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I live in a small village in central NY and we are months away from rolling out municipal broadband. For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region wi

I live in a small village in central NY and we are months away from rolling out municipal broadband. For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect. We finally said enough is enough and decided to rollout FTTH for every resident, without a single penny spent of tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground. The service will be fully subscriber-funded and end up making the town money in several years. There is absolutely nothing about this service that is: 1. A handout from government. You must pay for the service. 2. Expanding the role of government. 3. Increasing taxes 4. Hostile. The only hostility until now has been Spectrum bullying the competition.

mimikatz 5y ago
"without a single penny spent of tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground." How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars? State is different because the funding situation of state and federal governments are not equivalent, but marginal federal spending is not tied to marginal increases in tax revenue even in principal, so quite literally changes in federal spending do not come from tax dollars. If you assume that (1) the lifespan of the federal government is finite, and (2) the federal government will have no unpaid, transferred, forgiven, or externally covered debt from now until and including the eventual final shut-down, then it follows that any spending must eventually be covered by taxes, but while (1) is a reasonable assumption, (2) is...less clearly justified.
  - starik36 5y ago
    I am still confused how this isn't tax payer funded. If it comes from the government, it's tax payer funded.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > I am still confused how this isn't tax payer funded Because federal government spending doesn't depend marginally on taxes. > If it comes from the government, it's tax payer funded. This would be true if changes in government spending were tied to changes in taxes, but it isn’t because they aren’t. For state government operational spending its closer to being a general truth.
      - ghiculescu 5y ago
        That’s ridiculous. Why have taxes at all if spending is not dependent on them?
        thatguy0900 5y ago
        Because you need to pretend the spending does depend on them. Otherwise the magic of Fiat currency starts to waver
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Why have taxes at all if spending is not dependent on them? In aggregate, to offset, to the extent viewed desirable, the money supply effects of the creation of money in spending, and in terms of specific distribution of taxes to effect a desired (re)distribution of net income. Also, though the above would be sufficient on its own, because prior to the abandonment of commodity-representational currency for pure fiat, the metaphor of the fisc, a finite purse (from which we get the adjective “fiscal”) was a reasonable model of government finances, and there is a lot of inertia in popular models of the world. So, even though it is no longer an apt model, lots of people — both in the electorate and even in government — still view the world through a framework in which that is exactly how things work, which affects their decisions as electors or government decision-makers.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    The government is using its power of taxation to convince lenders that it can cover its debt. If that isn't taxpayer funded, then nothing I charge on my credit card is funded by my salary. Saying federal spending isn't "taxpayer funded" because there is a deficit is sophistry.
- jancsika 5y ago
  They are, but you are either being ungenerous in your question or missing vital context that anyone familiar with a city council meeting would already know. OP is bragging that the municipality is paying for a service without increasing local taxes to pay for it. Increasing local taxes is the obvious way that municipalities typically pay for something like this. But increasing local taxes also generates predictable and often persuasive complaints from old cranks who never want to increase local taxes. OP's muni is thus circumventing those complaints by using grant money for the rollout. While it's true that state and fed grants use tax dollars, it's irrelevant to the OP's brag. E.g., Old crank at meeting says, "I don't want to pay more money for a service I don't need." Applause break. Old crank at meeting says, "I don't think it's right to take a grant created with state and federal taxes which I don't believe in paying." Awkward silence. Edit: clarification
