that she is inviting is to
distribute this throughout the nown itself in all
of the different hamlets of the town, utilizing
the existing infrastructure, and the existing
infrastructure wonld be ~he four large Eowers thaE
they new have, the eno that Mr. Scheibel is
locating behind the fire deparEmenE in AmaganseE~n
and other ones like that, as well as telephone
poles, in order to make this very large mesh ~hat
covers ~he entire town. They're distributing the
costs obviously through the different fire
districts in East Hampton in order to de that. So
thaE what sounds like a nine million dollar thin~
for the town of Orient would be absolute£y out of
Ehe question. But we don't cover as much of an
area in Southold as East Hampton does. So
argueably the cost might be lower. We have no
idea because I just was talking to her ~oday, how
do I know.
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But if Southold, for instance, were
proceed in a similar manner, we're certein it
could result in a well-developed area-wide
communications system, improved cellular
csmmunica~ions because you would be distributing
the costs of such an implementation with the
cellular companies because the request thau they
made was basically te cell companies. And since I
had contacted Clear Links myself direculy and
found out that there would be no ii,pediments
running emergency communicaEions over the wires
that they need for the cellular communication,
there would be an ability to split the costs
between the cell companies and the districts in
Eas~ Hampton, which was another reason they were
so interested in it. If this were to be the case,
~hey would be writing a contract with the town
instead of leases with the individual fire
departments. So that would enable possibly the
full retention of tax exemptions within fire
disuricts without compromising future funding
needs. It would also save a lot of legal fees for
the various fire Oistricts. Income from the
cellular component of that structure could be
earmarked for the fire districts for incoming
reserve funds or pensions or whatever they wanned
to do. The plan in East Hampton is being modeled
tc coordinate planning and building anO zoning,
~11 of whom would have shared input and
responsibiliuy; and it thus would be implemented
very quickly and avoid public uproar like we have
been experiencing. And all of the same concerns
which motivated this structure in East Ha~npton,
which has a more complicated terrain than Southold
nas, eastern Long Island HospiEal in Greenport
Fire Department and the Sounhold police
communications network on the Greenport tower make
~reenpor~ Village participation in such a plan
crucial because any emergency communications has
to involve eastern Long Island Hospital. There's
no question about it. It has to involve ~he
Greenport Fire Department. So in would be whether
er not the ease of communication between the
village and the town is one issue, but because
it's an area wide -- it's a possibility of an area
wide solution, and we're with Plum Island, which
is federal and dangerous, ~here is Millstone.
There are a lot of differenn things than we need
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emergency communications for. And this type of
svstem I think really well thought out to be
looked at, and if it is structured the way Ease
Hampton is talking about, it could avoiO a lot of
town disnress.
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: Did you ask or did
they tell you how long it would take to install or
implement something like this?
MS. MCNEELEY: I had a very brief
conversation with her. She was sick. She said
because uhe infrastructure was basically, existing,
which is to say all uhe telephone poles are
~round, it would be relatively quick to implement
from than point of view. They have existing
towers. Basically what they do is they set up -
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: You don't know how
long it would take?
MS. MCNEELEY: No, I don't but I don't
think it would be as long as --
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: I don't want you to
speculate.
MS. MCNEELEY: The only thing I'm going to
say is if you're going to have a tower in
Mattituck and a tower in Cutchogue and a tower in
East Marion, which is proposeS, and a tower in
Orient, how long is that whole process going to
take ~o evolve as well. If Sou~hold itself could
co,ne up with an emergency communicauion system
tha~ involved all the hamlets with Town
responsibility and distribution of costs and
cooperation with cell companies who have been
wanting To get in here, and we could make it
possible to do ~hat without voiOing our zoning, it
makes a eertain amount of sense.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Ellen, I don't disagree
with what you're saying iu's just that this Board
doesn't have the authority ~o insist that
something like this should be done. The [ire
district here has been more or less an entity unto
itself, and this would have to go through the fire
chief's council and take a fair amount of time ~o
see if they would be inuerested in joining
nogetner to do something like ~his.
