Centro de Intercesión y Adoración Internacional won’t be able to build KCIY(FM), Helendale, Calif. That’s because the Media Bureau determined CIAI’s construction permit has expired and forfeited.
The case dates to 2013, when CIAI was approved for a CP and set a construction deadline of Dec. 8 of that year. The CP specified an antenna height of 20 meters above ground level on a 60-meter tower.
CIAI filed a license application, certifying that KCIY was built and operating. On Dec. 13, 2013 Enforcement Bureau agents drove to the site to verify KCIY’s operational status. They found no evidence of construction, found no power at the site and couldn’t detect a signal. They determined the station wasn’t on the air, according to the Media Bureau decision.
The agents went back a second time and noted the site was in a portion of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. BLM told the Enforcement Bureau it hadn’t authorized construction and would have denied such a request because station use is “inconsistent” with BLM’s land-use policies, according to the bureau.
In April 2014, the bureau asked CIAI to notify the commission within 30 days of the “supposed” station construction. CIAI responded in June that the station’s transmission facilities “are not currently built,” and there was no permission to operate on BLM land, according to the FCC.
Rafael Porras told the commission he was in charge of the station construction, and had set up an antenna with two pipes, cable, as well as a generator and a transmitter. He told the commission he brought a small dog house to the site to house the transmitter and the generator.
Using a laptop and a Verizon Wi-Fi hotspot, he connected to the Internet and received the studio signal from Victorville, Calif. That’s when CIAI applied for the license, and Antonio Cesar Guel made the engineering certification on the application, the commission says Porras told them.
Porras also told the FCC that wind subsequently damaged the antenna and tower, knocking the station off the air.
The Media Bureau said in its decision that CIAI did not build what it said it would and that the “temporary nature of the alleged construction” cements the decision to declare the CP expired and forfeited. “Licensing a facility which is dismantled shortly after a license application is filed or which is constructed without the site owner’s permission or knowledge, is fundamentally inconsistent” with the agency’s licensing principle, said Media Bureau Chief Peter Doyle in the decision.
CIAI’s license application will be dismissed as moot, KCIY’s call signs deleted and CIAI is no longer a permittee, according to the agency.
