[RTC List] Local Broadband Stimulus Money

Wed May 6 09:19:51 PDT 2009

I believe Larry brings up a very important point about who makes decisions with the tax payers monies. I have been working with all the County agencies and Tribes throughout Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity and Del Norte and have never found any accountability to how and why any publically funded project or purchases are made. I have been on both the receiving and losing end of bids without any explanation or feedback. As a business owner, I attempt to find out what we did correct or wrong so we can make adjustments in the bidding process. Also, I attempted to protest a bid award once and was told the County of Humboldt did not have a process for that! I hope at some point the County will become accountable.

Rick Blanchard
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: CrawfordCA at aol.com 
  To: list at redwoodtech.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 7:29 AM
  Subject: Re: [RTC List] Local Broadband Stimulus Money

  Larry, et al ...

  While I am not a proponent of the various mad dashes for stimulus money, I see nothing sinister in this ambitious plan to shore up our regional "middle mile" telecommunications infrastructure. Moreover, given our topography and the future-proof nature of fiber versus wireless, the plan to do so with a fiber optic makes perfect sense.

  Let's not look for conspiracies under every rock and at least begin with the premise that this is a legitimate, forward looking proposal that attempts to solve very real regional problems in a collaborative way involving several stakeholder groups. For more information, visit www.humboldt.edu/~rcc or http://redwoodcoastconnect.humboldt.edu/ or Google Redwood Coast Connect.

  If we do as you suggest and turn this into rounds of public hearings in three counties and several tribal governments in an effort to gain some sort of consensus on a plan of action, we'll have to wait for Barack Obama's grandchildren to vote for a new stimulus bill to fund it.

  I am a huge fan of Carlson Wireless and their terrific connectivity solutions worldwide. Your critical analysis of this development makes it sound like some sort of special interest advocacy on behalf of your employer, which I am certain is not the case. However, it looks just as bad no matter the intent. 

  Why don't we give this prospect the benefit of the doubt and hope it produces its intended outcome? There are plenty of other fights in our community, let's not add this one to the already enormous pile of them.

  Chris Crawford

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  In a message dated 5/5/2009 8:39:19 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, larry at northcoast.com writes:
    RTC members and interested parties:

    This morning I attended a very interesting meeting of the Business Partners Roundtable at HSU.  This is a group of local businesses, non-profit community based organizations and HSU personnel who meet quarterly to discuss topics related to local economic development.  Today we heard a summary report from Connie Stewart who is currently working with the Redwood Rural Action organization  (with the blessing of HSU President, Rollin Richmond) on the development of a comprehensive broadband plan for application for stimulus broadband money.   While I don't have all the details, the overall project came as a complete surprise to me (and I think will be to many of you).  Here's what I heard:

    Redwood Rural Action is trying to organize all the local governments (primarily four counties of the region, the Yurok tribe and several school districts) into submitting a "comprehensive" proposal for broadband.  What they've decided on is a proposal for addressing the "most critical issue" which they've defined as the middle mile/backhaul problem and they want a middle-mile only proposal to do five (!!) separate fiber projects (yes, that's what they're planning!) which include:

     - Hwy. 299 (Broadband Associates)

    -  Hwy. 101 to Crescent City (to satisfy the Yurok Tribe)

     - Hwy. 36 (I don't know who that's for)

     - Mendocino Coast (which may make sense given how little connectivity they currently have)

     - Hwy 3 (Trinity Co.)

    They will be issuing an RFP (I'm not sure who's funding this, but I know they've asked for funding from several counties to help with the effort) and they plan to hire a high-power consultant (do you think they have anyone in particular in mind?) who has an "inside track" to stimulus money, is technically savvy and will select the final projects for submission.  By the way - this all has to be done within the next 30 days because RUS and NTIA broadband proposals will be announced in early June.  Also - a private meeting was held recently with county, municipal and tribal representatives with no public input and no private sector invited to discuss this issue.

    According to Connie, this project will most likely be publicly owned (with 80% public money being requested), they are not open to any other broadband solutions (fiber is the chosen solution) and she claims the findings are completely based on the RCC report (please see http://redwoodcoastconnect.humboldt.edu/?content=docs  for the final report and "peer review" which I recommend reading).  She further claims that this will stimulate competition insofar as their goal is 3 providers per community, thus lowering prices (they hope).

    She only entertained a few questions before she had to leave for another meeting so we really couldn't discuss it at length.  I have so many concerns, as you can imagine, so I'm a little at a loss (imagine that!) but here are just a *few* of my concerns:

    1)   What was the decision/selection process for determining the scope & design of the RFP?

    2)   What are the roles of Redwood Rural Action and Redwood Coast Connect in deciding broadband projects for stimulus funding?

    3)   Why has the middle mile/backhaul issue become the primary driver for stimulus money?  What happened to "last mile" delivery services?

    4)   Why is fiber the only technology being considered for middle-mile? (and why do we need fiber EVERYWHERE?)

    5)   What is the role of local governments (counties, municipalities, tribes and community service districts) in this process?  Why are they proposing a single application for stimulus money?

    6)   Who are the evaluation committee members for the RFP?  

    7)   Who is the technical expert reviewing proposals?  Will there be a technical vetting process for proposals?

    8)   What are the criteria for reviewing projects?

    9)   Why wasn’t ANY public input considered for this process?

    10)  What is the vetting process for projects?  How will they be prioritized?  Is there any cost-benefit analysis? (This is public money, remember?)

    11)  When, if ever, will there be a public airing of the projects?  Is there any opportunity for public input?

    12)  If funding is limited, how will a project be selected as the top priority for the region?

    13)  If a project has over 60% public money invested, will it be considered a publicly owned project?

    14)  What considerations are being made for operations?  Who is going to operate and maintain these projects?

    I would be interested in your input.  Are any of you as concerned as I am about this whole process?  Please let me know how you feel and we can organize a response.

    Thank you.

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