Hello everyone, I hope you are all well. Last night I had an amazing meeting with several candidates about broadband at a party I threw in my home. It was the first time I used ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation which worked in a grainy fashion on my overpriced Comcast connection. Which, even after new wiring and modem replacements, never works nearly as well as they claim. This was an important point because it showed that even on my over-priced, low-performance connection, we could NOT have supported more than one remote participant. This means that our low-income residents, on their awful big telecom low-income connections, can't support this without freezing or worse. It also means that our citizens with disabilities are at a great disadvantage in Bellingham when compared to communities with public fiber-optics. We also hammered out the details as to how inexpensive fiber really is especially when compared with unnecessary projects that are way more expensive. Plus, fiber pays for itself with leasing, next-generation jobs, and much more. Seth Fleetwood attended, asked meaningful questions, and I can confidently say now that he is taking the entire broadband issue seriously. He is even reading Fiber like Garrett did. 

April Barker did not attend although she originally planned to. Even though she has many people working on her campaign, she did not send a representative. This was an opportunity to get a different perspective (meaning one not driven by big telecoms). She has released a statement back-peddling on her previous stance and has asked me and others to refrain from discussing the shortfalls of wireless technology. I no longer believe she is interested in getting the whole story. She has asked for a meeting later but I am not sure if that will happen as prior meetings were canceled. I am also concerned that sometimes people embrace "all sides" only as a way dissuade from an apparent bias for corporate telecom. Folks that I rely on have recently also extended themselves politically to try to get her to seriously commit to public fiber and broadband to no avail. 

Hence, in solidarity, I am officially endorsing Seth Fleetwood for mayor. He is stronger on every other issue as well and will do the right thing with broadband.