Today, I received a very lengthy e-mail from Eric of Public Works at the COB which is potentially promising. He is now the new person that is communicating with us about everything fiber related, which is fine since Ted Carlson, our public works director, pretty much simply never responded, etc. (as I've written about before). The full e-mail is a matter of public record so I'll just give you highlights. Their comments are in quotes, my commentary starts with --.

"At the July 23rd council meeting, staff was directed to provide a general fund budget proposal to study municipal broadband beyond the current system. The proposal will be considered and prioritized with the 2019-2020 budget process."

-- Ok, well this actually came up a long time ago with Mark Gardner's study in November of 2017, but as long as they're doing something.... I'll take it. Still, the $300K price tag to investigate doing something as basic as installing conduit, which they do all of the time and don't need to study, seems odd. Hopefully, the new number will be more reasonable.

"We are in the process of updating and populating a database of information on the City of Bellingham fiber system. We expect that work to continue into the spring of 2019. The database will help manage the fiber network serving public entities more efficiently than the current GIS conduit mapping and institutional knowledge. Once complete the database will be useful in analyzing daily operations and analyzing potential for additional uses of the city fiber network, including additional partnerships and dark fiber leasing."

-- This is good, I have followed up by asking if the maps will finally be truly public and easily available. If you recall, I had to do a formal public records request to get the inadequate ones in the past, and the shennangians that ensued were truly epic. They resulted in this article, among other things. https://nwcitizen.com/entry/the-husk-of-real-maps-cob-fiber-maps

"As an aside, the Bellingham public fiber system connects basically all public buildings, infrastructure and facilities in Bellingham. Every fire station, police HQ, 911 dispatch, library, government building, water plant, sewer plant and public schools are connected. The system largely eliminates the need for costly private communication networks, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax payer dollars every single year. The City will continue to install low cost communications conduit in common street light trenching to support this fiber system and the needs of the City when and where it is necessary. In 2018, conduit is being installed on Texas Street and on the Mahogany Street project using General Fund revenues (street fund)."

-- Like we've been saying for years now. Public Fiber saves money and makes us safer! So they admit that a public network saves hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year, but they avoid answering the question as to why we still don't have access to it. They also admit that they will continue to install publicly owned conduit for their own use, but have yet to provide a comprehensive plan to allow the public who pays for it to use it. While a few senior staff members have finally met with Kim Kleppe (the Mount Vernon IT Director) the council still has not. Since so much information never was passed onto the council, from senior staff in the past, I have again requested that the full council have a formal meeting with Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon's version of a Dig Once Policy is called a Conduit Ordinance. The COB is trying to use this wording to pretend that MV does not have a Dig Once Policy. It's kind of like calling a car an automobile instead of a car, and saying that because Mount Vernon refers to their cars as automobiles, they don't have any cars in Mount Vernon. Just automobiles. Anyway, the Conduit Ordinance does the same thing. Time for the COB to cut the legalize, and political garbage, and do this already. At the very least, there is no good reason for them to delay the use of existing resources by licensed ISPs including CO-OPs, Non-Profits, and Local Providers.

-- Also, no one has answered the question as to why the city's attorney Matt Stamps, gave the small cell presentation on behalf of Ted Carlson and Verizon at the July 23rd meeting and why Ted didn't stick around to listen to any of the public commentary that was related to Dig Once and public broadband that night. Ted did the same thing at the April 23rd meeting too. It is obvious that our public works director, doesn't answer to the public. Hopefully that will change soon too.

Overall though, I am hopeful :). Still, we need to keep the pressure up and keep getting signatures. There are still many ways they can protect the big telecoms if they want to. The devil is in the details.