MS. MCNEELEY: Well, uhey already have
joined ~o the exten~ that they have written a
mutual aid agreement and all of them are
signatories to that, including Plum Island. So
there is a precedent for ~ha~. And if uhey didn't
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have to risk their tax exemptions -- CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: But you would have to
bring this proposal to the fire chiefs
association, we have
like that whatsoever.
is a height variance.
MS. MCNEELEY:
MR. CORCORAN:
lie authority to do anything
Our only jurisdiction here
That's it.
This is an alternative.
This would have to come
through the Town Board as well, since it would
require a change in the Town Board and the Town as
a governing body.
MS. MCNEELEY: I don't think iE would
require a change in the Town code.
MR. CORCORAN: If you're going to require
them to engage in this sort of system, I suspect
i~ might.
MS. MCNEELEY: John?
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: I can tell you East
Hampton Town has three fire districts, Y~agansetu
and Springs -- four.
MS. MCNEELEY: And it's very hilly.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: That's why they're
doing the mesh system.
MR. SCHEIBEL: They have already spent the
money for the public safety system. It would be
that the clear system (inaudible2 . It's built to
be a mesh network, and the mesh network is based
on the requirements of a cell phone system where
each site can populate the other site with its
traffic and transparently cas~ that traffic site.
MS. MCNEELEY: That's exactly ute beauty
of it, what I'm getting at, and what they're
getting at.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: You'll have to debaEe
this later. Mr. Turner?
MR. TURNER: I just wanted ~o close with
eno or two quick comments. I wanted uo say tc the
,Orient Fire District that it troubles me greatly
to see the Orient Association appearing to be
battling the fire district. That is not the .rase.
We really understand what nhey are attempting to
do for us, and we are extremely grateful. I think
that there are other matters thau are playing
here, and I think those have tended maybe on the
sidelines influencing things. I think to uhe
extenu that we could make sure that anyuhing you
do actually is for emergency communications and is
not a mechanism for getting cellular
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communications in and is as thin and transparent
an antennae as possible would be extremely
important.
The second point is I think this whole
process is very good, and you are to be commende~
and thank you for hearing us, and thank you for
spending the time with us.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Thank you, sir. Mr.
Boyd?
MR. BOYD: Ma'am, chair, if you can for a
moment indulge me, take off my hat as attorney for
the fire district, and I'm now putting on my hat
as vice president of Southold Town Fire Chief's
Council.
We have explored th±s issue very
carefully, and we are definitely as a Fire Chief's
Council pushing each and every one of our
districts to go uo the 450 megahertz communication
system. Mattituck already has a tower in place,
Cutchogue has a tower in place. We're going to
that direction. It has been investigateO. It's
been inveszigated very carefully by all of ~s. I
jnst wanted to lee the people know that this
mat~er has been looked at at the chief's council
level.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: BUt it hasn't been
looked at as far as doing something cooperatively.
MR. BOYD: Yes. We are doing it
cooperatively se we can all talk with eno another.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: But it means that each
hamlet will have te put up their own tower?
MR. BOYD: Yes. Each fire district will
have its own communications base. There's no
question about that, but we are working together
to have one system which will give us ti~e
inter communication abilities that is so viEai and
will also let us talk to our neighbors further to
the west because we will have the equipment Eo go
on the 450 megahertz, which is being use~
presently en the south fork by a goodly number ef
~he departments and almost on a monthly basis
you've got another department down there going
450. That's mt, fire chief's hat, net my lawl~er
hat.
want
district
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: Does the lawyer hat
to speak now? No.
MR. BOYD: As the ~ttorney for the
I would like to give the chairman of the
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Board of fire commissioners an opportunity to
speak.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Go ahead, Marty.
MR. TRENT: There are a lot of things I
want to say. My name is Martin Trent. I live at
4390 Orchard Street in Orient. I'm chairman of
the Board of Fire Commissioners from the Orient
Fire District. I've been a fireman for 25 years.
I have been company secretary for 17 years. I've
been commissioner for 10 years. I've never seen
Hr. Turner attend one of our meetings in the last
several years. I have also been through the
chief's line. I think we're getting way off
track.
