[TowerTalk] Is the FCC sharp? CC&R's

[Pete Smith]

At 11:40 AM 12/31/01 EST, K7LXC@aol.com wrote:
>    ERRR. A community doesn't have anything to do with  CC&R's. They are put 
>in place by the developer so that all of the houses/properties look real
nice 
>so that other people will buy into the developement. If you were looking to 
>spend multi-$K for a home and the house next door was painted purple, had 
>broken down cars in the driveway, had mounds of dirt in the yard - would you 
>be interested in buying it? Probably not. So the developer is protectig his 
>investment. Unfortunately after all of the houses are sold, the developer 
>moves on and the whole developement still has all the CC&R's. 

Often, but not always true.  I lived for 22 years in a community (Reston,
VA), where the existence of a standing covenant enforcement process was
very much a selling point, not just for new homes but for resale.  The
covenants are uniform across the entire community (today, over 50,000
residents), but subject to change by the board of the Reston Community
Association.

Back in the 1970s the Reston covenants banned external antennas of any
kind.  Since the developer was also the owner of the cable company, and
rabbit ears wouldn't work that far from the TV stations, a ham/lawyer
talked them into allowing ham antennas, on a case-by-case basis, by
threatening to sue them for using their covenants to enforce their cable
monopoly.  He wound up with a TH-7 on a 60-foot tower, painted grey-brown
and almost invisible at the end of a cul-de-sac with trees in the backdrop.
 Subseqently others had towers and yagis as well, by careful siting and
getting neighbor consent.

Recently, in my current county, a crash effort to write a cell tower
ordinance threatened to capture ham towers in a set of engineering and
aesthetic restrictions that clearly made no sense for hams.  A group of us
were successful in getting it clearly on the record that the ordiniance did
not apply to ham installations.

A final thought -- the pre-emption of local controls (including CC&Rs) on
satellite receiving dishes is based on a specific provision of law (Section
207 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996).  The FCC has demonstrated that
it is not willing to extend the logic of this section to amateur antennas.
Therefore it is indeed up to us, having exhausted the administrative
process, to seek Congressional endorsement of our antennas on the same
footing as that extended to satellite dishes.  Essentially, Congress needs
to put the basics of PRB-1 into law, so that the FCC cannot do anything
else but implement it vis-a-vis all local regulation (including CC&Rs). 

73, Pete N4ZR

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