  - mattmanser 5y ago
    I really don't get how it's an ungenerous reading. It's funded by taxes. Grants are paid for by taxes. Many tax pennies were spent. Just because it didn't come out of the city council pot makes no difference.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      I agree with you. I think it is perhaps a great use of tax revenues, but at the state level all that tax revenue came from taxes. At the federal level it is possible to create money from nothing, something fans of Modern Monetary Theory would emphasize. Tho for the most part that is also tax dollars. Could be a good use of taxes but I don’t think it’s correct to say “not a penny of tax revenues spent”.
      - bawana 5y ago
        ^THIS. The fed govt prints more money. Cities and everyone else cannot,until every town starts to mine their own coin. Would you rather mine dodge coin or ‘new York’ coin that is backed by a municipal bond issue?
    - 5y ago
- nrdvana 5y ago
  Looking at it a different way, it’s entirely possible that those grants are the same ones that the companies would have applied for to roll out broadband to rural areas. In that sense, it doesn’t spend tax dollars in excess of what would have been spent anyway if they got the cable company to do it for them.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  The post office has been around for a very long time, and is an example of the government providing a service which people pay for by using the service. There are numerous examples of this. Your water supply might be one of them. Municipal broadband is also usually pay-for-use, and you could fund it with bonds, which is also common. You could argue against how a municipality decides to implement their own broadband service. But saying that no municipality should be able to provide any service - or even particular services - seems a bit odd. Since that's the majority of what local governments do... The police, education, water, roads, parks, etc...
cproctor 5y ago
This is inspiring to hear. I'm a recent transplant to a small city in Western NY (20k residents). Are there any studies or documents available from your village's deployment? I'm interested in getting involved in this issue in my own city. Thanks!
dominotw 5y ago
> Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. > Spectrum bullying the competition. Curious how did Spectrum bully out the competition.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Outside of major urban areas, there is often no bullying required. It was not economical 20+ years ago for there to be more than one physical cable or telephone provider in an area. Moving away from dial-up and DSL (which sit on top of phone lines which anyone can buy access to) toward cable (and fiber in the past decade) has put the power on the cable companies who physically own and maintain the lines. Since, in contrast to phones, cable has not typically sold access other than direct-to-customer, they maintain that same model. They don't sell access for someone who buys a fast fiber connection to then connect to the cable network and then their cable customers "dial into" that person's box. Instead, you only get service through the cable company itself. Because cable requires a massive financial outlay, we end up with regional monopolies unless cable companies are forced to open up their physical platform to others. Which is rare.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    " It was not economical 20+ years ago for there to be more than one physical cable or telephone provider in an area. " It was(is) more than that. Those companies were granted a franchise/local monopoly on providing the service. By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not.
    - dominotw 5y ago
      > By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not. Why not just fix that law now though. OP is stating that it is a profitable business. If they fix that law wouldn't there be new entrants, fixing original problem.
- ikiris 5y ago
  I heard it costs a lot of money to do these builds, for low return. You might even call it a natural monopoly, if you believe in such things like basic economics.
viro 5y ago
The GOP argument is kind of highlighted here. Your city didn't have to spend any of its own money. while a business would have had to spend millions to build then to maintain. A business must have ROI and profit to survive(due to inflation). Your city doesn't need to any of that.
- harikb 5y ago
  > profit to survive If only they stopped their greed at ... enough profit to survive
- ajmadesc 5y ago
  That's not true though. The gov pays the providers as well.
deregulateMed 5y ago
Welfare city. You are welcome.
- nwiswell 5y ago
  And you're welcome for your welfare roads.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Welfare fire department, welfare police.....
