9.6% — William Theriot shouldn’t be respected as a councillor (by his own estimation)

Nice and succinct from the IND blog:

9.6%
Percent of District 9 voters who sent William Theriot to the City-Parish Council in November 2007. The district had 18,452 registered voters, with 17.9 percent (or 3,307) going to the polls; of those voting, 1,773 or 54 percent went for Theriot.

Why is this significant? Because Theriot loves to question voters’ mandate for LUS Fiber, pointing out as recently as the Sept. 27 council meeting that it was “62 percent of the 18 percent that showed up to vote.” Applying that logic to Theriot’s district, 11.16 percent of city voters in Lafayette approved LUS Fiber, while fewer than 10 percent of District 9 voters sent him into office. Now that, Mr. Theriot, is anything but a mandate.

Theriot, the incumbent in the District 9 Councillors race, has long been hostile to LUS Fiber and is fond of saying that the overwhelming 62% to 38% victory for fiber after a long and bitter campaign was waged against it by the incumbent corporations wasn’t really the last word on “the people’s” judgment of the matter because the numbers didn’t add up to an absolute majority of all the people who could possibly have voted.

Elections go to those who care to show up and exercise their rights. That’s the basic democratic principle and always has been. Theriot’s (and others’) game-playing with this has always left a bitter taste in the mouth…so discovering that Theriot is less legitimate (by his own standards) than the fiber he criticizes in this way underlines just how hypocritical this line of attack is and always was.

And make no mistake, this line of reasoning—one which continues to be touted by anti-fiber crowd—has always been the height of hypocrisy. The nay-sayers wanted to force a vote on the rest of us because they, Cox, and BellSouth thought they could easily use the money and power of the huge corporations to win in the referendum. They failed, miserably, to convince the community that they were right. A vote was what what they claimed to have wanted and we can be certain that they’d have been happy to have said “the people have spoken” if they’d won. It was always hypocritical for Fiber 411 and those that said Lafayette couldn’t succeed and shouldn’t try to turn around and decide the vote they claimed to want so badly was illegitimate because they lost.

Here’s the real kicker: William Theriot shouldn’t be voting on anything to do with any of the LUS’ utilities anyway. He doesn’t represent any significant portion of the city. His ideological grandstanding over the LUS rate hikes and his snipping on fiber is a significant part of what broke the longstanding “fair-play” agreement between Lafayette Councilmen and the rest of the parish Councillors that the full council would endorse what a majority of the city Councillors thought was best when voting on purely city issues.

I wrote a detailed post on this back when it was all going down back in March of 2010.

His obstinacy—and to a slightly lesser degree, Councilor Bellard’s—is the most immediate reason that we are faced with a deconsolidation vote on October 22nd. So if you are in Mr. Theriot’s district and have discovered that you might suffer if the city of Lafayette withdrew from the current arrangement and became its own city again then you have only to look to your own councilman for the proximate reason those within the city don’t think that the present arrangement can be trusted.

Market Share – The Independent Weekly

20101124-cover-0101The Independent has published its second and final installment in the series on “LUS Fiber — where it stands and where it’s headed.” This one focuses on the immediate road ahead. The issues are ones that would be of interest to an partisan of Lafayette: marketing, market share, financing, the competitive landscape LUS Fiber has created, and innovation.

This series marks the beginning of the inevitable “friendly critique” of LUS Fiber. Supporters—not detractors—are beginning to voice disagreement with LUS over specific points while continuing to be broadly supportive. That’s the beginning of a more healthy relationship between LUS Fiber and its public. The inclination of supporters, and that includes a large majority of the citizenry, has been to close ranks with LUS against the (accurately) perceived hostility of the incumbent providers to our venture. That supportive criticisms are now being made of the still unlaunched advertising claims, and the sort of innovation that LUS has is seen to have encouraged is probably a good thing and indicates that people are seeing LUS Fiber as an accepted, “normal,” part of the landscape. Now I’m sure LUS is not feeling nearly so secure just yet and would prefer a longer stretch of reticence from the public but it should take some comfort in the implied confidence such quarrelsome talk represents.

