Category: Lafayette

“Carencro High pioneers in fiber optic education”

Marsha Sills of the Advocate has an analysis piece up today that coversthe Fiber Kids program at Carencro High’s Academy of Information Technology (AOIT). The lead:

Technology has changed the way classrooms look, how educators teach and how students learn. And one group of students, at Carencro High, is shaping the next generation of changes in the classroom, using fiber-optic technology.

Fiber Kids explores the use of fiber-optic tech in the classroom. The group has engaged in live streaming and video conferencing with kids in San Francisco and regularly uses a link to LITE’s video and 3d rendering engine. Community tech types regularly come into the classroom to offer their expertise on the arcane topics that knit together an understanding of modern big broadband technologies. The project knits together resources from Louisiana Public Broadcasting, the Lafayette Utilities System (LUS), Bay Area Video Coalition and Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE).

AOIT has rapidly become a fixture on the Lafayette tech scene and most folks associated with technology have a (vague) sense of what the school within a school is about. But exactly because we “know” it, we tend to treat as something that is normal, a regular part of a decent city—in the realm of “oh sure, that’s a good thing.” As has been said: “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.” Others better appreciate what director Kit Becnel’s school has achieved as is evidenced by:

Becnel and the FiberKids project are known in the broadband community, council member Don Bertrand said at the (LCG-School Board) meeting.

Bertrand, City-Parish President Joey Durel and other city officials were invited to a broadband public interest workshop at Google’s Washington, D.C., offices.

“We did not have to tell them who you were,” Bertrand said to Becnel. “She’s setting the course in the entire country on the use of broadband in education.”

During the meeting, School Superintendent Burnell Lemoine noted: “Why us? Why Carencro High School?

“The response was: We were the only academy set up or in the position in the United States to do this kind of project…”

…connections set Lafayette apart from other communities, said Joaquin Alvardo, senior vice president of diversity and innovation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, on a visit to Lafayette last fall.

The closing paragraph, quoting Kit Becnel:

“I think not only nationwide, but globally, all eyes are on Lafayette and the capabilities: fiber to the home, education, public media, online, on the air,” she said. “This is going to be huge … as far as education and education redesign goes.”

It’d be a good thing to recognize the prophets that labor among us for little credit and less pay…(the “profits” get plenty of credit as is…)

A salute to Kit Becnel and AOIT!

post scriptum: If you’d like a bit more on the award mentioned here LPF is at your service…

“Pixel Magic to make 100 hires in Lafayette”

An update on today’s Advertiser website says that Pixel Magic has committed to hiring a 100 artists to work at its new Lafayette location. They will work at rendering “old” 2-D films into new 3-D formats. That type of boost to the digital arts community plants the sort of seed that every community is looking for these days. It is the potential beginning of a hothouse economy built around the digital visual arts. 100 highly trained visual ‘magicians’ will have to have something to do in their off time…and some other personal projects to keep their juices flowing. For Lafayette it’s those spin-offs that will be the real payoff. [If the economic development people haven’t put aside some petty cash to sponsor a visual arts club for kids built around these folks as the core group then they aren’t doing their job. It’s stunning how much real development has sprung from cold pizza and warm coke…]

Looking for some of that work? From the article:

Pixel Magic will work with Louisiana FastStart to provide training for interested candidates. Knowledge of stereoscopic 3-D is a plus, but anyone with a visual arts background is eligible.

Candidates who are selected will complete a specialized training course taught by Pixel Magic artists. The course will be taught over 2-3 weeks starting May 2.

This announcement a tremendous success for LITE. And Louisiana, and Lafayette, and, I very strongly suspect, LUS Fiber (even though utility companies seldom get a fair share of the glory).