    - deregulateMed 5y ago
      I pay for these. The city didn't pay for the internet, I did.
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    That's hardly a fair comparison they are calling it welfare as the town in question didn't pay a cent to get it's own broadband.
    - thebradbain 5y ago
      And most small municipalities don't/didn't pay a cent toward the highway construction, either
      - deregulateMed 5y ago
        With the 50k I pay in taxes per year, I'm sure I can pay for toll roads.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>There is absolutely nothing about this service that is... Your implementation may be good. Living in NY it should not stretch your imagination to think up what an implementation that meets all those criteria would look like. Municipal broadband is the hip new thing right now so nobody half-asses it. I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right. That said, if a town or city wants to do their own broadband they should be able to do so without state interference. Local government is best government. Allowing the towns to have a "well we could DIY it and not buy your services at all" option as a backstop when negotiating with ISPs furthers competition in a market that is otherwise mostly devoid of it IMO.
- woah 5y ago
  Municipal fiber is a far easier service to provide than almost anything else a municipality does. One tiny plastic cable into the house. It can be run on telephone poles. Plumbing, sewer, and roads are many orders of magnitude more complex and expensive to build and maintain.
  - iptrans 5y ago
    Fiber optic cables contain glass strands. That’s what’s what’s used to transfer the signal. The plastic sheet is just mechanical protection. Not to be confused with the plastic ducts the fiber optic cables are often placed in.
- cat199 5y ago
  > I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right. so, basically what we have now for non-muni net in most places with telco+cableco duopoly?
- 5y ago
sokoloff 5y ago
Does the municipality have any role in the administration of the service? If so, did they have that role last year? If yes and no, respectively, how is that not an expansion? (And if the municipality has no role in the service, in what way is it municipal broadband?) It may very well be a good program and if it is, I'm in favor of it, but it seems like it's clearly spending taxpayer-funded grants and likely has an expansive (even if slight) force on government.
worldmerge 5y ago
> small village in central NY What village? Would love to learn more about it. I'm from upstate and Spectrum absolutely has a hold on many cities. Them + Verizon have a duopoly on areas, and access can change block by block. It's insane. Edit: did a google search and I found Parish, NY posted something asking residents to fill out a survey about their internet. But nothing else.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
5. There are also several examples of municipalities rolling out Municipal broadband at great expense to taxpayers, then failing, and then cities giving them away for-profit companies.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  similar to sports arenas ? If you are looking for red-hot local government corruption, there are long lists available .. be warned they look reasonable on the surface, and will self-report positives.. thats the nature of the beast there
2xpress 5y ago
>> For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect. So why did the other carriers not want to participate? Could removing barriers that prevented the other carriers from contributing be a better solution than replacing the one bad carrier with a government bureaucracy?
snowwrestler 5y ago
The reason other broadband providers have balked is because of the large investment needed to offer a competitive broadband service. Your town is instead funding that investment with state and federal grants, which are pretty much the definition of a government handout. However, there is an unspoken assumption here that broadband belongs to the private sector. That’s an assumption worth thinking carefully about. Many of the types of arguments against muni broadband have also been raised against other government infrastructure programs like public roads, bus routes, subways, etc. Many of those programs compete directly with private companies and displaced private investment. Yet we know now that government-funded or subsidized infrastructure, done right, becomes a common platform that the rest of the economy can grow on. It seems increasingly likely that broadband falls into this category. We just had a national year-long demonstration of the critical importance of connectivity to our economy.