We need to improve our communications. We
need to do it now. We don't need a college study.
i'd like to get this done in m!' lifetime. The
question before you is one of aesthetics versus
Nublic safety.
I'~ one of those guys that about 20 years
a~o fell through a floor and ended up in a
basement, I'm just glad I was 30 something Ehen
and didn't do it now au my age. It could happen,
and I don't think I'm going to bounce back as well
as I did at that point. The only thing we're
asking is to put up a flag pole structure t~at
we're going to make hopefully Olue gray t~at will
be unobtrusive than will improve our
communications and protect public safety and the
lives of our firefighters and police. Simply put,
we're not asking for anything more, anything less.
Thank you.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Thank you, Harty.
HS. WACHSBERG: Just as a point ef
privilege as eno ef the people -- as you did,
Ruth writing the legislation, and, Jim, the
reason why we're here is that's because that's the
way the legislation is written, and Ehe way the
ledgislation was written was that we spent a great
deal of Eime working out hew we could protect
residenEial and historic areas. And the reason
we're here is because there was a limit puE en ~he
height in those areas, and ~e requesE a height
variance you have to come ~ere, and that's why
we're here, and why are we concerned about the
height.
It's not a question aesthetics makes it
sound ar~y farty, but ~he fact is that visual
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impact is one of the basic reasons why people come
and protest the applications for towers. It has
to do with a sense of place and that was picked up
after Tony Hiss wrote a book called A Sense cf
Place. And one of the points ne made was that a
10 percent change in visual impact of an area can
actually transform people's sense of place 90
percent. And this was picked up by a lot of ouher
communities. This is put out by Scenic Hudson.
This is called Protecting Our Region's Sense of
Place in the Age of Wireless Communications. This
was done after Southold Town's legislation, it
recommends a lot of the legislauion that Southold
Town put into place, and the tenents of that
legislation specifically go to protecting the
residential and the historic areas. Orient is a
particularly sensitive one. I'm speakin~ now as a
past president of the Historical Society and of
uhe Orient Association. And one of the things
that snruck me as an incomer into this area was
now much the community of Orient respected and
sated for its past, first evidenced by nhe
fc. rmation of the Historic Society in 1944, when
400 people joined, that was practically the enuire
community. Then again in 1976 when an enormous
number of people worked on the project no have the
Historic district created, and I just want to read
one thing from the book that was published at nhat
time. It's the last paragraph, actually, it says:
"Perhaps it's hard to know where to end a
history like this because there's always ~omorrow.
Perhaps it will too say that village sentiment at
the time of this writing is in favor of preserving
Orient from here on with as little change as
possible. The community takes satisfaction in
recognition of the Orient Historic District and
hopes that ultimately the stretch of Main Road
from the village to Orient Point can be declared
an historic corridor, confirming to the world aE
large that Orient as a whole is a place worth
caring for."
The sense of place has been extremely
strong in Orient. This ~ower is sited in a very
sensitive place. It's sensitive from the poin~ of
view of the scenic by way ~hat was created for ~he
Main Road at that point. And I won't go into the
s~uff I distributed to all of us, that's why I
think the Board should be asked to pay particular
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attenEion to the conditions that were, in facE,
placed en the construction efa tower in a
residential and historic district.
There are conditions, for instance, which
have not been met. For instance, the applicant
was supposed to be asked to come in with a site
plan showing all of the towers in the town. There
are other conditions that have not been me~. I
don't know whether apart from uhe heighn whether
tile acreage has been met. I'm not sure there's
five acres as is requested by the legislation.
I'm saying the reason why we're here, tile reason
why the Orient Association has been concerned is
net because we don't want the fire department te
have what it needs for adequate communication,
ok. viously we do. Iu's in all our inuerests,
that's clear. Orient has always given the fire
department what it wanted in terms of financing,
always, whether it's a pension plan, construction
of the building, purchase of ~he plot that it's on
at the moment, we have always supported that
financially. There's no question about that. But
we have to also balance the other interests here
as well. That's why I hope that a compromise, I
really hope that Board will see its way to ask for
a compromise in this instance, particularly ill
re~ard to the height because that is what will
make the most impact.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Than]< you, Freddie.