Pixel Magic is the real item—it’s not a start-up hoping to leverage the fallow assets of Lafayette into some star gig that lets them move up and out…it’s a major established house that has come here because it can accomplish more of what it wants to do for less money than elsewhere. It’s up to Lafayette and the region to set the hooks deep so that nobody ever wants to leave. Festival International will be a good start….and Mardi Gras and crawfish etouffe. [Never heard of Pixel Magic? Shame on you. Check out their site, with the Lafayette location prominently featured on the fly-in, and their list of movies, and, for real fun, go to the “reel” they’ve put up of special effects. Imagine being able to do that sort of stuff…it really does look like magic.]

Pixel Magic bringing employment to Lafayette is not the result of any simple, “silver bullet” approach to development. This had to look good to the company from a number of different angles. Starting at the state level a big chunk of their favorable decision has to be Louisiana’s “aggressive” tax benefits for film and digital production. The company will get some extremely nice tax credits for the work that is done in the city. But that’s not nearly enough. Many states have copied Louisiana’s generosity. There’s also Lafayette’s location on big backbones like the Internet2 and LambdaRail consortiums. Shipping big buckets of bits back to Los Angeles won’t be an issue. Then there’s LITE itself—with a 3D rendering setup and multiple varieties of 3D visualization venues testing out films in settings from theatrical to flatscreens will be easy. LITE also has a couple of monster underutilized rendering farms on site. Pixel Magic no doubt gets a good deal and LITE gets a client that will actually use its massive facilities for more than a prestigious address.

Finally, we’re down to LUS Fiber. You have to know if you’ve been down to “the egg” at the LITE building that they’re not going to put 100 cubicle workers in that facility. No way they’d fit. However they do have to do the tedious work in Louisiana to get those credits. So some large percentage of those 100 workers will have to be off-site. But they’ll have to be able to do their work as if they were in the same building with, at a minimum, the 100 megs of connectivity that standard ethernet LANs provide. That, of course, is exactly what LUS provides on its justly acclaimed 100 meg intranet. A person setting behind a nice workstation setup on Moss Avenue with a nice VLAN setup could work within the Pixel Magic network as if they were just down the hall from the boss’s glossy corner office (something both would probably prefer). The ultimate in working from home. I’ll not be surprised if Pixel Magic opts for an offsite work center like NuConn did—but there too LUS’ fiber-to-every-nook-and-cranny make it possible to shop for the cheapest appropriate location rather than the cheapest location that has something close to real connectivity. In that sort of situation it would be easy and damned inexpensive to leverage LUS Fiber to provide a gig or several of commercial grade connection between the two points.

All of that taken together—each element individually impressive but not uniquely decisive—turned out to make Lafayette very hard to match.

The best thing is that this little coup will put the “three ‘L’s”—Lafayette, LITE and LUS Fiber on a lot of people’s radar in the digital video arts. Rev up your motors guys….the race is now beginning.

LUS Reveals Long-Term Plans

(Please note: this was first published on April 1st. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the following is simply true and more is actually planned; what isn’t true is credible IMHO…the fun is in figuring out just what the status of each claim is. Might be worth coming back next year.)

LUS has revealed its long-term plans!! Sorta. A daylight savings glitch apparently caused a timed press release to be sent early. (This sort of thing has happened before.)

After a press release dated tomorrow, Friday, showed up in PR inboxes across the city mid-morning calls to LUS and an embarrassed George Graham (from whose office the missive was mailed) confirm its authenticity. The surprise release gives an amazing amount of detail (7 loosely organized pages) about topics the local utility has always deemed “proprietary information.”

Said Huval:

Yes, It’s real…We just decided that since it has become extremely clear that Cox and the Independent’s FOI [Freedom of Information] requests will force us to reveal many details that would remain private were we a privately owned company like Cox or the The Independent we’ve decided to make the best of a bad situation. If we can’t keep our competitors from using and critics from revealing much of our proprietary information we’ve decided that a pre-emptive strike is our best bet. We’ll simply tell our community—our owners—everything we are hoping to do and see what their reaction is. Hopefully we’ll get good feedback that will help us make final decisions. [Pause] Besides most of this stuff is either obvious or nothing Cox or AT&T can do anything about anyway. Why not let the community know?

