Category: Thurston County (Page 5 of 16)

I’m sure my dad is going to have something to say about this post, but I found some interesting statistics while looking for something else this week. I was poking around, looking for county level statistics to create a Washington level “general happiness index.” I wasn’t planning on tracking it across time, just finding some quick list of the happiest of the counties.

So, crime rates in Thurston County, take a look:

What’s going on here is while reported crimes grew at a slow rate between the early 1990 to a few years ago, the total number of criminal sentences by our county courts went way up. What explains this?

Stiffer mandatory sentences? This phenomena may have led to courts imposing stiffer criminal penalties over the last 20 years.

Internet connectivity should be a basic utility, like sewer, water and garbage. Directly speaking, that isn’t possible in Washington State. Some local governments can, but PUDs cannot directly connect their customers. They can provide service to businesses that sell retail connections to customers.

So, in Kitsap County, the PUD up there is wiring up the cities of Poulsbo and Bainbridge Island, which then are turning on municipal wifi:

There were four antennas placed in downtown Poulsbo.

“Which was not enough,” Jones said.

An upgraded system will likely equate to more antennas throughout a coverage area.

“I’m willing to put a tower on my house,” joked Poulsbo Port Commissioner Jim Rut-ledge, who attended the May 28 meeting.

“I’m willing to wear one,” quipped Councilman Ed Stern.

Improving the system may require KPUD to further expand its fiberoptic system to accommodate additional antennas.

A few weeks ago, I asked various PUD candidates what they thought about the Thurston PUD rolling out not only internet service, but reaching out to customers.

Here is my question:

PUDs are allowed by law to become wholesale internet service 
providers. With the already limited number of private companies providing internet access abandoning net neutrality, we have the opportunity through our PUDs to help provide inexpensive and fair access.

Do you think the Thurston PUD should enter the broadband market?

Here are their responses.

Chris Sterns:

I would say yes, if we could do it with a successful business
plan. Each county PUD has entered the Telecom/Fiber Optic wholesale
marketplace under their own different business model. This reflected
whether or not they were already an electric utility, how big they are
and whether or not their model was successful. Noanet is the consortium
of PUD’s that provides the main conduit of the internet fiber-optic
system that everyone already uses including the private telecoms and the
cell phone towers which are now hooked up to it! It passes through our
county along side of the federal BPA transmission lines. Electric
utilities utilize fiber to run their electric utilizes more efficiently
(connecting up all their electric substations) that a water utility
cannot do. Both electric and water utilities have cut back on Noanet
participation due to revenue losses that their electric customers made
up. Some had more secure private sector participation, others dropped
out since customer density was low in rural counties. I will not enter
this business to become a loss leader (lose money just to get into the
market). Some other counties had residents who felt this was a good
idea, I don’t and their commissioners rejected the federal grants to
start up services because they felt they couldn’t make it work
profitably. I have attended along with Commissioner Russ Olsen
Washington PUD Association meetings on how each PUD runs their fiber
optic system. We are looking closely at what would work best here. The
first place to go would be the densest areas in the north county cities.
These cities have already laid down dark fiber when they dig up their
streets for water line replacement. All it needs is to be connected and
lit up. Other areas can be added from a profitable core area. C.S.

P.S. The federal regulators (FCC) are considering overriding our
state law that limits us to only wholesale service, we are the only
state with those direct restrictions and yet cable remains unregulated.
They have better lobbyists! The only other proposed systems are
government to government services.

 Brian Hess:

I am still researching this issue and have found some things that I
think the PUD can do to assist with the challenge.  One way to assist
is being the repository of information not only about
telecommunications, but also water and power.  The PUD should have
available data for all within the county to look at and research and
then be able to make educated decisions about their choices.  The PUD
currently puts out a newsletter, but only to those that receive services
from it.  I believe that the newsletter should go out to all residents
within the county.  While campaigning it has occurred to me that not
many know that there is a PUD and what it does.  This is wrong since
each property owner within the county pays taxes to the PUD.

One of the challenges we face with
telecommunications, or any other utility, is the infrastructure of such
utilities.  I have read a story about how cities are being challenged by
the telecommunication companies when the city wishes to install fiber
optics within their limits.  I am still researching this issue, but my
first response is that it is not right that a city cannot provide
infrastructure for its residents.  I am still researching this issue and
will hope to have a better response soon.

I have also read about a city in Washington
that set-up free WiFi for all within the city limits.  I am trying to
find that article again to share with you.  I am also wanting to
follow-up on it to see how successful it has been.  This is another way
that telecommunications can be provided to all.

