Grant Writing

Announcement: If you are interested in dealing with the wireless industry, whether it is zoning, lease for a cellular tower, or controlling the proliferation of cell sites ...

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. has been asked to write grant applications for some of our city and county clients, and so far, we're batting 1000. So, we're writing grant applications as well as helping control wireless from the public sector perspective. Here's how we can help you...

Two Grants for Land Connecting Children with Nature

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. recently prepared two grant proposals for a large city. All we were told was:

What defines a child at-risk? We weren’t really sure, but it’s probably a child who likes to climb a fence when the sign says: Danger! Keep Out! Maybe it’s a child who likes to vandalize things, like base stations found at cell sites. They aren’t really bad kids, just looking for something that’s edgy, challenging and totally exhilarating. Kreines & Kreines, Inc. came up with an idea … an idea for all kids, really.

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. got into the grant writing business by helping the City of Los Angeles win a $1.6 million grant for placing WiFi on a 19-mile light rail line. (If you missed that issue, let us know and we will send it to you.) But now, even though Kreines & Kreines, Inc. has two city planners specializing in wireless deployment and regulation, we were being asked to envision two parks for at-risk youth. This was a challenge. One of the parcels was over 200 acres, characterized by:

Here’s what Kreines & Kreines, Inc. proposed: a “wilderness experience” where at-risk youth would build the trails, sleep in tents and prepare their own food from trucked-in natural ingredients. There would be no plumbing, no roads, no parking lots and no attractions to the urban environment.

Readers may wonder what this has to do with wireless. Increasingly, experts believe that kids are connecting to their cell phones and video games more and connecting to the natural environment less. Many of kids’ current distractions are delivered wirelessly, and soon television will be generally available on cell phones.

Some experts are conjecturing that ADHD, obesity and depression are in part the result of weaning kids away from nature. Richard Louv, in his recent book, “Last Child in the Woods,” has coined the phrase “Nature Deficit Disorder.” Schools are concerned about it, health experts are concerned about it and now, it’s up to the park and recreation people in local governments to address it, even though budgets are so strapped that some local governments are leasing land for cell sites in parks.

This is Not Camp

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. proposed that what is needed is a true wilderness experience. Nature trails are fine, petting zoos are great, but learning to live outdoors without electrical outlets and running water is what we had in mind. Millions of families travel hundreds of miles each year to find nature in the mountains or by the water. In this time of climate change, Kreines & Kreines, Inc. thought it made sense to bring the wilderness to the metro area.

Any city or county can do this. All it takes is money, and there are grants being made available. If a town is so small it can’t tackle the job, it can partner with another community. It makes more sense than leasing land for cell sites in parks.

Grant Writing as a Way of Life

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. was surprised to learn that more than $300 billion a year is made available to local governments through the grant process. Grants account for anywhere from 7% to 18% of a local government’s budget. More and more of these grants are becoming competitive, that is:

· The local government needs to demonstrate sustainability, e.g., that the project will become self-sufficient and even revenue enhancing.

· The project should help to reverse the current trends leading to climate change, e.g., the consumption of fossil fuel.

A Few Hints on Grant Writing, 2007

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. has found the following to help their grant application efforts. If you can use them, please feel free:

· Climate change – whatever you do, tie your idea to the need to change our way of thinking about global warming. Our tie-in to getting children back to nature was to design a recreation activity where cars are not necessary to get there, are not allowed in there and fun doesn’t involve the burning of fossil fuels.

· Sustainability – try not to equate sustainability with environmental quality. Sustainability should mean “how long can the grant project be kept going after the grant money has been spent?” Any grant project should demonstrate that it has “life after the grant.”

Cell Site in a Park?

You can call them “cell sites,” “cellular towers,” “antennas,” or “personal wireless service facilities,” but the question PlanWireless gets is:

Kreines & Kreines, Inc. does not advise its clients whether they can place personal wireless service facilities in parks or not. Local governments know best in matters of wireless deployment.

However, there are some facts that your parks and recreation staff and commission (or board or council or committee) should know before leasing a site to a wireless carrier:

· Few people realize that handsets themselves are made of or contain hazardous or toxic materials, although almost all of them are in trace amounts. Here is a partial list: arsenic, antimony, silane, boron, phosphorus, tungsten, copper, aluminum, gold and germanium.

In addition, our source, who makes handsets, states there are "six hazardous substances in electronics - lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, polybrominated iphenyl flame retardants and polybrominated diphenyl ether flame retardants." If handsets contain trace amounts of these materials, we can only imagine what materials there are in a typical base station at a cell site.

Cell sites vary in size and equipment. One thing we know is that all cell sites have batteries. Batteries contain sulfuric acid. When batteries are needed for backup power, such as in Uninterrupted Power Systems, those batteries are provided in addition to the batteries all cell sites have. Sometimes back-up power is provided by generator, either diesel (most common) or propane. Both usually require storage tanks for fuel. In 2002, a cell site burned to the ground in New York State. Your fire protection personnel should inspect every cell site plan, install and operation on a periodic basis. Do they?