Huval declined to elaborate on what was meant by “extremely clear.”

Said Graham:

Yes, it’s for real. No, it’s not supposed to have gone out quite yet….the attached pages haven’t been fully edited and organized…that’s pretty much the way it came over from LUS and our writers haven’t much of a chance to whip it into shape. There’ll be a better version this evening. The thing was on automatic send for tomorrow. There’s some sort of time glitch in Outlook that’s in the news this morning…our IT intern is supposed to be on it. I’m not a happy camper.

The pages are pretty much a mess…. But the substance is pretty visionary. No need for LPF’s reporting to wait till the evening. If we can get even half this stuff done….well…. I’m impressed.

On to the good stuff as I see it; extracted from the PDF, organized into my categories:

Major points:
LUS is planning a set of hardware upgrades to the network

  1. The local backbone electronics are being upgraded to 10 Gbps as we speak. [This is about 2 years earlier than the first electronics upgrade anticipated the business plan.]
  2. New 1 gig-capable CPE equipment [the box on the side of your house] has been ordered and installs done after May 1st will use it; early adopters with 100 meg equipment will be upgraded “according to demand.”
  3. The 100 meg intranet is being upgraded to 1 gig [LUS has always talked, awkwardly, about the intranet as a “full available capacity” feature and this upgrade is consistent with that stance since the CPE was the choke point before…but: wow.]
  4. A 100 meg symmetrical internet connection will be available for retail customers. (100 megs is currently only available in a “business” package though a household is allowed to buy that package if it wishes. Presumably the retail version will be cheaper.)

LUS is upgrading their set top boxes, software and hardware

  1. The software upgrade comes first and is due March 15th.
  2. The plan is to install new MS Media Room software “beginning” on that date. (no hint on whether you’ll have to bring your box in or if an over the network upgrade is possible. Either way expect an uncomfortable transition moment.)
  3. A set top hardware upgrade is planned for August. Upgrades will be available to current “upper tier users on demand.” (Why switch boxes? no hint…)

A WiFi network will extend the fiber. This has long been in the plan, both Terry Huval and Joey Durel have stated their intent in public forums but no concrete plan has emerged before today.

  1. The network will consist of both public and private “channels.” (Presumeably the “private” channels will serve safety functions — there’s been a lot of discussion of GPS costs on the council recently and this would be a very cheap way to address location issues inside Lafayette.)
  2. The public side will exclusively use 802.11N and will be offered on a “best effort” basis
  3. 1 meg of symmetrical wireless service will be offered to everyone on a “guest” basis.
  4. Subscribers to internet service get free “best effort” service. (WiFi N is rated as high as 600 Mbit/s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009#Data_rates) but I doubt we’ll see such speed—but 50 or a 100 wouldn’t be impossible considering LUS’ rejection of the bandwidth-sapping mesh architectures that hobble most muni networks.)
  5. Probably associated with the wireless issue: “The CPE [Customer Premise Equipment] will equipped with a wireless repeater node.” (I’m not sure I fully understand that but I’m pretty sure I like it.)
  6. Cellular interoperability for “select” WiFi phones from “a major carrier.” (?)

Digital Divide/ Digital Inclusion, the one sheet devoted to this and is in a different format for what that is worth. Digtial divide and digital inclusion are used interchangeably, possibly this is the beginning of the Graham Groups rewrite…digital inclusion is the newer term.

  1. There will be a comprehensive DD/DI program whether or not the current application for a stimulus grant is won. That is, support for community computer centers is planned for a “slower rollout” if the grant bid fails.
  2. The WiFi node in the new CPE is cited as part of this.
  3. The new set top box is also mentioned in this regard. Apparently it has on-box memory that is regarded as necessary to use this box as a “fully functional” web browser. (The current WAP-based browser in the set top box, while innovative, is simply not practically useable.)
  4. The free 1 meg of wifi to all is mentioned again on this page.
  5. Discussion of supporting “NAD’s” seems to refer mainly to smartphones and perhaps to the new iPad and recent netbooks. (Network Attached Devices is an odd generic term to use and may refer to a recent LWV study and other local mention.)

