Hooray, we must be having some impact :) We received a short, poorly thought out memo from the Mayor today! Before the ink was even dry on the CenturyLink deal the mayor's office moved unilaterally to stop one of the internet accessibility reports from being allowed to be completed. This is one of two reports that were being worked on. A private availability report and a public availability report. This is especially odd since quite a bit of information had been complied and the city planned on completing its reports around this time. Keep in mind that an entire team was provided by the city to help CenturyLink come into Bellingham and worked with them for over a year using your tax dollars. I will post the original document below and reply to all of the inaccuracies and outright lies in it. It is important to note that this is the mayor specifically taking this action and to note again that the mayor and her staff intentionally chose not to investigate a better option than CenturyLink seriously. They even asked for public record requests to be withdrawn, refused to share info with the council, and all of the other things I've written about before. My replies will start with dashes like this (--). Some of them will be in a how it should read if they were telling the truth format. I should also note that this was forwarded to me by Michael Lilliquist. As you know, and I've written about in previous communications, the city has gone out of its way to be less than transparent on this topic and of course is still withholding your access to resources you've already paid for. In other good news, Mayor Linville isn't expected to run again, and another mayoral election is right around the corner. Original Letter Below: to: City Council from: Mayor Kelli Linville cc: Tara Sundin, Community and Economic Development Manager subject: Status update on private broadband infrastructure analysis date: Letter from the City: Staff launched a project earlier this year to research existing private broadband internet service available to Bellingham businesses (particularly high-speed fiber service) to confirm or dispel rumors that our community is particularly well-served by this critical infrastructure. Initial research, in partnership with the Technology Alliance Group, highlighted the following barriers: -- (We really, really, really wanted a big private provider to give us a private solution and didn't really investigate any other solutions. This research involved almost no one from the Public Fiber community although many experts were available and willing to provide a comprehensive overview to the city council and mayor. An OpenAccess network would have allowed for us to have many private providers, as well as other entities, and given us real choice city wide, but again we didn't look into it. Ted Carlson threatened a member of the public fiber community on behalf of PSE and Ted and Brian Heinreich refused to share information about public fiber with the mayor. He didn't even bother to show up to the one meeting they had with them on time. The mayor herself never took any real interest in this important issue. Instead, a team was provided specifically to CenturyLink using your tax dollars. CenturyLink is worth 18 billion dollars and therefore needed corporate welfare to conduct negotiations with the COB. We say we care about small business, the largest growth section in our economy, but moved to destroy small providers instead and not increase our Self-Reliance, even though we could have easily afforded to. Also, the COBs stats come almost entirely from the Port who also blew off most of the public fiber community and tried to push overpriced private providers. The COB is completely focused on the Waterfront project and large businesses, which again, is not where new growth is expected. Small internet based business is the way to go but we're not going to help them out. ) -- 1) A very limited response from the business community and information gathered from individual follow-up conversations indicates a lack of interest in pursuing this report. --( Just here, on change.org, we have 526 signatures including from every walk of life. Including business owners, professors, Bioinformatics researchers with doctoral degrees, Planetarium directors, doctors, lawyers, teachers, medical doctors, veterinarians, musicians, artists.... I could keep going but you get the picture here. I provided all of this information to the COB and County and tried to set them up to talk to public fiber pros. They chose not to talk to them and therefore their results are biased. AKA they're lying.)-- 2) Limited available information and interest from providers regarding their service/service areas, except for the smaller providers who could possibly use help with access or community support. -- (No surprises here. Even CenturyLink refused to provide a report of service areas to Dan Hamill when asked about North Bellingham at the recent meetings. So take the answer from number 1 and add that to the fact that the area served would have to do with infrastructure build-outs, which we need to be doing anyway. So this is a non-statement as the area served would increase as conduit was put in as part of a Dig Once policy. Yes, the providers that are making $900 a month for gigabit don't want competition and CenturyLink wants a monopoly. Mount Vernon has 10 providers on their public fiber network, many of would could operate up here too. So the lack of information has to do with the mayor, and her staff, intentionally choosing not to hear the public fiber community out on this topic and coddle CenturyLink and of course self-interest on the part of the providers.) -- 3) Possibilities and limitations regarding public fiber infrastructure seem to be of primary interest to vocal stakeholders. Mark Gardner has been directed by Council to conduct a separate research project focused on this issue, which is inextricably tied to the topic of private service. --(Ok, but why was his original report stopped while the ink was drying on the CenturyLink deal? He expected to finish it originally in June. In enough time to highlight it as an option other than CenturyLink, funny how that worked out. Also, it's funny how the mayor's office is moving to destroy real competition in such a brazen move. Sorry small local providers, your government says that it cares about small business but eat this instead. This is also where they pretend that I'm the only person that thinks public fiber is a good idea. Which they've done before. Since I live in the county, and would probably get zero benefit from a city initiative, that's always really funny.)-- Based on this information, work will be suspended on this effort at this time. Information gathered to date will be forwarded to Mark Gardner for consideration in his public fiber report. -- (LOL, yeah, the report he's probably not going to be allowed to finish now.) -- Please contact Tara Sundin if you have questions or would like additional information. -- (Wow so the city signs the deal with CenturyLink, claiming it's only a cable TV contract, although PRISM TV (CenturyLink's TV service) is brought over a small amount of fiber, meaning that it is really an unregulated internet contract, and then removes our right to even have Mark Gardner finish the report he was probably almost done with in time for the deal to close and now removes this report from consideration as well. I wonder how many shares of CenturyLink stock Mayor Linville has.) -- By the way, the pic is of Mayor Linville's face on top of Ice Cube's face. The car he's driving is a six - four Impala. I recommend the following song to listen to along with this picture. https://youtu.be/mlugG0NydTw