The Davis City Council is moving forward with interest on the municipal broadband proposal, asking staff to come back with additional information regarding the financial and technical options.
A number of public commenters pushed back on concerns raised by Dan Carson in op-eds in the Enterprise and Vanguard over the weekend. Councilmember Carson, while not disputing the “benefits of improved high-speed broadband for economic development, education, technological innovation, and addressing the digital divide,” nevertheless questioned how to get those benefits “without saddling our taxpayers with huge financial risks.”
Other members of council had questions and concerns as well. As Councilmember Will Arnold put it, “We can’t approve a municipal fiber network today, but we can kill it. I’m not ready to kill it.”
So instead he asked staff to bring back, at a future meeting, a plan for further study of financial aspects as well a technical study that is needed to figure out how to make it work.
There was considerable pushback by the attending public against the caution of Councilmember Carson.
As one member of the public put it, the question is whether we should pursue the municipally owned broadband network, “we have our bat force [staff’s derivative commission, the Broadband Advisory Task Force, or BATF] saying yes we should pursue this, and staff is saying no.” She said, “I was astonished to see Dan Carson’s editorial in the Davis Enterprise. It would seem like he’s already decided… in advance of today’s staff presentation and without hearing comment from the community or his own fellow councilmembers. That he’s decided that Davis should not control its own broadband network.”
Rob Nickerson from Omsoft said “our initial proposition remains viable, community investment with municipal ownership.” He said that they never wanted such an ISP to directly challenge the largest businesses in the market, but rather, “We do need to and have advocated for a change in the dynamics of the internet marketplace as it is today.”
He called for “internet access as a utility with a neutral, trusted party holding the infrastructure which is this municipality rather than a monopolist holding the infrastructure which we all need to 
use.” He said this effort “would provide benefits across multiple sectors of our community.”
Dan Carson, while serving as a bit of a lightning rod, had his defenders among his colleagues.
Councilmember Lucas Frerichs responded, “I think it’s unfortunate that he was ridiculed for putting his perspective out there,” noting that a critical perspective was not only needed but helpful, even as he stated, “I don’t one hundred percent agree with it.”
Will Arnold stated, “I appreciated my colleague Dan Carson’s op-ed… He is a cautious (person), very knowledgeable about finances… There wasn’t really any point that he wrote that I disagreed with. There are a lot of risks out there. Whether they’re insurmountable, we’ll find out.”
He said, “Any suggestion that he should have… kept his mouth shut… I don’t want that – I don’t want that to be the takeaway for any of my colleagues.”
Dan Carson on Tuesday added to his comments from the weekend by noting that the more questions he has asked, the more confirmed he is that “this is going to be a dead end.”
He noted not only is it “too costly” but also that it has “weak support.”
The consultant’s survey showed, “Only 21 percent of those surveyed said they would definitely buy into a municipal system… They’ve polled in a lot of places and they’ve never seen such weak support for this kind of a system.”
He said, “It suggests that even those numbers that (are) in that feasibility report are too optimistic. It’s a more grim situation than that.”
Nevertheless, he said stated, “I’m not going to oppose my colleagues asking for more information.”
Mayor Brett Lee was also skeptical. He told his colleagues, “I’m a little concerned about a public utility” where the city provides the network and infrastructure for access where “all residents are charged for that service,” regardless of whether they might want it.
He said he was curious at full buildout what the fee structure would look like, but noted on the flip side of Dan Carson’s point, a full 15 percent polled said they were not interested in broadband service.
“I think we need to be very careful when we talk about this digital divide, that there are people who choose not to spend their money on access,” he said.
“I’m supportive of doing further investigations,” he said. “The key to me is unrecovered costs.”
Lucas Frerichs added, “I care about the costs… I think it’s a major consideration for the possibility for us moving forward on something like this.” He added, “I appreciate that there’s a variety of other factors that go into this.”
He noted that there are a number of reasons why California lags behind other states in municipal networks. For him there are still some major questions out there, major pitfalls and “there are more answers that are needed.”
