I want to make sure I keep everything straight here. There are three entities to consider with broadband other than the public, small local providers, and the big telecoms.

1. The Port/PUD - Way to go! Keep up the good work. The Port/PUD has a jurisdiction that covers pretty much the county and city.

2. The county. Although they appointed a Tech Advisor, they are pushing wireless only solutions, and have not responded on fiber in general. They also are not doing proper research. I have been focusing on the city, so I could use some help in the county.

3. The COB, whose public works department, mayor and council have been as difficult as possible on the broadband issue as you know, unless you just signed up.

Since this has been going on for a while now I want to remind everyone that about 3 years ago we walked into the COB IT offices to meet with Ted Carlson (the public works director) and others. We offered expert, volunteer, help to reduce the costs of install and help get our community wired up for the future. Let's just say that Ted's response was loaded and less than professional. Still, whenever you read a number from the city keep in mind that they have been offered free, expert, help from everything from digging trenches on up.

I do have to pause and thank Michael Lilliquist for asking the Council's Policy Analyst, Mark Gardner, to look into why the COBs install costs were so high. Michael is disappointed that the COB missed an opportunity to install conduit.

I was one of 5 experts that provided information. While everyone agreed that costs can vary, it was clear to everyone that the COB had over-quoted the project, and that their numbers were way too high. Also, no one knows why they didn't simply re-bid for 2x2" conduit or 4x2" conduit (to match the port.)

Michael Lilliquist admitted that if the number was lower, most of the council would have voted for conduit on Roder Ave. As we know, the numbers were intentionally made high. Still, this is NOT a commitment for a re-bid to match the Port's at 4x2" conduit, or really even look into the issue. The council is simply aware now that something is up, but whether they will actually take action is yet to be seen.  Also, without a Dig Once Policy we will have to go through this fight everytime a bid is made, so it is important to recall that public works tried to sneak this bid through around the holidays in the first place. This is consistent. All of the pro-Verizon decisions the council made were done on beautiful summer days.

This report has generated the usual excuses that I've been seeing for years now. Keep in mind that the big telecoms have gotten everything they wanted and the City found hundreds of millions of dollars for other projects in the meantime. All of the COBs excuses are old, outdated, and based on bad information. This is one of the many reasons why we need a tech committee with citizens on it that have the authority to draft a Dig Once Policy.

For the sake of brevity, I will focus just on one that I personally care about. I promise this relates to broadband and I will tie it in. For at least the last 3 years the COB upper echelon has used homelessness as a shield to protect the big telecoms and other big money interests. While some recent action has been taken on homelessness, it should be noted that it took them years to do anything and even though empty public buildings were available and teams of volunteers were ready to build tiny homes, they still mostly stand in their way. The biggest offenders are Mayor Linville, April Barker, and Ted Carlson. 

How does this tie in? Well, homelessness advocates spoke before the council about how the homeless need access to broadband to job hunt, and much more. In fact, while making my last HomesNow Donation, I noticed that they specifically ask for old cell phones with Wi-Fi for job hunting, etc. 

So what does this mean? It means that most of our officials never take advice from experts in the community and will use the most desperate, most vulnerable, people in our community as a shield. Ask them how this matches up with their supposed social justice crusades at their next talk.

(Note: I will be writing up an article showing the actual costs of fiber/conduit that I provided as part of Mark Gardner's study. Hint, it's a lot less than the COB quotes.) Also, I've linked to my most recent article about the COBs most recent, pretend Dig Once Policy.