HR. REALE: Edward Reale, Twemey, Latham,
Shea and Kelley, here as attorney for the Orient
Association. I'm not going to repeat things we
have already talked abouu tonight or other days we
were here.
I have ~wo comments, essentially this is a
quasi-judicial board. You're here to make a
decision about the need for a height variance.
What is required to do that is some proof.
Hr. Scheibel, as everyone recognizes is very
capable, did a very nice job, pretty pictures.
One of ~he quesuions I have in going through those
lovely pictures of coverage, in ~he course of
proving something, if you're proving something in
court, you're proving something in front of a
Board you show ali the other ways something can be
done. Mr. Scheibel was very careful not ~o answer
the question about what would happen a~ 100 feet
sr 90 feet or 75 feet. I'm sure those pretty
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graphs could have been plotted for some other
heights so this Board could see whether uhe
coverage was adequate at 90 or 100 or 60,
w~auever, I don't know. That would have been very
easily done today and been part of the project and
picture, I ~hink it's an imporuant question, it
goes to what Mr. Dinizio asked earlier, is it your
decision to determine these things? It is in fact
your decisian to determine whether the height
variance is merited. Height is mighu is a nice
thing to say, and I hope in future applications,
if I ever need a height variance from this Board I
can use than. It would be nice to prove ~hat
maybe you don'E have to go quiEe as high, that's
really the question, and that hasn't been shown as
far as I could tell from tonight, not that
anything Mr. Scheibel said was incorrect, but
think Ehere's a few missing pieces, and I thi~k
that's an important issue. And that goes to my
second point, which is this whole thing started
some time ago wi~h a telecommunications
application from Beacon Wireless, and I don'E
really know what's happened to that whole process
or where uhey stand, and if the lease that's
the record is s~ill in place and Mr. Cannuscio
going Uo build this tower, and do we need the
tower at 120 so we have room for not only
emergency services but these other things. I
uhin~ that goes to the heigh~ question as well.
~hink if anything, those quest±ohs do need to be
answered. What does it look like at other heights
and where is Mr. Cannuscio on this tower and how
does that all fit in? Thank you.
CHAIRWOM_AN OLIVA: Bill, do you have any
other q~estiens?
MR. SCHEIBEL: I was careful net to
respond -- I did what the fire departmenE asked me
to. The way uhe question was asked and answereO
is, what do I need to do this. I gave them what
they need. If this changes, I'll de anything the
fire department asks me to do. Don't personalize
~his that Mr. Scheibel did this.
HR. REALE: If any offense was taken, I'm
sorry, that's no~ what I meant.
MR. SCHEIBEL: It was just phraseology?
HR. REALE: It was phraseology. At the
last meeting I said you were credible, capable,
you're a very good expert. I say the same
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uonight. My only point was, there were no charts
of other heights for proving to this Board -- I'm
sure you're doing what the fire department asked
you to do, nobody's saying you didn't. I'm not
saying that either. Ail I'm saying as a matter of
proof, you could show other heights and other
impacts of the coverage, and I apologize if you
took that personally, that's not how I meant
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: What is the Board's
pleasure?
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: I'd like to ask
Mr. Scheibel a couple questions, do you mind? MR. SCHEIBEL: No.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: The way ·
understand it, the fire department approached you
and they wanted a certain increase in the
reliability of their radio system that the low
band just wasn'~ going to do. And you determineO
uhat that low band is not going to do what they
want, what they think they need.
MR. SCHEIBEL: And if you own a scanner,
you can pretty much figure that out by listening.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: I think everybody's
agreed to that. You wenu out and plotte~ on your
computer this 90 percent coverage MR. SCHEIBEL: Right.
BOARD MEMBER BINIZIO: What was the result
of that plot?
MR. SCHEIBEL: The tower at 120 feet.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: If you were to plot
85?