Gloria Partida noted, “The one thing that’s thrown out a lot is the digital divide as an argument for doing this – we’re doing this for the betterment of people, the people who don’t have access. I’m a little uncomfortable with that because if we really wanted to do something about the digital divide, we would set up hotspots where people could access the internet for free.”
She noted that there are a lot of families for whom, if you gave them broadband, would not have the computer hardware to be able to access it.
Even Will Arnold, who seemed solidly behind the idea, acknowledged that, while he likes “the idea of having a municipal network,” at the same time, ‘There are legitimate questions that we don’t know.” His answer: “Let’s find out.”
Moving forward, the council supported a motion for staff to bring back the proposal after further discussion.
“Direct staff to come back with a plan to provide council information on what a phased approach would entail technically and financially and potential cost mechanisms.”
Council was unanimously in support of this direction.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Sounds like the city should acquire some of that DJU communication expertise! No price is too high.
Your referent is verrrry interesting… never perceived DJU as particularly effective at communication (particularly as to timely)… many levels…
DJU?
Methinks DJU is shorthand for DJUSD, aka Davis Joint Unified School District… might be wrong, but that would be a 0.0001% outlier…
The deliberations by Council last night were remarkably similar to the deliberations by the BATF on May 22nd, when the letter to Council contained in the Staff Report was finalized. There was an abundance of caution, and a bottom-line Next Steps suggestion that was very much like Will Arnold’s.
As I said in my e-mail to Council yesterday:
.
The next steps game plan that Council has asked Staff to bring back is already well described in the BATF letter, specifically,
If the next study is competent and pro-bono, no problem in my view… but, everyone should realize that staff resources, that have real total comp GF costs (and ‘opportunity costs’… staff time on this comes at the ‘expense’ of the same time used for other [already approved] purposes), are in play… hope they are tracking that, for eventual ‘reimbursement’ if a new municipal utility comes into fruition… if not, it’s ‘sunk costs’, if I understand that term correctly.
Ironic… my take-away was that folk are saying this is needed for ‘social justice’ reasons, yet in almost the same breath, acknowledge it will be “rolled out” in phases… can any one guess where it will be LAST rolled out? Who will be the last to receive the benefits?
And, as a municipal utility, will all City residents be assessed, whether they choose the service or not? And will adjoining County folk (generally, higher financial resources — El Macero, Willowbank, Binning), insist on getting the benefit, without taking the financial risks, paying the same assessments?
Enquiring minds want to know…
Matt Williams: those all sound like well-reasoned and thought out suggestions.
There is a real question about why Dan Carson wanted to kill further investigation and study of the options, even to the extent of penning an op-ed that broadcasted his position to his colleagues in advance of debate on this.
He specifically said that he didn’t want to kill further investigation and study.
Your assertion is a clear falsehood.
From Dan Carson’s op-ed:
That was also the sense I gathered from my watching the meeting… but there are zealots, who have several ‘agendas’, whether on this topic or others (some of which are ‘surrogate’ issues)… attack someone on one topic, because they don’t like their stand on un-related ones…
Just saying… it happens… whatever…
One of the problems with moderates, is wording “lies” as “falsehoods”… guilty as charged… have the T-shirts… still, …
Just another falsehood, WM
Alan… good point… I overstretched…
I sincerely hope any future analysis of the “municipally-owned” option clearly takes into account whether that would mean expansion of city staff (including all current and future total comp issues), including providing for operation/maintenance/billing/admin.
I am of the opinion that the City should ‘tread lightly’… concept, I do not oppose on principle… but the principal, interest, etc. is a concern of mine…
The approach that I believe would be most effective would for the City to pay for the backbone infrastructure using existing conduit whenever possible, then lease non-exclusive access to the backbone to the various ISP’s in town. Operating the backbone should be handled through an outside contract, not by City staff. In addition to the City, School District, and the University, the other first customers should be commercial property owners who would pay to connect their buildings to the backbone thus supplying high-speed access as a competitive advantage to their prospective tenants. The initial benefits to residents could be the free hotspots that Gloria mentioned. I think it would be an extremely bad idea for the City to try to become the preferred ISP in town.
