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Good luck, Fort Collins. I'm from Burlington, Vermont. We had municipal fiber. Great speed and prices and amazing customer service. Unfortunately, due to mism

by mparr4 9y ago

Good luck, Fort Collins. I'm from Burlington, Vermont. We had municipal fiber. Great speed and prices and amazing customer service. Unfortunately, due to mismanagement and some shady borrowing from the city, the utility was sold last month as mandated in the settlement of a suit by Citibank, marking the end of our experiment with municipal broadband. Fort Collins is 4x the size of Burlington. Hopefully the larger customer base means they'll be able to avoid some of the financial struggles that we faced.

AngeloAnolin 9y ago
"Unfortunately, due to mismanagement and some shady borrowing from the city" That alone spelled its doom, not the premise of it being established as a public internet utility. With financial institutions having a stranglehold on the government, they could effectively choose (negotiate?) which sort of payment would be beneficial to them long term. A public internet utility sold to them makes the most sense as this means an actual steady flow of income and customer base.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  Citi doesn't sound like the bad guy in this case.. BT borrowed from Citi for the buildout. Citi was told 40% of payments to BT were not from tax receipts, and were available to service the loan. Then when it became clear the buildout wasn't going well, the mayor decided to allocate $0 in the city budget to service the loan, and declared that all payments, no matter the source, were tax receipts(ie: payments from BTs customers were tax receipts now).. and therefore Citi would receive nothing because in their interpretation of the loan agreement, only non-tax revenues would be available for loan payments. Where in that is Citibank doing the wrong thing? Is Citibank wrong because they wanted to receive more than $0 from BT? And casting this as Citibank's fault directly conflicts with the fraud investigation, illegal borrowing from city bank accounts, etc. There was clear mismanagement by BT, bad forecasts for subscriber numbers, and no more funds available because this occurred during the financial crisis in 2008 (prompting the illegal borrowing from the city).
  - matt_the_bass 9y ago
    That sounds pretty damning. Do you have any sources to share?
    - rgbrenner 9y ago
      that's just part of it.. the link I posted above was the best/most thorough source I could find: https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt-lessons-learned.pdf https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt... But there are plenty of news articles out there too if you search.
rgbrenner 9y ago
This report on Burlington Telecom is interesting: https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt-lessons-learned.pdf https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt...
TWAndrews 9y ago
I grew up in Fort Collins, and live here now after an itinerant period, and I'll say that overall the city government has always been far-sighted, a good steward of the tax money they get, and provided good public services. I'm pretty confident that they'll do this well.

by mparr4 9y ago

AngeloAnolin 9y ago

"Unfortunately, due to mismanagement and some shady borrowing from the city" That alone spelled its doom, not the premise of it being established as a public internet utility. With financial institutions having a stranglehold on the government, they could effectively choose (negotiate?) which sort of payment would be beneficial to them long term. A public internet utility sold to them makes the most sense as this means an actual steady flow of income and customer base.

rgbrenner 9y ago
Citi doesn't sound like the bad guy in this case.. BT borrowed from Citi for the buildout. Citi was told 40% of payments to BT were not from tax receipts, and were available to service the loan. Then when it became clear the buildout wasn't going well, the mayor decided to allocate $0 in the city budget to service the loan, and declared that all payments, no matter the source, were tax receipts(ie: payments from BTs customers were tax receipts now).. and therefore Citi would receive nothing because in their interpretation of the loan agreement, only non-tax revenues would be available for loan payments. Where in that is Citibank doing the wrong thing? Is Citibank wrong because they wanted to receive more than $0 from BT? And casting this as Citibank's fault directly conflicts with the fraud investigation, illegal borrowing from city bank accounts, etc. There was clear mismanagement by BT, bad forecasts for subscriber numbers, and no more funds available because this occurred during the financial crisis in 2008 (prompting the illegal borrowing from the city).
- matt_the_bass 9y ago
  That sounds pretty damning. Do you have any sources to share?
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    that's just part of it.. the link I posted above was the best/most thorough source I could find: https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt-lessons-learned.pdf https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt... But there are plenty of news articles out there too if you search.

rgbrenner 9y ago

This report on Burlington Telecom is interesting: https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt-lessons-learned.pdf https://muninetworks.org/sites/www.muninetworks.org/files/bt...

TWAndrews 9y ago

I grew up in Fort Collins, and live here now after an itinerant period, and I'll say that overall the city government has always been far-sighted, a good steward of the tax money they get, and provided good public services. I'm pretty confident that they'll do this well.