Hello, I hope you all had a great holiday and are looking forward to a great new year. 
I have another sad Broadband Advisory Group update this morning. Here are some highlights from the article. "...the COB is intentionally using the pro-big telecom company Magellan Advisors to create a worthless survey to protect big telecom, we learned recently that the advisors from Magellan were chosen by Public Works Director Eric Johnston personally in closed door secret meetings." And "Both the Republican and Democratic party leadership were aware of all of this but have not even tried to make their members aware, most likely to please special interest members and donors." Also, " A BAG member, who happens to have a WAVE lease for their own small ISP, wrote to me in an attempt to get me to stop writing articles. He, like most of the special interest members of the BAG, is angry that the truth is getting to the public." So WAVE now has 2 voting members. There are only 8 on the BAG as one other member left the group. The Corporate Democrats rewarded him for attacking the public interest by making him a precinct representative.
So, as in the last election, we would have to be out of our minds to elect any incumbents or anyone linked to them. It's time to demand that this anti-citizen group be disbanded and reformed with members that are not chosen by public works director Johnston.
Btw, the Port, PUD and County are acting in pretty much the same way. Lots of closed door meetings, no public input, lots of special interest pocket lining for half-assed solutions. Still, we just have to keep letting the sun shine in on the issue, and elect different people when we have the chance. 

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Margaret Mead

City contacts:
smfleetwood@cob.org
and
ccmail@cob.org
Here is the full article:
https://nwcitizen.com/entry/biased-bag-internet-survey