Apparently some in the marketing community want a bang-up, high tech projection of LUS Fiber’s advanced network and object to what they see as the stodgy utility orientation of the ads they’ve seen. Just to stoke the fires of community discussion: I disagree with both sides either/or… I’d like to see ads that first, emphasize the home-town, local benefits that owning our own fiber accrues and that includes the utility orientation that LUS projects, then, second, I’d like to see the evokation of civic pride in what we’ve got and that in turn includes bragging on the unique aspects of our network. I can see why we can’t have, and benefit, from both. The point though is until recently all I heard was how badly people wanted to see some, any marketing strategy enacted. That the situation has matured to the point that we can now disagree over the style of a marketing strategy is a happy development.

Similarly others in the space between tech and business want to see LUS pursuing Google and the likes as it opens the public network to innovation. Shoot, so would I and have long advocated that the city pursue a Google “internet in a box” located on network. But I am located in the space between tech and community and would see the real potential for innovation occurring around decisions to give us all 100 megs of intranet bandwidth (check!) and opening the set top box to internet access…the really innovative things, in my judgment, will involve pulling in greater levels of participation at higher levels of usage. But again, until recently folks were just looking for “innovation” — arguing about what sort of innovation we should emphasize is a good sort of disagreement…and one that LUS should be proud (if not always comfortable!) to have inspired.

There’s more in the article worth looking at and discussing but none of the financial stuff beside upping the take rate number to 30% strikes me as news.

The real news is that we are beginning to talk about our network openly enough to disagree. And that’s a good thing. A very good thing. Just not a comfortable one.

LUS: Who Governs?

The question of who governs LUS—and apropos this blog, LUS Fiber—was raised last night at the meeting of the Lafayette charter commission. Terry Huval, LUS director, suggested that he favors some sort of governing board. This drew sharp questions from the commission and featured articles from both the Advocate and the Advertiser. The Independent blog weighed in early alerting readers to the meeting and offering useful background information. But AOC, as part of its desire to inform the public, has uploaded the full meeting to the web and I’ve embedded it here:

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The stories, understandably, focus on the sure-to-be-contentious issue of governance. It’s a source of conflict because LUS’ governance is the point which most clearly illustrates the reasoning of those who are pushing for deconsolidation, for giving Lafayette back its own city government. LUS was owned by, and arguably was the most valuable asset of the city of Lafayette back in the days before consolidation. The clear intent of the new consolidated city-parish charter was to keep control of LUS in the hands of the city. In pursuit of that goal LUS was to be governed by the LPUA—a panel made up of all the members of the city-parish council whose district contained at least 60% city residents. Almost immediately, however, legal opinions were sought and contradictions were found between those sections that gave control of LUS to the LPUA and those that gave control of “all” functions to the full council. A subtext here is the general tenor of the time immediately after consolidation— a “we can all get along” feeling was apparently widespread and when bond attorney’s voiced a feeling that bond issues would be look stronger if both the LPUA and the full C-P Council approved them that principle was quickly generalized to all governance matters. With a few tweaks to the implementation details that has been how LUS has been governed since.

This all blew up recently when LUS asked for the first electric rate hike in more than a decade. Arguably (and I do so argue) the ensuing deconsolidation conflict grew from the fact that ideologically conservative Bellard and Theriot, rural members of the council with few city citizens in their districts, refused to honor the majority decision of the LPUA to grant the hike. That resulted in a squeaker vote and served notice that the traditional ways of working around the deficiencies of the charter could no longer be relied on. People began looking for ways to “fix” the problem by fixing the charter. But once that Pandora’s box was opened the issue quickly morphed into one focusing on sovereignty for the City of Lafayette—a new city-only council, a real mayor for the city, and total city control of city assets. LUS has become a secondary issue for most of those passionate about issue but it remains the biggest practical problem, and among those whose bent is practical and pragmatic a solution to the problem of LUS governance would go a long way toward ending their worries.

