My hat is off to the Port Again for their work on broadband. I encourage you all to watch Gina Starks Amazing presentation on this topic. They are installing 113 miles of fiber, which makes me have to give them the RFOG award. (Real FIber Optic Gs). Here report is very well detailed, and looks at all of the relevant aspects of broadband. 
Thanks to Ken Bell, Michael Shepard, Bobby Briscoe, the Port Staff, and especially GIna Stark (who I lent a copy of "Fiber" by Susan Crawford to today to circulate at the Port).
I wonder what the city's excuse for not at least having a reasonable Dig Once Policy in place will be after this. Their standard excuse of lying about "fiber being available everywhere in Bellingham via WAVE" is totally blown out of the water in the presentation and by all of our research over the last 3 years. For example, The Port confirms that not only is it not available everywhere, but that on average WAVE has 30 out of 72 strands that are broken. Keep in mind that they also charge $250 for 100 Mbit (almost 9 times what it costs in Mexico City), $900 for Gigabit (13.25 times what it costs in Chatanooga, TN) and thousands to get hooked up. Their customers tell me that they are slow to respond to calls. My God, when is the city going to really sit down and talk about this?! At least with the Port?!
In good news April Barker and Pinky Vargas have both requested meetings with me. I hope this is sincere, and that this is a step towards finally taking this matter seriously.
Sadly, Micahel Lilliquist seems to have taken a step backward. While he still recommends Dig Once, and had Mark Gardner launch the investigation showing the over-quotes by public works for conduit, he is recommending speeds lower than that offered in Mexico City for Bellingham via public fiber as "good-enough", he even thinks last mile copper is ok now, (his banter seems to come entirely from WAVE broadband and Ted Carlson), and he no longer seems to understand Fiber's important role in breaching the Digital Divide, and social justice, even after heavy hitters like the ACLU have talked about its importance. Sometimes, when it comes to our City, I really don't know what to say. It doesn't seem like malevolence from all of them, just that they really still think it's the 80s. Well if it's the 80s than I want my Delorean. Keep in mind that other than Michael and Pinky meeting informally with Kim Kleppe (the Mount Vernon IT Director) years ago, the council, public works, etc. have not had a real meeting with Public Broadband experts the entire time we've been working on this issue or formed a committee including local broadband experts, to talk about fiber. Sure, they pulled us in and tried to bully us twice, but they never wanted to listen. I hope that's changing. With the PUD and Port involved now, I think it is :).