mimikatz 5y ago

"without a single penny spent of tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground." How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars?

dragonwriter 5y ago
> How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars? State is different because the funding situation of state and federal governments are not equivalent, but marginal federal spending is not tied to marginal increases in tax revenue even in principal, so quite literally changes in federal spending do not come from tax dollars. If you assume that (1) the lifespan of the federal government is finite, and (2) the federal government will have no unpaid, transferred, forgiven, or externally covered debt from now until and including the eventual final shut-down, then it follows that any spending must eventually be covered by taxes, but while (1) is a reasonable assumption, (2) is...less clearly justified.
- starik36 5y ago
  I am still confused how this isn't tax payer funded. If it comes from the government, it's tax payer funded.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I am still confused how this isn't tax payer funded Because federal government spending doesn't depend marginally on taxes. > If it comes from the government, it's tax payer funded. This would be true if changes in government spending were tied to changes in taxes, but it isn’t because they aren’t. For state government operational spending its closer to being a general truth.
    - ghiculescu 5y ago
      That’s ridiculous. Why have taxes at all if spending is not dependent on them?
      - thatguy0900 5y ago
        Because you need to pretend the spending does depend on them. Otherwise the magic of Fiat currency starts to waver
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > Why have taxes at all if spending is not dependent on them? In aggregate, to offset, to the extent viewed desirable, the money supply effects of the creation of money in spending, and in terms of specific distribution of taxes to effect a desired (re)distribution of net income. Also, though the above would be sufficient on its own, because prior to the abandonment of commodity-representational currency for pure fiat, the metaphor of the fisc, a finite purse (from which we get the adjective “fiscal”) was a reasonable model of government finances, and there is a lot of inertia in popular models of the world. So, even though it is no longer an apt model, lots of people — both in the electorate and even in government — still view the world through a framework in which that is exactly how things work, which affects their decisions as electors or government decision-makers.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  The government is using its power of taxation to convince lenders that it can cover its debt. If that isn't taxpayer funded, then nothing I charge on my credit card is funded by my salary. Saying federal spending isn't "taxpayer funded" because there is a deficit is sophistry.
jancsika 5y ago
They are, but you are either being ungenerous in your question or missing vital context that anyone familiar with a city council meeting would already know. OP is bragging that the municipality is paying for a service without increasing local taxes to pay for it. Increasing local taxes is the obvious way that municipalities typically pay for something like this. But increasing local taxes also generates predictable and often persuasive complaints from old cranks who never want to increase local taxes. OP's muni is thus circumventing those complaints by using grant money for the rollout. While it's true that state and fed grants use tax dollars, it's irrelevant to the OP's brag. E.g., Old crank at meeting says, "I don't want to pay more money for a service I don't need." Applause break. Old crank at meeting says, "I don't think it's right to take a grant created with state and federal taxes which I don't believe in paying." Awkward silence. Edit: clarification
- mattmanser 5y ago
  I really don't get how it's an ungenerous reading. It's funded by taxes. Grants are paid for by taxes. Many tax pennies were spent. Just because it didn't come out of the city council pot makes no difference.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I agree with you. I think it is perhaps a great use of tax revenues, but at the state level all that tax revenue came from taxes. At the federal level it is possible to create money from nothing, something fans of Modern Monetary Theory would emphasize. Tho for the most part that is also tax dollars. Could be a good use of taxes but I don’t think it’s correct to say “not a penny of tax revenues spent”.
    - bawana 5y ago
      ^THIS. The fed govt prints more money. Cities and everyone else cannot,until every town starts to mine their own coin. Would you rather mine dodge coin or ‘new York’ coin that is backed by a municipal bond issue?
  - 5y ago
nrdvana 5y ago
Looking at it a different way, it’s entirely possible that those grants are the same ones that the companies would have applied for to roll out broadband to rural areas. In that sense, it doesn’t spend tax dollars in excess of what would have been spent anyway if they got the cable company to do it for them.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
The post office has been around for a very long time, and is an example of the government providing a service which people pay for by using the service. There are numerous examples of this. Your water supply might be one of them. Municipal broadband is also usually pay-for-use, and you could fund it with bonds, which is also common. You could argue against how a municipality decides to implement their own broadband service. But saying that no municipality should be able to provide any service - or even particular services - seems a bit odd. Since that's the majority of what local governments do... The police, education, water, roads, parks, etc...

cproctor 5y ago

This is inspiring to hear. I'm a recent transplant to a small city in Western NY (20k residents). Are there any studies or documents available from your village's deployment? I'm interested in getting involved in this issue in my own city. Thanks!

dominotw 5y ago

> Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. > Spectrum bullying the competition. Curious how did Spectrum bully out the competition.

Jtsummers 5y ago
Outside of major urban areas, there is often no bullying required. It was not economical 20+ years ago for there to be more than one physical cable or telephone provider in an area. Moving away from dial-up and DSL (which sit on top of phone lines which anyone can buy access to) toward cable (and fiber in the past decade) has put the power on the cable companies who physically own and maintain the lines. Since, in contrast to phones, cable has not typically sold access other than direct-to-customer, they maintain that same model. They don't sell access for someone who buys a fast fiber connection to then connect to the cable network and then their cable customers "dial into" that person's box. Instead, you only get service through the cable company itself. Because cable requires a massive financial outlay, we end up with regional monopolies unless cable companies are forced to open up their physical platform to others. Which is rare.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  " It was not economical 20+ years ago for there to be more than one physical cable or telephone provider in an area. " It was(is) more than that. Those companies were granted a franchise/local monopoly on providing the service. By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not.
  - dominotw 5y ago
    > By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not. Why not just fix that law now though. OP is stating that it is a profitable business. If they fix that law wouldn't there be new entrants, fixing original problem.
ikiris 5y ago
I heard it costs a lot of money to do these builds, for low return. You might even call it a natural monopoly, if you believe in such things like basic economics.