(Unintended consequences alert: Bellard and Theriot are the councilmen most passionately opposed to deconsolidation. It’s a practical not principled position. The new ideological conservatives are supposed to be all for smaller government and moving power closer to the people as a matter of principle—and deconsolidation would do both. But Bellard and Theriot have the practical problem that their largely rural constituencies would be the ones left without resources in a new, rump, parish government. So, principle aside, they are against it. If they’d been old-fashioned conservatives earlier and honored the tradition of allowing the LPUA to decide on matters relating to the city utility they’d not be in this position today.)

What was interesting in Huval’s presentation lay as much in what he did not suggest as what he did.

What was suggested (@ 1:16 minutes in the above video) was drawn from data offered by the American Public Power Association (a body of which Mr. Huval is a past president):

  1. 44% are run by an appointed Board
  2. 28% are run by an elected Board
  3. 28% are controlled by the Council or local equivalent

The Commision had asked Mr. Huval to suggest a range of alternatives and this is what he offered in response. Huval clearly did not want to wade in any deeper though he seemed, in several remarks, to favor some form of a board. For instance, he remarked that he’d recommend, and repeated this recommendation several times, that a condition of membership on the board be residence in the city of Lafayette. At another moment he was also clearly concerned that it was at least possible for a council to be made up representatives who, even if their districts were mostly in the city, were not themselves city residents.

What was not suggested was any of a range of alternatives that had been batted about and which were mentioned in passing by Commission members. Specifically: proportional voting. In such a scheme all members of the council who had any city citizens in their district would get a proportional vote on the LPUA/Council on matters relating to LUS. So, in one example, if Representative A had a 20% city constituency then he’d get 20% of a vote and Representative B, whose district was 80% city would get a vote that was 4 times as large as A’s. Bruce Conque, a commission member who’d floated such a suggestion, was not present at this meeting.

Also not suggested were ways of dealing with the issue by simply changing the charter to take away any ambiguity as to the governance of LUS. It should be a relatively simple matter to make LPUA control explicit. Why that should not be explored more specifically is a matter for speculation. How much of the bond-worthiness of the city and the parish is due to having the large and stable income of four utilities to stabilize its income?

Nor was there any discussion of separating the traditional utilities—which operate as a municipal monopoly and the LUS Fiber division which operates in a much more competitive environment and under a vastly different set of constraints. State law already separates LUS Fiber from the rest of LUS for many purposes (part of the infamous (un)fair competition act) and discussion of the value of a separate LUS Fiber board would seem in order—even if it were finally decided that was not the way to go.

A lot of the questions asked by the Commissioners centered or touched on the role of LUS in encouraging or discouraging annexation of developing areas into the city. Mostly this centered around water (which is now being sold to surrounding areas at a rate that is higher than the retail rate in the city!) LUS Fiber, which is too young to have an historical role to play in that story was largely unmentioned. But it should be clear that LUS Fiber adds significantly to what the city of Lafayette can offer unincorporated areas. What isn’t being discussed is how LUS’ tight ties to the city have limited the growth of the utilities themselves. To the extent that the people of the community own their own utilities they keep local money at home and can use the resources to best serve the people of the community rather than the best interests of out-of-town investors. LUS has traditionally been seen as a huge benefit to the town and then city of Lafayette and it is often cited as a partial explanation for the way Lafayette moved past larger, but less progressive cities to become the hub city of the region. Is there any way to extend those benefits to others in the region without being unfair to the people of the city of Lafayette? I’d hate to see the value of public ownership stifled by peculiar historical arrangements. Of all the suggestions so far put forward the most easily adaptable to allowing the utilities to benefit the people outside the city limits would seem to be proportional voting. It’d make sense to separate LUS Fiber and the other utilities so that they could advance at differing rates. (It is my understanding that bond covenants which entangle all of the traditional utilities would likely make it impossible to separate out the water service from the electric. I’d be happy to stand corrected.)

