City Council - Public Works and Natural Resources Committee

good afternoon everyone uh this is the February 12th uh Bellingham city council meeting and we are going to attend to our uh city council standing committee meetings this afternoon we have two um committee meetings Public Works and natural resources followed by committee at the whole and to lead us off for public works and natural resources I'll turn the meeting over to council member Stone thank you very much president Hamill um I'm joined this afternoon on the public works and natural resources committee by council members Anderson and lillquist we have one item for us this afternoon it's agenda Bill 2411 proposed Grant of telecommunications franchise to zipley Pacific fiber LLC so zipley fiber Pacific LLC has applied to the city for a non-exclusive franchise to install and operate fiber optic Network facilities in City rights of way for the provision of voice and data communication services to Bellingham businesses and residents the city's franchising Authority is contained in chapter 13.15 of the Bellingham municipal code and article 11 of the city Charter state law precludes the city from charging a franchise fee for telecommunications franchises therefore the purpose of the franchise is not to generate Revenue rather its purpose is to coordinate the franchise's use of the right of way with other approved uses and to allocate risk the attached franchise ordinance has been negotiated by City staff and the applicant and in accordance with the applicable city code is

substantially similar to other telecommunications franchises granted by the city I understand that a representative from zipley fiber will be with us this afternoon as well so first I'm going to turn it over to Public Works director Eric Johnston thank you Miss Stone so again Eric Johnston public works as is stated in the agenda bill this is a franchise for telecommunications function so we've done a couple of these over the couple of years uh they're rather routine in fact uh much of the guidance that we have for telecommunications franchises is dictated by state law and Mr stab's can address what what we are authorized and not authorized to do uh but I do want to give time to Miss Jessica Epley who's behind me who's going to come up to the podium here uh to just talk a little bit about zipley and what they're doing and why they're coming to town and I'll turn it over to to Jessica if you don't mind I'll just note that Miss Miss Epley came up here from Portland for our our meeting today so we're glad she survived that distance which is not terrible uh good afternoon I'm Jessica Epley vice president of regulatory and external affairs from zipley fiber zipley fiber is a telecommunications company operating through about 40% of Washington state as the incumbent telephone carrier you have Lumen Technologies or Sentry Link or us West variety of names that you might know them as serving the city of Bellingham proper however most of watcom county in fact is served by ziply fiber we

have been investing our own uh resources in overlaying an aging copper Network we acquired in 2020 from Frontier Communications to up upgrade that Network to a modern state-of-the-art and really futur looking fiber optic uh based Network as we were deploying our resources around Bellingham we had lots of residents come to us and say hey what about us uh we'd love to see connectivity to your network and so we've decided to go ahead and expand our Network footprint beyond our existing incumbent territory and uh come into the city of Bellingham which is why we are coming to you today for a franchise agreement under the name of ziply Pacific our celac entity um with that I'd be happy to take any questions that you might have thank you very much I'll turn to committee for questions Council Mary Anderson thank you um looking in our packet uh the printed packet there's a small aial photo but if we go to the online packet you can kind of enlarge it and there's a blue line is that the area that is int there's blue lines going through the city is that intended to be the area that you plan on um either taking over fiber utilizing fiber or laying new fiber down thank you so much for the question the blue line that you see in the packets actually are existing transport fiber that's already here in the city of Bellingham under uh our transport network provider wholesale networks which is one of the Affiliates of ziply fiber Pacific we'll be leveraging that line of uh transport fiber to

build Distribution off of it list and then I'll come back yeah that a great question just just to clarify too so that existing fiber you might ask why that's in the ground if we don't have the franchise in place yet that is under wholesale networks uh which is the affiliate company of the applicant and they do have a a franchise with the city already in place back a few years now little uh so again the purpose is to um not say yes or no but rather to coordinate the franchisees use of the right of way so that's my question um from the city's point of view are we trying to uh encourage or require a collocation combination ways of avoiding clutter are we talking about overhead above ground lines or buried lines I mean if our concern is really is kind of managing the physical right of way what are our mandates or requirements or requests of zipley or others well probably best answered with two parts one from legal one from Public Works perhaps but from a legal perspective when we talk about coordinating and uh allocating risk we're talking about having Insurance in place and bonds and place and then having the contractual Provisions that if damage occurs you get have the contractual obligation to repair any facilities that are damaged while they're out doing digging and then also to require uh them to comply with certain permitting requ requirements so it sort of puts a process and procedure in place to deal with problems as they arise notifications when you're digging and to

