[vox] Fwd: City Council Meeting Tomorrow! 5:15

[Timothy D Thatcher]

Hey everyone,

DavisGIG and friends are holding a bit of a stand-in protest in front
of the city chambers this evening at 5:15 before the council goes into
a closed session to negotiate a contract with the fiber provider that
could totally sink the DavisGIG community fiber project. All you have
to do is show up and hang out for a little bit outside so that the
council can see that there are people actually care about what's going
on, and want DavisGIG to be able to continue without the city locking
itself into a 30-year contract. More details are included in the
forwarded message below.

Helping out our DavisGIG and Davis Community Network (DCN) friends for
a few minutes would be a nice thing to do, if you can spare the time!

-Tim

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Rowan Boswell <missboswell at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 9:38 PM
Subject: City Council Meeting Tomorrow! 5:15
To: <pr at lugod.org>

Hello Davisites

We deeply appreciated those who came to the 3/27 Broadband Task Force
Meeting,  the community spoke with a unified voice to the Task Force
and City Council Member Dan Carson! You wanted community ownership and
open access, you want a network that will be a foundation for economic
development for the years ahead, you are heroes!

But Big Money is barreling ahead.

Tomorrow (Tuesday 4/9) the City Council will meet in closed session
with Astound Wave to negotiate the terms of a city conduit lease.
Those who have been following this effort know that the city has not
yet done a proper analysis of the value of their installed conduit,
and is acting out of a perceived need to rush a deal to completion in
order to limit its Internet access costs, which skyrocketed when the
Comcast cable franchise expired.

City Management seem to be proceeding with this negotiation in spite
of a recommendation passed UNANIMOUSLY by the Broadband Advisory Task
Force, advising they do a fiscal analysis of the value of the conduit
they are proposing to lease, nor examining the impact this would have
to a publicly owned fiber network.  We need our community in the
driver seat when it comes to the future of telecommunications in
Davis, with robust competition, and revenue from fiber lease fees
returning into our community. We do not accept another monopoly level
Private Equity owned company taking advantage of our City.


A badly-negotiated lease agreement will permanently foreclose options
for a public-oriented fiber network, and we need to make sure the
Council knows that those objecting to the current process aren't just
a handful of cranky geeks.  Toward that end, we want to muster as many
people as possible in the Council Chambers lobby (at City Hall,
Russell Boulevard at A Street) shortly before the meeting so that the
Council members and the City Manager can appreciate the level of
public concern as they enter the building.

Please consider making it to the Council Chambers at 5:15 tomorrow.
Since the item will be in closed session, there's no need to hang
around for the meeting unless you're motivated to speak during public
comment. A show of force before the meeting is what's most urgently
needed.

If you're able to make it, it would be helpful if you would drop an
email to help at dcn.org so that we have some idea of expected headcount.

Thanks, and I hope to see you there!


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