Interestingly, the current dustup isn’t the first time the issue of LUS governance has been raised locally. The local League of Women Voters (full disclosure: I’m an active member) recommended an oversight board as the “final recommendation” in their extensive study of LUS Fiber’s potential for the community. Interestingly Terry Huval was at that time adamantly opposed to the idea, attending a public meeting SLCC called to discuss the issues raised by the report chiefly to make the point that such a board for LUS Fiber was not a good idea. It isn’t clear what has changed between then and now…beyond the uncomfortable realization during the rate hike discussion that LUS could no longer count on the city-parish council to honor what city councilors thought best for the utility.

“LUS now offering 100 Mbps residential Internet”

Nathan Stubbs over at the Independent blog has a brief article announcing that LUS Fiber is now officially offering a 100 Mbps residential tier. That makes Lafayette one of the very few places in this country where homes can easily and relatively affordably buy a 100 Mbps of connectivity.

It’s not entirely clear why LUS has decided to offer this service at this time. Huval points to demand; apparently regular folks are asking for a speed that LUS thought only businesses would desire:

He adds LUS Fiber continues to be pleasantly surprised by the higher levels of service being sought by the average residential and commercial customers. “The level of service [being sold] is higher than we expected,” he says, “which is very positive.”

The utility was already offering a commercial tier at the 100 Mbps speed for $199.95 a month. Huval has long said that any resident that wanted to pay for the commercial version was free to order it up so it is a little unclear as to just what is new about this explicitly residential service offering. (The LUS Fiber residential internet page has not yet been updated to reflect this change.) Unlike the 10 and 50 Mbps residential offerings the new 100 Mbps residential tier it is not cheaper than the corresponding business ones. The other residential tiers are cheaper than their corresponding business tiers by 45-48%. Nor, according to Huval’s remarks in the comments is the monthly usage cap any different—in both the residential and the commercial versions of the 100 meg package is capped at 8 terabits. (Note: that’d be about 1 terabyte of hard disk storage.) The idea behind the higher prices for businesses is that they use much more bandwidth than households—and LUS pays for its connectivity by capacity.

Another possible reason to formalize a 100 Mbps tier right now is that Chattanooga’s still-building municipal fiber-optic utility recently announced a 1 Gbps option on its system. Chattanooga’s Gig is expensive for a regular consumer at $399 a month. In general, while Chattanooga has offered higher speeds, their pricing schedule has been more expensive than LUS’. That relationship no longer holds with LUS pricing its residential 100 Mbps package at the same cost as its commercial one—LUS’ price is 200 dollars a month while Chattanooga’s is a 14o…

It sounds a bit as if this new residential tier hasn’t been completely thought out. I’ll not be surprised if revisions that bring it more into align with other residential packages don’t appear.

LUS wins rate increase, smart grid

Well, LUS won its rate increase…about 15% over two years, the first rise in electricity costs since 1998. If you want to see the sausage being made you can tune in to AOC or download the video off UStream.

The central story tomorrow will be that increase, of course. And that is probably all you’ll see in the papers. I’ll leave any detailed reporting on the back and forth to them.

On the other hand, I expect that there’ll be no reporting on the sidelight issue of the status of the smart grid funding and I’ll take that up here. (If you’ve not followed this you can catch up the earlier posts on the issue: 1, 2.) The smart grid package, which includes both water and electricity utilities will go forward and the Feds will cough up half the money necessary to pay for communications infrastructure and the electrical side’s new meters—11.6 million dollars. It’s a great deal. But if the rate increased had failed, as it initially appeared to have done, then LUS would have had to turn down the stimulus money that would have made the smart grid deal so attractive for Lafayette. With that would have gone the opportunity for the service improvements that would come with the utility having instant, detailed information on the status of every customer and the potential for home owners to save money by actively managing their consumption.

There was a fair amount of back and forth on this topic and it’s apparent that LUS believes that the grant money is still there and that with the approval of the rate increase they will have no trouble convincing the Feds to turn over the money they have won.

Now that the money has been secured I’m hoping for more interesting news sooner rather than later on just which information technology will be used to connect the meters to the network. Whether it will be wired or wireless will be the first question and the answer will shape the future of the LUS communications division….stay tuned.