Things I don’t understand….
Well, there’s actually plenty I’m not sure I understand; the doc could use a lot of clean-up. I’ve tried to stick to reporting stuff that made sense to me. The upcoming release of a cleaned-up version should help a lot.

  1. There’s stuff in there about a media server and AOC that are opaque to me… also stuff about VLANs and remote access to the same. (I need to do some research to get into this.) AOC is also mentioned in reference to support for its “new location” (?) and server space in the front-end for “multi-format web-based VOD.” (again ?)
  2. There’s stuff about cloud computing, standardizing access protocols, and “supporting” a unified data access categories “scheme” that probably means something to some readers but doesn’t to me. (help?)
  3. Interoperability & “widgets:” A lot of emphasis throughout the doc is placed on interoperability and widget-based interfaces. APIs are mentioned that would support incoming phone calls on the TV, Caller ID, remote login to video recording features, etc. The Media Room product supports some light programming so apparently the idea is to allow local 3rd party developers access to some (but not all) of the hooks.

Ok folks, that’s a lot to digest. A dream-list. I presume they’re not wedded to it all and Huval explicitly asked for input from the community. What do you really want LUS to get behind?

“Tech efforts getting noticed”

Sunday’s Advertiser carried a story that —as my father might have said—”Does Lafayette proud.” I recommend locals and fans give the full story a read. The article hangs its hook on Kit Becnel’s Academy of Information Technology (AOIT). A school within a school at Carencro High, AOIT prepares students for careers in the broad field of information technology and is affiliated with the national academy foundation. AOIT is a leader in the national academy and its leadership sits on several committees driving changes in the national program. The award cited in the story was actually given to Louisiana Public Broadcasting and showcases several of Lafayette’s tech jewels including LUS Fiber, LITE, AOC, and AOIT:

Louisiana Public Broadcasting partnered with Lafayette Utility System, Bay Area Video Coalition and Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE) to enhance technology and instruction at Carencro High School. This project provided more bandwidth to the school, expanding instruction to include creation of 3-D models and training students for careers in technology.

But beyond AOIT’s award the article also delves into Durel, Huval, and Bertrand’s recent appearance at Google’s DC headquarters. Not surprisingly, since attendees at that conclave included the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Bay Area Video Coalition, and the CIO of San Francisco AOIT’s reputation was already well-known.

…many of those invited to the event at Google’s headquarters already knew about the academy and Becnel’s work.”The pioneering spirit exists in Lafayette with our LUS Fiber and the work and energy of people like Ms. Becnel,” Bertrand said at the meeting. “You’re going to hear her name again and you’re going to hear it a lot. The entire United States is envious of what we’ve done. It’s no small feat.”

Also in this mix is Acadiana Open Channel (AOC) who is providing support and training for AOIT. Part of the conversation

The invitation-only event in D.C. was a workshop on broadband and the public interest, and was co-presented by the Ford Foundation and the Paley Center for Media….”Their purpose was to talk about how digital public media networks should advance in broadband and enrich connected communities,” Huval said…

Lafayette officials discussed LUS Fiber, including how it is used in all Lafayette Parish public schools and is expected to be throughout the whole city by this summer. As the infrastructure portion of it nears completion, Huval said the focus will turn toward how fiber can be applied in both schools and the community.

That last (my emphasis) is what the community is waiting to hear. The benefits to education through the school system and to public media through AOC are simply the entering edge of the wedge.

The dreams continue to come…Huval, widely know for his prowess on the fiddle and his advocacy of Cajun culture, tossed out this one which will surely resonate with Lafayette’s Creole and Cajun communities:

“You could have the ability for a French immersion school to work on a project with students in Paris, France, and have this real-life collaboration,” Huval said. “The technology now allows you to have the exchange of ideas and understanding that you could only get in-person before. This is only the beginning. To have this little oasis of Lafayette, La. have the ability to do these kinds of things is really exciting for a lot of people.”

