A sample letter from a colleague is presented below to help with your composition efforts.
73, Don Milbury, W6YN
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Dear Governor Davis:
Please sign SB1714 regarding zoning ordinances and Amateur Radio antennas, passed unanimously by both the California Senate and Assembly.
As I'm sure you know, the Amateur Radio Service provides voluntary emergency communications service, as well as advancement of technology and international goodwill. In addition to a career as a radio engineer, a Silicon Valley CEO, a Stanford professor and a venture investor, I've been an active Radio Amateur since I was a teenager nearly five decades ago.
I've seen the benefit of Amateur communications when the telephone and public safety systems collapse in local and distant disasters, such as the Loma Prieta and Mexico City earthquakes, the Marysville floods and the Oakland Hills and Los Gatos fires. Also, I've been gratified that numerous advances in computer networking, telephony and safety communications originated in the Amateur Service, which has also provided a good share of the technologists needed to advance these areas.
The Amateur Service is federally licensed and regulated under 47 CFR § 97. To have effective communications capability in times of disasters, Amateur Radio licensees must practice and advance their skills in communications and technology before the need suddenly arises for their services. To do this, individual Radio Amateurs require antenna structures at their homes high enough to conform with the laws of physics and as permitted under federal license privileges. In the past this requirement has been frustrated by the widely varying levels of local zoning as desired by various communities, leading in many cases to burdensome requirements on the Radio Amateur and even to costly litigation.
SB1714 provides a mechanism for resolving the current problem, in which well-meaning communications volunteers must today run the gauntlet of local zoning agencies that have minimal radio technical and regulatory knowledge, and therefore do not uniformly provide the federally mandated reasonable accommodation and minimum practicable regulation of station antenna structures under 47 CFR §97.15. The Amateur Radio Service, through its national organization, the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), stands ready under the terms of SB1714 to provide your office, without cost to the public, the benefit of its members' specialized technical capability and emergency operations experience.
Again, please respond to the bipartisan wishes of both houses of the California Legislature by permitting SB1714 to become law without delay. Thank you in advance for your interest and support in this matter.
Prof. David B. Leeson Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University Amateur Radio License W6NL