Mark, not disagreeing in concept… but…
Placement of “stuff” in existing and/or municipally paid for conduit is inherently limited… hence, “non-exclusive access” is inherently limited. Depends on your definition of ‘exclusive’… one, three, five, fifty?
Aye, we get to who would be served first… the one of the inherent “untruths” is that the those who would be the primary beneficiaries, on a “social justice” basis, would be anywhere close to first… a subsidy to the top 5%?
With all the risks borne by all?
Neglects capital cost, maintenance(?) etc.? No proposal on the table, one way or the other. Basically agree with the ‘thrust’, but the capital/maintenance/replacement/upgrade costs are huge variables. Not sure how you’d get away from additional Finance Dept costs/liabilities if it is a “municipal utility”… “assessments” to finance the concept, sure look like a tax…
The City could never (if they follow law) make a ‘profit’… at best, the City would break even, but then there is the “risk” factor… should all residents pay for a system, benefitting few (in reality), putting up the capital costs, and cross fingers hoping to break even? Those are questions that I believe should be addressed before decisions are made…
On that, we are in total agreement.
Am very skeptical of the entire concept of municipally owned BB… but can be convinced, but facts are not currently in evidence, IMHO.
We were down this ‘road’ 30+ years ago… Davis Community Cable… results were not very good…
Nor should they be. The initial customers are the ones who are going to pay for the bulk of the installation, the City, Schools, University and large commercial interests. Not the end users, per se, but those who want direct access to the backbone. If we lease access to the ISPs in town, the end users access would come through their customer relationship with the ISP, not directly with the City. Free hotspot access expanding with the growth of the system is one way we might address the ‘social justice’ impact.
Why do you assume that? All depends on the quality of the contracts that the City writes. Hopefully, the CC considered the applicants experience writing quality outsourcing contracts when they considered the new City Attorney’s position.
Fiber allows for a great deal of capacity in a small amount of space. Staff proposed giving away exclusive access to the subsurface infrastructure in exchange for a few fibers for City use, thus creating a monopoly situation for the preferred vendor that would ultimately have harmed consumers. What I propose is the City installing far more capacity than the City needs, then leasing access to multiple entities and ISPs who then have to compete for the end users. How many vendors will depend on the interest, but the City could create a maximum limit on the percentage of capacity that one vendor may control (preventing a functional monopoly), and could also set aside a percentage for use by a community based non-profit providing access to those in need.
I think that 32% willing to buy in now with another 21% interested is not a bad figure for a system that is coming out of the blue for most people. Most people hate any kind of change and it takes energy to create momentum for anything new. A campaign waged by the city and citizens who can see the benefits would likely win over most people. Who in their right mind would be in favor of letting a mega-corp control something so important and continue to suck monthly subscription dollars out of town while throttling innovation for the same or higher price? Figures quoted last night at the CC meeting of $75/mo for 1G/s speeds (20 times what I have now) beats the $90/mo I pay Comcast not even counting the benefits of local control. This is a replay of Davis neglecting to get Berryessa water in 1956. Think ahead. Plan ahead. Yes, it’s risky, but there is a lot to gain and a lot to lose.
It’s the other 68% who may well be required to buy in now that is my concern… if only subscribers pay the cost, take the risks, no problem, they should go for it…
We definitely have to get more information, and much more complete picture of costs, and how they will be financed, before decisions/commitments are made…
‘Apples’ and calamari… no reasonable comparison… except ‘things eaten’…
It is clear you want this to happen, no matter what… no matter who pays… to get what you desire… understood… K…
Your “history” is flawed… had Davis bought into the Monticello dam project (there was no lake, until the dam was built… the town of Monticello (not Berryessa) had to be dismantled, graveyard contents disinterred, relocated … Davis or much of Solano would have still needed to acquire Sacramento River water … )… history and current events are FUNdamental…
Just saying… fiber optic options in 2019 vs. water sources in 1956? Really?