Perhaps unknown to Huval the futuristic dream of cross-cultural francophone educational collaboration is already being realized in a project organized by WSIL (World Studies Institute of Louisiana). The pilot project, underway currently, connects classrooms in New Brunswick, Louisiana, and Haiti. Students and their teacher collaborate through Lafayette Commons, a Lafayette nonprofit that supplies the educational edition of Google Apps and support to the project.

The benefit of a community-owned fiber-optic telecommunications system to Lafayette and communities like Lafayette lies less in the technology than in the fact of public ownership. Having built our own network we can now choose to do things to benefit the people and community institutions.

Building our network was the first step—and that is nearing completion. Taking the resource of our new network and firing up the process of doing something useful with it was the next step. That process has already begun.

(full disclosure: I sit on the board of AOC, the advisory board of AOIT, and help supply services via Lafayette Commons to WSIL’s project.)


Lagniappe: LUS and Lafayette have applied for the Google Gig FTTH project; apparently as a direct result of conversations held at the meeting in DC according to an exchange I had with Huval…more on that surprise when I get a little time.

There’s NOT an App for That…

But if you write a good one you could win $100,000

A digital inclusion App that is…

The FCC and the Knight Foundation are teaming up to offer an “Apps for Inclusion Challenge” that asks:

technology innovators to review government and community services and develop tools that will improve lives by making it easier for citizens to receive these services through mobile and online applications.

For the FCC’s part—they are interested in increasing the rate of broadband adoption in “lagging” sectors and see potential in useful apps for achieving that goal.

The Knight Foundation is fronting the money. Details are not yet available but the Knight Foundation suggests that they’ve got three core beliefs that this challenge would serve:

First, our ideal of informed, engaged communities; second, our conviction that universal broadband is key to achieving this ideal; and third, our deep interest in using new approaches to connect with innovators.

The inclusion of mobile platforms and highlighting it with the allusion to “Apps” is probably pretty good policy. Recent research shows that more of the poor and minority populations that are lagging in net connection are adopting wireless devices more rapidly than the rest of the population…mobile’s probably a pretty good target.

There’s been a recent push in Lafayette to get more governmental data available online. We’ve even got a placeholder location for hosting data in an accessible form. Some places, like San Francisco, are a bit further along in having its data available in a form developers find useful. It’d be a neat project for somebody—or some civic-minded group of geeks. I’d sure like to have a version for the Lafayette Commons’ gadget page….

Anybody?

Boradband Plan a Pipe Dream?

The response to the National Broadband Plan has been muted nationwide, at least in part because it was released at the climax of the health care debate. The response has been even more muted, if possible in Lafayette…after all, we’ve got ours Jack…real 3 way competition even if AT&T is an also-ran. (Caveat: Economists say a 3-way is not enough. The fact that we’ve got a public option will help immensely.)

But for most of the country the plan would be uninspiring in any context, mainly in that it has failed to grapple with the underlying problem of competition. The plan as currently constructed simply accepts the current nation-wide wireline duopoly. The pretense that wireless competition is large enough and that it is separate enough from wireline to generate genuine competition is just foolish. (I have two friends who’ve worked, in differing capacities, on the plan. Both have expressed deep disappointment. One bitterly.)

The Economist does a great job of summarizing the painful reality of the American situation:

Almost uniquely among OECD countries, America has adopted no policies to require the owners of broadband cables to open their infrastructure to rival sellers in order to enhance competition. America relies almost exclusively on “facilities competition”, the provision of rival infrastructures: a cable provider may compete, for example, with a network that runs optical fibre to the home. True, there is a legitimate worry that forcing a company to rent out parts of its infrastructure to competitors may deter investment, but a review of international broadband policies prepared for the FCC by Harvard’s Berkman Centre for Internet & Society revealed a range of successful compromises in use in other countries. The FCC has availed itself of none of them, and suggests that wireless broadband could instead provide more competition. But wireless data transfer is very much slower and less reliable than fixed broadband; it is more a complement than a competitor.