deal with any any harm that occurs so that that's the coordination that that I'm speaking of when I talk about just allocating risk and and coordinating the uses of the right of way which is slightly different than what your question was which is what are we doing in terms of minimizing you know cables or wires or visual clutter yeah I'll turn that over to Eric Eric well I'm going to ask Matt to help me on this but I don't think that franchise requires one method of of construction over another right in terms of coordinating access to the public rights of way we're not dictating I'm not making sure that we can dictate what or the type of where that fiber would go for them it might be underground it might be overhead uh we will take advantage of opportunities where the city can coordinate with fiber providers as is outlined in our policy adopted by the council from the Broadband Advisory workg Group to seek those opportunities to work with those entities to provide services where appropriate uh but we're not going to dictate what or how they choose to extend fiber to residential customers or commercial customers as case may be well can I just follow up on that or you can sure then I'm gonna go back to well so I still didn't get an answer to sort of like do we at least have preferences that we state it seems to me we should have a preference against clutter and it seems to me although it's maybe expensive for the provider we should have a preference for uh undergrounding as

opposed to overhead again just in terms of the hazard loss of service weather uh it creates the more expensive to move any utility pole if there's more utilities hanging off that poll um back in the days of the small cell uh discussion about small cell transmission facilities there was concern about the Clutter on the size of the boxes and and the impacts that would have on neighborhood Aesthetics as well so maybe we can't mandate what they do but do we have guidance preferences things we encourage best practices that we indicate generally speaking yes we don't we don't allow new poles to be installed in areas that are currently in underground facilities right so where where a neighborhood would currently have underground conduits we would not allow for new overhead lines to be installed uh the challenge of course comes in those older neighborhoods when the overhead lines are existing and the polls are existing and how zipley chooses to uh lash their facilities to overhead uh we do not have the ability to require them to go underground where there is existing overhead uh services available now the Clutter within how that gets arranged that's that's that there's a potential to look at how those things are installed uh and we want to make sure that those are not conflicting or causing difficulty with the operation of the rideway uh but we do not have a standard that says You must be entirely underground or vice versa entirely overhead it largely depends on the location specific

to that and and Miss Epley might be able to speak to that as well there's certainly U several builds that we've done today and just because facilities are overhead may not me mean that we're going to necessarily go overhead attaching to polls is not a cost-free activity and so we will get into a situation where we're evaluating the pole we're evaluating the load on it there may be additional Make Ready costs that push the cost of US attaching to that pole above what our threshold would be in that case we'd go underground because it would be less expensive overall um I will tell you also that when joint trench becomes available in the future this is a provision within our franchise agreement exactly that um we will go we'll join that joint trench and go underground with the other utilities when they are eventually Going Underground so I think in terms of a future look um you should rest assured that your Public Works is going to be managing to both nesc standards anesthetic standards and helping to encourage all utilities to do the same thing at the same time and and to to that point if I might that was we saw an example of that this year with the undergrounding of the power along the alley on Long Railroad Avenue where PSC needed to take the power service and place that underground in coordination there was work by the gas company and the other telecommunications who had to come off of their polls so as that work was proceeding for motivations From psc's perspective that was

uh coordinated with those other franchise utilities at the same time so that's one example of how that would actually go into place but to your original question we do not have a standard that says You must be Underground Across the city of Bingham council member Anderson thank you um well council member lqu took one of my three remaining questions so thank you um and depending on the answer of this would be whether or not I have a clarifying question but um I'm assuming this is just fiber which would be overhead cable and underground cable does this also include the potential of expansion to um like the macro cells or small cells for things like 5G so we we ourselves are not a 5G provider we would provide the fiber to make that equipment work but that would be up to that provider to come and get permission and Authority from the council okay great don't need to clarify then but one more question okay so you touched on it a little bit as far as um coordination for when the ground is being opened up and it sounds like uh PSC when they were taking things off a pole there was coordination to move the fiber underground but are we as a city coordinating with a potential company like this that if we are digging up a section of the city and perhaps we're not planning on putting conduit it in do we notify um some of our cable providers that there is an opportunity for them to be able to come in and put in underground cable and if not what would that take for us to be making those

kind of coordination efforts those coordination efforts do occur excuse me at a project level with most of our in fact all of our utility or roadway projects Telegraph Road would be a good example of that so when that project is initiated a key element of those major capital projects is coordination with with all of the franchise utilities so purpose of the franchise utility is to say who do we talk to what do you have so that we as we start our projects and you either need to get your facilities out of our way as is the case on Telegraph roads in order to put the sidewalks in that the power poles had to be moved back uh the utilities then get to choose how they want to pursue that and if there's an opportunity for them to go underground that doesn't have that meets their financial uh uh economic analysis they may choose to go underground uh in the case of psse they chose not to underground that power and simply move the power poles back and and we would expect that most likely most of the telecoms would simply leave their lashings and just go with where the PS are going uh if there were to be a project where the city were to install a large lengthy run of conduit uh that we could make it make available to other other providers that would certainly change that Dynamic of that of that conversation what will lead to that at at the right point in time is the plan we're developing the comprehensive fiber plan which says the city is intending to install fiber for its purposes in