MR. SCHEIBEL: The average will go down.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: The tower could
probably be lower?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Yes.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Would the tower
most likely be lower or would iE definitely be
lower, it could definitely be lower?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Yes. And coverage will go
down lower in some proportion which is nonlinear.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Yes, I agree. And
I think that my statement concerning ~he red would
probably hold us up that if you did it at 85 you
would not really notice any difference?
MR. SCHEIBEL: On the red local to the
firehouse, the place you see the difference in on
uhe extremities.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: On the output of
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the hand holds?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Correct.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: And the difference
probably wouldn't be that much in color on nhose
spots?
MR. SCHEIBEL: No, because there's a
finite limit and that's one of the questions
Mr. Turner asked actually, and I answered as best
I could. Their give you a tool to do your best job
at answering the route question, not of saying
what's the coverage going Eo be right there,
what's the coverage going to be there. There
actually is a program like that. It's only been
determined in systems where there's actually been
determined to be a problem where the customer has
paid Motorola for a certain level of coverage and
that level coverage isn't apparent. There's a
program called Pactware where you actually drive
the whole geography, three square foot by three
square foot and it plots in and out of the
coverage.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: That was
interesting but I don't think it was pertinent. I
guess I'm trying to get at, you wouldn'n notice as
~euch difference with that program probably at 65?
MR. SCHEIBEL: In the red in the center?
No, all the changes the diameter in red.
BO~D MEMBER DINIZIO: We're loo~ing for
~his 90 and the 90 is a number that comes out ~c,
120 feet?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Right.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: And 110 feet is not
90 any more, it could be?
MR. SCHEIBEL: 81.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: That's how you
chose this thing, there's ne other criteria?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Right. The parameters .Df
tile equipment are fixed. The FCC license is
fixed. You can't play wi~h what the FCC gives
you. By the way, the FCC already approved it mE
120 feet. They said it was okay. They seem ts
think it was appropriate. Their took away the
group of people who can cause interference, the
body that coordinates who can be en what channel
and what the reaches of that machine are allowed
to be, that is still done bI, two separate
agencies, and they continue to compare notes
before they grant the license and Orient's license
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was granted an 120 feet.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Could you go lower
with that license?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Sure. Can't change the
pattern of the antennae, can't change the gain,
can't change the operator of
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO:
1307
MR. SCHEIBEL: Can't
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO:
the transmitter.
And you can't go
ge 130.
That's all I
have. The reason you chose this was 120 equals 90
percent efficiency?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Right. When I put all the
other parameters like the power of the hand held,
the size of the antennae, where i~ is on the
person, believe i~ or not, that all goes into the
program.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: Could you plot iT for
us, say at 75, 85, 90 feet?
MR. SCHEIBEL: If that's a request of the
fire department. There is something else, too, I
have not yet been paid for any of this. I have
not submitted an invoice because I typically ~o
nhis as a service to my customer because I'm going
~o build the system. This is the first one where
i spent -- I'm thinking around somewhere around
100 man-hours trying to do this. It's usually I
go in, here's the answer --
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: For the Board's
information, would the fire department be willing
to let him do a couple different heights?
MR. SCHEIBEL: I actually checke~ my
have a partner who has a shop down
gave him ~he parameters and let him
results. I
west, and I
run it.
MR.
CORCORAN: I think if you're going
down that rouue you also need to know the number
for each of those heights for the efficiency
rates.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Being in the
industry for 20 years, this Board couldn't leek at
a 75 degree of frequence and a 100 degree
efficiency and see much difference. You wouldn't
see the difference, honestly, you would say, oh,
loo~ there are some spots there that aren'~ there
that ma}, look really complicated.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: It isn't?
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: Ne. Tha~ program
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is basic, that's what upsets me so much about the
fact that requires this or asking for this. Ii!
we're going to -- the Board is going to consider,
we're not qualified to look at a 75 foot and a 120
foot height, look at that picture and say, oh,
this will be good enough for the fire department.
You won't notice that much different. He could
print them out.
MR. SCHEIBEL: You end up with more hc£es,
when you leek at the chart.
