Hello, I hope you're all enjoying this amazing weather as much as I am. This really is a great place to live. One of the most important parts of this petition is to push for the establishment a Dig Once Policy for Bellingham, which would require the installation of conduit and a bit of fiber whenever a repair was done. I snapped some photos of a repair being done on Holly St. yesterday from Rainbow to Cornwall. The workers were professional and did a good job with the repair they did, but NO conduit was put in for public use. They were there for days and there were at least 10 workers. I'm waiting to get official numbers on the cost of the repair, but conduit would have cost next to nothing when compared with the rest of the repair. The really sad thing is that since they poured concrete, if we decide to go back and put conduit in down the road we'd have to bust it up. This is what my dad refers to as pennywise and pound foolish. I think it's pretty obvious that we need better leadership in relation to infrastructure. Ted Carlson (the current Public Works Director) said, at the March 27th meeting, that they put conduit in "when practical" but it would have been practical to put it in when they did most of the repairs they have done around town so what do they consider practical? The truth is that this is a virtually worthless statement since they can decide it is NOT practical to take inexpensive steps to improve our infrastructure for any reason, whenever they want to. That's why we need a Dig Once Policy that includes conduit and fiber. Reminder: Fiber is low voltage and can be installed just about anywhere and around anything. Some towns have even installed it in old water pipes and sewer pipes.