Update: The local and regional media has weighed in and as I suspected there no mention of the 11.6 million dollars in federal lagniappe that goes with the decision. From the Advertiser: “LUS rate hike OK’d” and from the Advocate: “LUS rate hike wins approval.” From the Independent: “LUS rate increase approved.”

“Dore clarifies position on LUS rate hike”

That title might better be: “Dore commits to LUS rate hike.”

According to the Independent blog Sam Dore is now a committed supporter of the LUS rate hike and will both vote for it himself and work for its passage. Dore explains it as less a shift in position than a matter of timing but that commitment changes the odds on the measure’s passage.

In a LPUA meeting late last year Dore was sided with Ken Boudreaux and Brandon Shelvin to make a 3-2 majority in favor of voting down a rate hike. The five-person LPUA board must approve any changes concerning the city’s utility assets and that loss made a vote by the larger council pointless. Dore, and in particular Boudreaux, cited timing, a lack of information and the feeling that the administration had put forward and a take-it or leave-it position that didn’t brook compromise or negotiation.

Among the non-LPUA members of the council, the so-called rural districts, it rumor has it that Purvis Morrison who is planning a run for mayor of Scott is now in support of the increase. That decision could only have been reinforced by the power outage in Scott during Monday’s frigid night that was attributed to an overtaxed connection by Entergy and when that same connection went out again Tuesday night LUS’ Huval pointed to outages as just the sort of problem that he wanted to avoid by doing the timely capacity upgrades the rate increase would fund.

That brings the pro-rate increase count up to 4…with 3 of those votes being mostly out of the city and thus having few LUS customers to contend with— and the few that they do have are in the more prosperous southern reaches. It seems likely that this time around the administration and LUS have done a better job of vote counting.

Time will tell.

LUS rate hike returns

LUS will be going back to the City-Parish Council for another go at a rate hike on January 19th. Or so report the Independent, (not once but twice), the Advertiser and KLFY.

Of the early reports the most interesting has come from the Independent’s Walter Pierce who starts looking into the background politics of the matter. His speculations focus on shifts toward rate hike support from Purvis Morrison and (very tentatively) Sam Dore.

But my guess is that some serious negotiating has already been going on with Brandon Sheldon and Kenny Boudreaux being taken more seriously than in the first pass when the complaint was heard that little explanation was given and no inclination to discuss mitigating the increase was entertained.

There is a lot sitting in the background of this issue, including the upcoming redistricting and a prospective change to the home rule charter that raises uncomfortable questions about city vs parish revenues and charter-based restrictions on how LUS’ in lieu of tax revenues are controlled and how that money can be spent.

This might well get more politically sticky before it is put to bed.

For tech infrastructure interests that are a focus of readers of this blog the consequence of securing the rate increase might well be to put the federal stimulus money for LUS’ smart grid infrastructure back on the table. (See earlier coverage.) Without the rate increase LUS was going to have to turn down $11,630,000 dollars. It’d be nice to get the feds to pay for all that build out—and smart too. Having to walk away from that much money might well have influenced the administration to quickly take another stab and the Council to reconsider its earlier action.

It should be interesting to watch the sausage being made.

LUS Fiber’s First Commercial Customer Goes Live

The headline is pretty much the story: “LUS Fiber’s First Commercial Customer Goes Live.” The Independent reports that Lafayette Convention and Visitors Center (LCVC) has taken a 50 meg symmetrical service for $119.50. They like it; Breaux, LCVC Director Breaux is reported as having said:

“Unbelieveable,” he says. “It’s been a major difference [in speed] and the whole group at LUS has been incredibly cooperative to get this whole thing going.” Plans are already in the works for a media event or open house demonstration of the service at LCVC. “We want everyone to come in and see how great it really is.”

The IND notes that having only a single business customer is part of LUS Fiber’s perhaps wise but surely frustrating measured roll-out strategy:

This follows LUS’ slow rollout strategy that allows it to carefully monitor and work out any service issues before expanding its clientele.

Ok, so that makes sense. Still. We want our fiber.