Also serving the communities of De Luz, Rainbow, Camp Pendleton, Pala and Pauma

Zoning Administrator denies Minor Use Permit applications for Fallbrook, Pala inactive wireless sites

As part of a review of inactive cases, the county’s Zoning Administrator officially denied three applications for wireless communications facilities, including one in Fallbrook and one in Pala.

The batch denial issued October 30 by Zoning Administrator Rose Garduno formally terminates the application process for Minor Use Permits for those sites. Garduno’s formal denial of the applications for the three sites follows the October 5 decision by the county’s Planning Commission to deny seven inactive Major Use Permit applications for wireless communications facilities.

One of the denials by both Garduno and the Planning Commission was of an inactive AT&T Wireless Services application for a Fallbrook site in the 4500 block of South Mission Road. The application was originally filed on April 7, 2003, thus grandfathering the application and allowing it to be processed under a Minor Use Permit.

On April 30, 2003, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors adopted a wireless communications policy which included zoning regulations. While a Minor Use Permit had previously been required for most wireless communications facilities prior to the new policy, a Major Use Permit is now required in certain cases (most notably the siting of a tower in areas with residential or agricultural zoning). A “pipelining” provision allowed applications filed prior to the effective date of May 30, 2003, to be processed under the Minor Use Permit process, although those projects were converted to Major Use Permits. It was later determined that the Fallbrook project should be processed as a Minor Use Permit, and the application was once again converted back to a Minor Use Permit.

“It was last determined that they should be processed as Minor Use Permits,” said Merry Tondro, the project manager for the county’s Department of Planning and Land Use.

No action had been taken on the application since April 2004. In April 2007 the Department of Planning and Land Use commenced a review of all open wireless facility applications to determine the status of each project and to follow up with inactive cases. A list of projects which had not been active for at least one year was compiled. In May letters were sent to those applicants asking for either a request for a due date extension or a withdrawal letter for the project, and follow-up letters were sent in August. No responses to those letters were received for the denied projects, and no utilities or landowners expressed objection to the plans to deny the applications.

“Numerous communications have taken place with project applicants and owners with no response,” Tondro said. “All correspondence for all three projects wasn’t answered.”

The Major Use Permit application for the Fallbrook site was officially denied by the Planning Commission while the Minor Use Permit application was denied by Garduno.

The Pala site for which an application was filed is in the 10600 block of Highway 76. The application was submitted by AT&T Wireless Services on May 23, 2003. Although the project was originally processed to a Major Use Permit, it was later converted to a Minor Use Permit. Requests for time extensions of the application were made and granted in April 2004, November 2005, and July 2006, but no revised documents were submitted. The application for a Major Use Permit was withdrawn in January 2007, but the application for a Minor Use Permit had not been withdrawn by the applicant.

 

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