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: When you say it's
90 percent, is it 90 percent te the blue te the
red?
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: It's the blue
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: The blue is 90?
MR. SCHEIBEL: (Inaudible) it gets to
where if you're standing here the coverage is
great; when you go like this {indicatingl you
can't hear anything. That's what happens when you
start ~o drop it. That's when you stare to get
into whatever the geography you want te cover is.
Ycu say it's 90 percent in that geography, that's
when it's nine out of ten times. I get in first
try in that geography, but like one of the things
that has come up for us, is the}' run a water
rescue team, se they wanted their coverage to be
out elf the coast in both directions too. So if
they're out in the Pecenic, I think there was a
ferry acciden~ out here a couple years ago, the
FCC didn't approve this. I don't think the
licensing agency asked for it, but the way the
system is set up, the coverage is uniform as in
can be, but as you lower that number, it's the
start, it's how much spetier it gets.
Specifically, Plum Island we really see big
differences if they're ena scene in Plum Island,
and they're on the shoreline adjacent to the mine
lands, the coverage would be fine, but if they're
putting out a building fire that's around the
2erner where the ambulance barn is, the coverag~
wculd start te fail, that would be the
difference.
BOARD MEMBER ORLANDO: That's your 90
percenn?
MR. SCHEIBEL: Right. Same thing wi5h
Ease Harien as they went te the outer edges ot
East Marion or into the next Oistrict over, that's
when you get into the works now, can you hear me
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now, just like the joke on the cell phone
commercials.
BOARD MEMBER DINIZIO: With my questioning
I'm getting at, we're not qualified, this district
has decided on 90 percent efficiency. If we make
a decision that 85 is good enough, I have no idea,
how we can make that decision. We are non
qualified to do that. These people put their
lives on the line, and they are saying to us, 90
percen~ is good enough, 100 percent is good
enough, 90 percent is good enough, they're suill
going to nave problems. I don't think we can say
you can't have 90, you have to have 75 based on
anything this gentleman could give us. That's the
point I'm trying to get at. That extra studies,
mesh up, all that. We are not, not even myself
are capable of comprehending that.
MR. TURNER: M!, only reply in response to
this is that the same argument could be made if
they said 180 feet and this Board does have an
obligation to decide whether 180 feet would be too
much.
MR. SCHEIBEL: In order te be 99 percent I
would have said 180 feet. As John said, there are
multilecatien solutions.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: John, eno more t~ing.
MR. TURNER: Let me -- I think the way the
program works and what you do is you generate a
certain amount of power on talk out at 120 feeu at
~he Orient firehouse. You then divide up the ~rea
into a grid, I don't ~now what the grid parameters
are, so you have this huge grid. You compute the
received signal power at the center point of the
~rid wi~h the hands held at three foot off the
ground for talk out so you take a hand held three
foot off ~he ground, and at the center of one of
~hese grids and you compute the EransmiEted signal
sErength that you're going te receive, and you
give it a color, and so then you look at this, and
you see at the fringes it is where you're going to
i:ave difficulty as you lower the antennae
height. So the question is how do things change
aE the fringes ef the coverage? Now, in fact, we
could learn something and these are precisely zhe
plots that I have been asking for for three
months. New the queszion I would ask is why
hasn'z it been forthcoming? I am capable of
interpreting.
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MR. BOYD: Very simply, the plots are not
forthcoming is because they have not been done.
They are not done because we are looking for 90
percent coverage. 90 percent coverage is an
industry standard. It is a usual sort of thing.
The fire district doesn't want to settle for less
than 90 percent. Ninety percent is important for
the safety of the firefighters not only the Orient
firefighners, but other firefighter that might
some no assist them in a mutual aid situation. We
have to get the coverage outside in the water area
around the district. Orient has a boat, rescue
boat that goes out. The other fire districts have
rescue Ooats. I'm not going to bore yo~ or go
overboard with ideas of the various things than
may happen that would require the convergence of
emergency resources in than area, we all know what
it can be, so let's please provide the coverage,
the radio coverage that's necessary no keep all
these people safe. That's what it is about.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: You have a technical
piece of information, ma'am? I would like to
bring this hearing to a close?