The most common chemical in cell site switching mechanisms is gallium arsenide. PlanWireless called the quality control officer of a switch manufacturer in Oregon and asked, “Is the Gallium Arsenide used on a switch toxic?” Her answer was “I wouldn’t lick it.”

By stressing the health effects of cell sites, the FCC completely bypasses the issue of hazardous materials. We would think each cell site would have a list of trace elements, regardless of how minute, to be found in each base station. At least the cell site owner (not the landlord) should file a Materials Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) with a local public safety agency (police or fire). Kreines & Kreines, Inc. has not seen this done. Yet, we are certain there are toxic materials inside a cell site.

This warning label identifying health, flammability, reactivity and, in this case, corrosives, is required at all sites by the federal government. Kreines & Kreines, Inc. took this photo at a cell site on top of a mountain, where few people would ever see it. Do your cell sites have these labels? Imagine these labels on a cell site in a public park. Few carriers admit they use and store hazardous materials at cell sites.

Why don’t carriers tell prospective landlords about these materials? PlanWireless doesn’t know the answer but some of the reasons may be that:

- Wireless carriers often use third party contractors to install the wireless facilities and the carriers may think that this shifts the responsibility from the carriers to the installers.

- Landlords often don’t ask about hazardous materials. If you don’t ask, carriers won’t tell.

- Leases often have clauses about hazardous materials. So what if the landlord asks the carrier for a list of hazardous materials because the carrier may not be in compliance with this clause; what is the remedy if hazardous materials are found? A federal or state fine? The carrier will pay it, because that’s a cost of doing business. Removal of the cell site? No landlord wants to lose rent money. Report it to the FCC? The FCC may tell you it’s not their jurisdiction. The first and last line of defense of this issue is the local government.

The best antidote for local officials who want to know more about this concern is for the city or county to call the public safety people (fire, policy, etc.). Even better, the Parks Department should ask questions about hazardous materials in the first place, before a lease is signed.

· Failure to register batteries - there is a federal law called the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) that requires users of 500 pounds or more of batteries (cell sites often use more than that weight in batteries) to register those batteries with the local fire department. Many batteries are not registered. Carriers claim that batteries are not hazardous, and it is true that EPCRA exempts listed chemicals when they are present in a manufactured article and cannot be released into the environment. However, EPA has determined that the exemption does not apply to liquid chemicals contained in batteries because batteries have the potential to leak. So, at the very least, each carrier at a cell site should file a MSDS. Under EPCRA, the maximum civil penalty for failing to submit an MSDS for a regulated chemical is $10,000 per violation. And, if the annual inventory form is not kept up-to-date, the fine is $25,000 ... each time.

Your local community should check with the fire department to determine if cell site batteries are registered.

· Land acquisition with restrictions – some parks, recreation areas and open space were acquired through bond issues, donations, grants or dedications. Many of these acquisitions have restrictions on the use of the land to recreational or open space activities. Some acquisitions specifically prohibit commercial or public uses not related to recreation or open space. Any proposed cell site would need to show how it is related to the provision of parks and recreation. (Kreines & Kreines, Inc. doubts that the infusion of much needed revenue from rent can be related to parks and recreation.)

A city or county may ignore such restrictions and the carriers would not care. However, an aggrieved citizen may resort to litigation to enforce such restrictions and that might be embarrassing for everyone, including the citizen who had to go to court to make his/her community do the right thing.

· Failure to obtain permits – many local governments lease land to cell sites without worrying about permits, such as zoning or building. The rationale may be thinking that signing a lease is the same as granting permission. But a lease is not the same as a permit.

A lease is a proprietary (business) arrangement while a permit is a regulatory tool. Courts have distinguished between the two in some wireless cases, noting that different sets of laws govern the two instruments. A carrier can be in conformance with the permit and in breach of the lease at the same site with regard to the same subject.

What if a local government discovers a cell site that has a lease but never obtained a permit from the city or county (or is out of compliance with the permit)? This happens all the time and many local governments feel they have more important issues to deal with.

· Failure to file an Environmental Assessment – this is a function of federal law under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Many parks and open space lands lie partly or wholly within one of the following protected areas:

- Flood plain. (We had one client ask us why flood plains are sensitive to a tower in the ground. Imagine a flood engulfing an area with trace amounts of toxic materials. The toxics get carried along in the flood waters to the entire riverine system. What harm can a few toxics to do a river?)

None of these are a prohibition against a personal wireless service facility. (The FCC staff prohibits no siting – as they like to call it – but merely requires an Environmental Assessment of the proposed cell site).

Environmental Assessments are not regulatory documents. They identify impacts and propose mitigation measures. But the requirements for filing an Environmental Assessment by the carrier with the FCC is on the honor system and many are not done.

Some states also have environmental review procedures. It is hard to imagine any local government deliberately side-stepping environmental review where children are going to explore areas around hazardous materials, fenced or not. This documentation is often overlooked by cities and counties.