I like it when organizations send questions to candidates. Its a nice way to get them down on paper taking positions that they aren’t likely bringing up on their own.I’ve though for awhile about putting together my own questionnaire, and two big areas seemed to pop out at me, PUDs and the internet and court records.

So, what I’m going to do is send these questions off to candidates and then, when I get some responses back, I’ll post those.

Here’s the question (or something similar) that I’m going to send to Public Utility District and legislative candidates. It is framed around the ideas I wrote about here.

1. PUDs are allowed by law to become wholesale internet service providers.
With the already limited number of private companies providing internet
access abandoning net nuetrality, we have the opportunity through our
PUDs to help provide inexpensive and fair access.

Do you think
the Thurston PUD should enter the broadband market? Also, do you think
the state legislature should lift the ban of PUDs selling internet
access direct to customers?

Here’s the question that I’m going to send to legislative candidates and the two candidates for county clerk. I’ve written more on this topic here.

2. Court records are understood by common law to be public records. While they aren’t specifically considered under Washington State’s public records act, they are as important as any public document. 

Despite this, the cost to citizens to obtain copies of court records is prohibitive. For example, it costs nearly $30 for an electronic copy of a 16 page document. This is well above what would be considered reasonable for a similar document from any other part of government.

Should the legislature allow counties to charge the same amount for any public document, including court records?

A little while back a group of citizens took on Puget Sound Energy to bring power to the people. Literally, they wanted to have our local public utility district, which up to now is limited to providing water to a small portion of the county, into the electricity business.

They lost. Big.

Despite a horrific record of bringing the county back online after a winter storm months before, the public electricity drive was outspent and lost at the polls. I voted yes. I like the idea of public power.

But, the entire time I thought that maybe they were fighting the last campaign. Seriously, public power is an old issue.

What is the next issue that is like what electricity was in the 1930s through the 1950s? The internet.

Right now, we’re seeing internet service providers show why there’s a massive difference between the values corporations bring, compared to government. Or, businesses that are required to support the public trust.

Net neutrality, providing equal access to all data, not discriminating based on the content providers ability to pay, is like the electrical access issue of the 1930s. And, watching the tiered internet we now seeing created, the public in Washington State can seem to provide their own home grown version of net neutrality.

Public utility districts have been able to for years get into the broadband business. Right now they can become wholesale providers to local companies that provide their own retail plugins. This isn’t ideal, but at least it gets us part of the way there. I would assume that local PUDs could write net neutrality into their contracts. Or, if a certain bill passed, PUDs could get directly into the retail business and ensure net neutrality.

There seems to be a lot of room in this discussion. Maybe even the cities could join with the PUD:

Still, the city of Edmonds was forced to seek a state attorney
general’s opinion in 2003 to offer broadband as a public service. In
response to Rep. Jeff Morris of the 40th District, the attorney general
said “First-class and code cities and charter counties may offer
telecommunications services to their residents to the extent not
specifically barred by state statute.”

Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater have all laid fiber optics in
city-owned conduits covering varying proportions of each jurisdiction,
which they use primarily for internal data and communications. And all
three cities share access with the state Department of Transportation.

By extending fiber optic networks throughout the metro area,
the three cities could open their infrastructure to private companies
and, in turn, provide equitable Internet access to families wanting to
Skype with loved ones across the country, or download a movie on family
night.

One last way local governments could ensure equal access would be through free public wifi. The Kitsap PUD has already deployed local free wifi in Poulsbo. Wifi is also a way to get around the direct access to the public barrier PUDs have experienced:

…the state legislature erected barriers that derailed the full
project by revoking PUD authority to offer direct retail services. To
this day, public utility districts are required to wholesale access,
which rarely creates enough revenue to justify the initial cost of
building networks. Community leaders knew that wholesale-only models
carry more risk because they split an already tight revenue stream. With
the change in state law, the community re-evaluated the fiber network
plan.

Rather than abandon the plan, Poulsbo and the PUD adjusted it to use
the existing fiber assets. They created the wireless mesh pilot project
that went live in Poulsbo in November 2012. They funded the project with
a Local Improvement District (LID) loan from the State of Washington.
LID works with specific geographic areas; the neighbors in an area
collaborate to form each district. The City heads up the project by
handling the design, financing, and construction of the improvements,
selling bonds for financing. The property owners in the geographic area
payback the bonds through special assessments over 10 or 20 years.

From what I can tell from meeting minutes from last year, the Thurston PUD has been looking into broadband. No recent updates though.

I think the PUD should go back out and try to expand their services beyond water. I think they should work with the cities, build broadband and start putting up wifi antennas. The next find isn’t power, the next fight is information. The internet is a basic right, it should be a public resource, it should be fair and the Thurston PUD can help that happen. 

 

  

 I