MS. LIBERTORE: My name is Mary Ann
L~bertore, and I am a new resident of Orient, and
I am so grateful that John brought up the point
that nas been disturbing me all day, which is I
rented with my significant other in Orient for
nine years, and then this past June we bought a
house and it's really difficult for Sidney an~ I
to even think of disagreeing with our neighbors,
all of whom have been massively kind to us. We
live across the field from ~he ~ower, an~ that's
net my beef, but when I was coming out here to
speak tonight at the request ef my colleagues, I
was coming out on the bus and eno ef the things
Yhat was so striking te me was all of these
towers, and you go along the LIE and you see them
one town after another, and I guess you only see
tilings when you want te look for them, but I saw
them today, and I was grateful to Mr. Scheibel for
mennioning 911 because the reason that Sidney
isn't speaking tonight, my fiance, is that he's a
lawyer back in town, and he is working on the
FreeOem Tower. He is lucky enough te be working
en rebuilding the World Trade Center, and I was
born and raised en Staten Island, se at my core
I'~u a cop's kid. I grew up with four cops and all
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firemen, so I understand the issue of fire safety,
particularly after 9/11 when many people that I
grew up with there, I understand what these
fellows are talking about. I didn't know as a new
resident ef Orient that we could go te fire
department meetings, and, Mr. Commissioner, if you
want me, I'll be there, and I'll do fundraising
for you and everything, but I think as a Staten
Islander, I have a special thing te share with you
all.
I was born right at the end of World War
II, 11 months after my father came home after
being on Utah Beach. I grew up in Staten Island
in the '50s. I was a small child in the '50s.
was like growing up in Kansas. I think one ef tile
things that struck me se much when I came out here
10 }'ears ago for the first time was hew this place
£oeks just like Staten Island ii1 the '50s with tile
wetlands and the beautiful golden fields and these
wonderful trees and I think if you permit this
tower to be built at this house are you going
establish the tipping point, the thing that will
degrade our portion of the east end, not just
Orient, East Harion, and I think the logic is
let the Greenport tower and the mesh system be the
new paradigm for how to protect these firemen.
That's all I'd like to say.
CHAIRWOMAN OLIVA: I'm going te make a
motion te close the hearing anO reserve --
MS. EMO: My name is Robin Emo, I live in
East Harion. And we had a meeting a wee~ age on
the same topic and eno of the questions I asked
Hr. Scheibel and he said they work even better
than all t~ese other cell and radio situations but
it was all about cost. I asked how much. It was
$1,000 per satellite phone, 15 phones would be
required for East Marion, I doubt there's a whole
lot more would be required for Orient. And
problem ne stated was you wouldn't be able te talk
to people in the other towns, but if everybody get
the satellite phones, which are Oetter quality, we
wouldn't have towers. We wouldn't have
discussions, we wouldn't have to worry about
health risks that may or ~ay not be involved in
tbe ~owers, and I think it's something ~hat should
be looked into, and I wonder if the cell phone
companies hadn't approached the firehouses, would
they even be talking about this. Why didn't we
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know that there were problems with the
communications systems until the cellular
companies appeared on the scene?
MR. BOYD: Lawyer and fire chief hat these
problems with the communications in the fire
departments have been growing over the
years. It's no~ a question that it started all ,of
a sudden, basically it's been getting
progressively worse. We're finally te the point
where we have to do something about
CHAIRWONLA_N OLIVA: I'd like te make a
moEion te close the hearing reserving decision
un,il later.
ISee minutes for resolution.}
{Time ended: 8:30 p.m.)
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CERTIFICATION
I, Florence V. Wiles, Notary Public for the
State of New York, do hereby certify:
THAT the within transcript is a true record of
the testimony given.
I further certify that I am not related by
blood or marriage, to any of the parties to this
action; and
THAT I am in no way interested in uhe outcome
of this matter.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I ]lave hereunto set my
hand this 3rd day of February, 2005.
Florence V. Wiles
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