[Davisgig] Fwd: Notes from My Meeting with Mike Webb

[Robert Nickerson]

Hi Folks

One of the people trying to make this happen met with the City Manager 
yesterday, and here is a summation of the meeting.  Looks like we have a 
PAUSE to the Astound Contract which is great.

The next 6 weeks are CRITICAL to the success of this project. At the 
next BATF meeting we will  have to present a more fully developed plan, 
we hope the BATF adopts the plan to recommend to City Council. We are 
working out a draft of that we will share with you all in the next week 
for feedback and comment.  We should be able to pull a list of talking 
points from this document we can use to talk with City council, and 
community members. We have to turn up a lot of support at whatever City 
Council meeting the BATF recommendations will be presented at in May.

Thank you all for coming, and I believe you all, and the other citizens 
that came Tuesday and piled together at the Item helped make the 
difference here to slow them down.

Here are the notes ...

As scheduled, I met with Mike today. Below are some notes pertaining to 
our discussion:

1. I opened by making it clear that I wasn't formally representing any 
organization, but noted that my affiliations with both DCN and DavisGig 
prompted my interest in the Wave matter.

2. I emphasized the need for the city to allow the BATF process to 
conclude before committing unique city resources to a long-term 
agreement. Mike said that the city is now on board with that idea, and 
that the general sense of CC and staff is that hitting the pause button 
on the Wave agreement is appropriate. He acknowledged that the original 
staff proposal was a response to similar agreements entered into by both 
the City of Woodland and Yolo County. (I wasn't able to find anything on 
a Woodland agreement with Wave, but did find that the County approved an 
IRU agreement with Wave on 1/29/19. I only skimmed that agreement, but 
it appears to be essentially the same as the one that landed on the 
Davis consent calendar. I have a copy if anyone wants to see it and 
doesn't want to wade through the county website.)

3. Mike understands that the city needs to more thoroughly analyze the 
costs and benefits of a deal with Wave. He said that the city might have 
to go a year or two paying retail, but noted that $150k a year isn't 
that much in the city's budget context. On the other hand, he said that 
past efforts to interest Crown Castle and others in leasing city conduit 
haven't born fruit.

4. I asked about Comcast use of city conduit, specifically at the Pole 
Line and Dave Pelz overcrossings, and whether the city should be 
collecting rent on those. Mike said his understanding is that Comcast 
elected not to use the city's conduit and decided to bore under instead, 
but he wasn't sure. He said there's also conduit under the freeway and 
railroad at the east end of the Nishi property (parallel with the bike 
undercrossing), and he doesn't think it's occupied.

5. I reiterated my belief that any Wave agreement should require that 
Wave pull innerducts, to be owned by the city, into any city conduit 
that they use.

6. He volunteered (note to Matt: I didn't bring it up) that the decision 
not to lay conduit in L Street was due to the price tag: $250k. It 
sounded like a lot to me, but I didn't have any numbers to challenge the 
figure.

7. Mike said that consideration of a contract with Lori Raineri would 
have to be in response to a formal recommendation from BATF, or possibly 
as an offer of assistance initiated by Lori herself. Staff isn't going 
to initiate such a contract on its own, it can only respond if something 
lands in their lap. They would have to make a finding of city benefit, 
but that shouldn't be hard. Mike said he was unfamiliar with Lori's 
background.


Thanks All more soon