viro 5y ago

The GOP argument is kind of highlighted here. Your city didn't have to spend any of its own money. while a business would have had to spend millions to build then to maintain. A business must have ROI and profit to survive(due to inflation). Your city doesn't need to any of that.

harikb 5y ago
> profit to survive If only they stopped their greed at ... enough profit to survive
ajmadesc 5y ago
That's not true though. The gov pays the providers as well.

deregulateMed 5y ago

Welfare city. You are welcome.

nwiswell 5y ago
And you're welcome for your welfare roads.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Welfare fire department, welfare police.....
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    I pay for these. The city didn't pay for the internet, I did.
- tick_tock_tick 5y ago
  That's hardly a fair comparison they are calling it welfare as the town in question didn't pay a cent to get it's own broadband.
  - thebradbain 5y ago
    And most small municipalities don't/didn't pay a cent toward the highway construction, either
    - deregulateMed 5y ago
      With the 50k I pay in taxes per year, I'm sure I can pay for toll roads.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- deregulateMed 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>There is absolutely nothing about this service that is... Your implementation may be good. Living in NY it should not stretch your imagination to think up what an implementation that meets all those criteria would look like. Municipal broadband is the hip new thing right now so nobody half-asses it. I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right. That said, if a town or city wants to do their own broadband they should be able to do so without state interference. Local government is best government. Allowing the towns to have a "well we could DIY it and not buy your services at all" option as a backstop when negotiating with ISPs furthers competition in a market that is otherwise mostly devoid of it IMO.

woah 5y ago
Municipal fiber is a far easier service to provide than almost anything else a municipality does. One tiny plastic cable into the house. It can be run on telephone poles. Plumbing, sewer, and roads are many orders of magnitude more complex and expensive to build and maintain.
- iptrans 5y ago
  Fiber optic cables contain glass strands. That’s what’s what’s used to transfer the signal. The plastic sheet is just mechanical protection. Not to be confused with the plastic ducts the fiber optic cables are often placed in.
cat199 5y ago
> I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right. so, basically what we have now for non-muni net in most places with telco+cableco duopoly?
5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

Does the municipality have any role in the administration of the service? If so, did they have that role last year? If yes and no, respectively, how is that not an expansion? (And if the municipality has no role in the service, in what way is it municipal broadband?) It may very well be a good program and if it is, I'm in favor of it, but it seems like it's clearly spending taxpayer-funded grants and likely has an expansive (even if slight) force on government.

worldmerge 5y ago

> small village in central NY What village? Would love to learn more about it. I'm from upstate and Spectrum absolutely has a hold on many cities. Them + Verizon have a duopoly on areas, and access can change block by block. It's insane. Edit: did a google search and I found Parish, NY posted something asking residents to fill out a survey about their internet. But nothing else.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

5. There are also several examples of municipalities rolling out Municipal broadband at great expense to taxpayers, then failing, and then cities giving them away for-profit companies.

mistrial9 5y ago
similar to sports arenas ? If you are looking for red-hot local government corruption, there are long lists available .. be warned they look reasonable on the surface, and will self-report positives.. thats the nature of the beast there

2xpress 5y ago

>> For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect. So why did the other carriers not want to participate? Could removing barriers that prevented the other carriers from contributing be a better solution than replacing the one bad carrier with a government bureaucracy?

snowwrestler 5y ago

The reason other broadband providers have balked is because of the large investment needed to offer a competitive broadband service. Your town is instead funding that investment with state and federal grants, which are pretty much the definition of a government handout. However, there is an unspoken assumption here that broadband belongs to the private sector. That’s an assumption worth thinking carefully about. Many of the types of arguments against muni broadband have also been raised against other government infrastructure programs like public roads, bus routes, subways, etc. Many of those programs compete directly with private companies and displaced private investment. Yet we know now that government-funded or subsidized infrastructure, done right, becomes a common platform that the rest of the economy can grow on. It seems increasingly likely that broadband falls into this category. We just had a national year-long demonstration of the critical importance of connectivity to our economy.