After so much good news from the Port and the PUD I am sorry to deliver a piece of bad news from the COB. In August of this year I wrote an article about the ludicrous study the COB was doing in relation to public broadband without any input from the community or even other similar communities. The test city they picked was totally inappropriate, especially with a successful public fiber network next door in Mount Vernon to use as a model. We provided the COB with lots of documentation, correcting their errors, and the community even provided them with a Dig Once Policy to follow that was based on several successful cities like San Francisco and Mount Vernon. I am sad to say, that today I was informed that the "study" the COB constructed in August of this year was not modified by the COB in any way shape or form over the past 5 months even after receiving mountains of documentation from experts in the community. They not only ignored the advice of their community experts, they still have not met with successful public fiber pros in the area or anywhere else.

Instead, they are hell bent on weaving a narrative that protects the big telecoms.It is truly a fair tale of epic proportions that is hurting our community. For example, we only need 2, 2 inch conduit to have public broadband at an expense of about $180 K per mile. The COB would quote 24 conduit, so 12 times as much, to the council at an expense of $2.77 Million a mile on 12/10/2018. So almost 16 times higher than necessary. Again, they would seek no advice from anyone but he big telecoms, and would seek a solution that would yield the highest price possible to protect the big telecoms. The really disturbing thing is that none of the council members had the common sense to say "hey if it really costs this much then let's at least do as much as we can, and do half or even a quarter of this instead of digging up the road over and over again, since excavation costs way more than fiber and conduit that lasts 100 years, and pays for itself in leasing, ever could." They chose to do nothing instead, meaning that any future expansion on Roeder Ave. will come with the unnecessary re-excavation of the site. They are NOT doing as much as possible when they do a repair, and intentionally over-inflating the cost of repair which costs us more in the long run.This is critical, necessary infrastructure, and it will need to be installed at some point. So why are they working so hard to delay the inevitable?

These numbers conflict with the COBs' own numbers from previous years and are many times above the national average. For example, the COB installed conduit for its own use on Holly street for $400k about 2 years ago. Mount Vernon usually installs conduit for $180 K per mile. Many cities do it for even less than that. The COB would quote a rate almost 16 times higher than Mount Vernon, and 22 times higher than Phoenix, and receive virtually no opposition from the council who seem incapable of doing division by 2 or 4. There is simply no other explanation. They haven't even formed a proper technology committee to look into the issues before making decisions. Your public works director gets up and leaves before public commentary on broadband takes place. All of the meetings on broadband are held in the summer or around the holidays and they allow no real public commentary on the topic. I personally was dealing with sickness in my family when this last one was held. This administration is protecting the big telecoms. The math doesn't work out any other way. They are over-quoting everything to keep from installing the most basic infrastructure possible. Their numbers are even higher because of a lack of a Dig Once Policy (which reduces the cost of install by 90%) and they are flushing our chances of competing for next generation jobs down the toilet.

The largest growth sector in our economy is based around small internet based businesses. This is a fact they refuse to acknowledge. They only respond by increasing the cost of housing and the taxes on it instead of providing real opportunity by providing real infrastructure. High rents that drive small businesses out of business, and increase homelessness don't bother them at all either.

The public record request number is 19-10382 if you want the documents. They ignored my request at first and I again had to do a formal public records request to get any response from them. When it comes to telecom, there simply is no transparency with this administration and council. Conduit and fiber do NOT cost a lot, they are lying to us. They are going out of their way to over-quote everything. We need two, two-inch conduit, at about $180K per mile. That's it. Time to ask them why they are going so far out of their way to protect big telecoms that cause 911 outages like the recent statewide outage caused by CenturyLink. This is critical infrastructure! Time for our COB officials to treat it as such and at the very least, have a proper public committee on this topic.