conduit of certain type and certain Dimensions to serve the needs that the city has identified and when that were to be on the table as the project engineers and the utilities Engineers would meet to coordinate then those two would doveet tail and align to each other part of the challenge however is the way that the franchises are written particularly with power is if we choose to underground power for our purposes as the city then the city pays at least 60% of that cost off the off the top in addition other costs that would be incurred by Property Owners to change their power from overhead to under ground or their Communications from overhead to underground becomes an added cost that's not borne by the franchise utility but it's borne either by the city or the individual property owner so so the answer is a roundabout way of saying yes those are coordinated but it doesn't necessarily result in an automatic that they would be underground as part of a city project uh but there are mechanisms to get to that point we would likely see in the next 10 years as we uh adopt the uh uh recommendations ideally from the the fiber comp plan that's currently underway that will identify Cor corridors where we are intending to provide City fiber City conduits that would make space available potentially for private providers to get access to that the harder part I would add to that is that is that as a uh as a wholesale provider they're not getting to individual properties zipley however is

is is a franchise that would provide service to individual properties commercial or residential which brings a different different Dynamic how do you get it out of the trench and into the individual property owner so that that becomes a much more complex Dynamic of of service to individual homes and and and residents and businesses Anderson one more question kind of going the opposite direction of this now um I'm assuming that zipley is not going to necessarily be in the business of opening up huge TRS and putting things underground but this is a longer contract and if that should happen there's an area especially in new development where the thought is as we go out towards Cordata that might be ripe for expansion and so you would need to get the cable in um and I when I go out there I see a lot of things are underground um is this written as such that should that happen um that they come to the city for permit to open up a large area in order to put in underground fiber that we have the ability to piggy back on that work and put in our own conduit especially my concern is more of the north part of the county because eventually I See Fire School pump stations and things that would be City infrastructure and it would be a great opportunity to coordinate something like that if the opportunity was there so in this contract would we be able to piggy back and and be able to do something like that and is the communication has anybody even thought that might happen yes so me the

purpose of these franchises is to facilitate that type of coordination effort uh and the one of the challenges when it comes to fiber is if you're putting 244 strands of fiber on the ground we don't need to have two 24 fand strands right next to each other so if ziply were to go on the ground and we could use their fiber to serve the city's needs and vice versa if we had our fiber in their and they could use our fiber to serve our needs then those separate contracts not as part of the franchise but those separate Arrangements could be made by the entities parties to to resolve those questions but the the notion of extending fiber to where we need it and to where where it is needed which arguably is to everyone all places all times uh then then that's that's that that's the goal right the city's goal individually is to serve our our our our particular interest in the way that's lined up with the Broadband advisory work group recommendations but that does not prevent the city or zipley from partnering or city partnering with any other private entity or public entity at the same time so as uh in a new subdivision I will clarify however new subdivisions when those large trenches are opened up that's not done by the city that's done by the developer of those particular properties uh and they are arranged by between the developer and the franchise utilities Power telephone gas fiber to various degrees cable uh as to who pays for what when that trench is opened uh so that that

largely left up to those folks and that's not our not our we're not involved in those conversations between the private developer and the private franchise utilities what we require the developer to do is provide those utilities uh and and let them sort through the Arrangements on how those actually get built in the ground I would just peig back on that with a couple of my own comments first of all when you talk about a large trench being opened up generally speaking that's not our protocol um if there's a large area that we need to go underground and we'll typically use Directional Boring technology or you know micr trenching soft service placement something that's going to keep us out of opening up a very large trench because that's very very expensive um secondly when we do have an opportunity to coordinate with the city it's actually probably more frequently for zipley than most other providers um I can name off three cities in Washington state right now that we have lease agreements for existing conduit old water system that we're able to leverage to develop our system or our Network footprint um and lastly of course you know the city wants to have capacity throughout its footprint um we know as well as anybody else that we double our own capacity needs every 18 months so I'm using twice as much today as I was 18 months ago in terms of bandwidth uh we build and scale our networks to handle that type of approach so we will be installing not just you know a standard 244

count um most of our back haul through the areas 864 we have dwdm nodes that are going to be at either end we have 400 gigabits of capacity on uh 32 channels so I mean it's a really big pipe we're not planning to touch it again once we put it out there right it'll be changing electronics and making sure that folks have the capacity they need to help them now and into the future thank you very much I know that we're coming up on time for this committee um but Council M Anderson happy to see a new provider um I think more choices for our community the better so with that I move approval thank you very much um so we have a motion before us from council member Anderson to move approval of the proposed um Grant of telecomunications franchise to zipley Pacific fiber LLC any further discussion okay seeing none all in favor we'll say I I I any opposed or abstentions seeing none that passes 30 and I'll bring that recommendation forward this evening thank you very much for your time Miss Epley and thank you Public Works back to you president Hamill thank you Council mstone Miss gut do you need a moment to adjust okay