If America’s facilities-based system were really working, the country would at the very least enjoy first-rate broadband in dense urban areas where providers are most likely to recoup their investments quickly. Yet in February the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the Universidad de Oviedo released a study, funded by Cisco, that produced a broadband quality score based on bit volume and speed, mapped against current and probable future applications. Chicago, America’s best-performing city, ranked 26th, below Sofia and Bucharest.

Lafayette is lucky not to have to rely on the “beginners” sort of broadband plan that has been generated so far. It’s yet another instance of it being demonstrably wiser to do for yourself.

That’s not to say that there is nothing positive to be said about the plan….most importantly it’s a plan worth criticizing. Up till this moment the US has had NO plan. We are admitting that not having a plan is a problem. And, as we all now recognize, admitting that there is a problem is the first step in solving it.

That said there are parts of the plan that, if implemented, could have a real effect on communities like Lafayette. More on that as time allows….

“City seeking $9.2 million in stimulus grants to address digital divide”

The Independent blog reports that LUS and LCG have submitted a pair of stimulus funding grant applications worth 9.2 million dollars that are directed at reducing Lafayette’s digital divide. This has been a central issue in Lafayette for a long time and this is the first attempt to move beyond lower prices for better services as a way to close that divide. (See LPF digital divide coverage—LPF also offered some background on this grant application back in February when the authorizing ordinance was proposed.) The Library, the Housing Authority and Je’Nelle Chargois’ Heritage School of the Arts and Technology are also partners. The grant money would come from the second round of BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunity Program) stimulus grants. LUS won a first round stimulus grant for its smart grid program back in February.

BTOP provides separate programs to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers, and sustainable broadband adoption projects. These two applications are for the computer center and the sustainable broadband adoption sections.

The coalition has applied for $3.9 millon to build out or expand public computer centers in the library, senior centers, and the Housing Authority. The money will be spent on new computers and personnel.

The second grant is focused on “sustainable broadband adoption.” That’s bureaucratese for finding ways to help folks who are not currently getting service or who underutilize service available to get up to speed. That one is worth $5.3 million and:

would go toward 55 direct or indirect jobs in providing 35,000 hours of computer training and 1,000 new PCs, as well as pay for two-year subscriptions to high speed Internet through LUS Fiber for graduates of the program.

Details on the plans for the training program would be very interesting.

The Independent is also the first local news source outside this blog to mention the community broadband survey that will be providing supporting evidence for this grant. Hopefully we will soon see the release of the study and the supporting dataset.

“Huval: LUS Fiber ‘well above’ target”

The Indpendent blog checks in with Terry Huval, director of LUS, and gets a nice chunk of good news for supporters of the system. The system will be complete in “around July,” 9 months ahead of schedule. Even more heartening is:

LUS Director Terry Huval writes in an e-mail. “Early in the planning of the project in 2004, we estimated that our breakeven for the project would be about 23 percent. In the areas where we have done the most of our limited marketing, we are already well-above that target. We are opening up new areas for service every week, so naturally those early take rate level are lower in those areas. But, we are pleased with the response we are getting. All indications are that we will easily meet all our financial obligations moving forward.” He adds that the business has also exceeded its projection of customers who buy all three services — phone, TV and Internet. LUS Fiber first began serving customers in February of last year.

That’s all good news! To unwrap that last a bit…having higher than expected take rates for the full triple play is not only a vote of confidence, it also means that the very large expense of taking on a new customer (paying for the truck rolls and expensive electronics inside and on the side of the house) will be paid off more quickly than expected. Purely in terms of paying back the bonds this is a “better” pattern.

<grump>
The Ind unfortunately continues to feel obliged to report meaningless and misleading monthly revenue vs expenditure figures. (I know, this quarter’s numbers are “good” in that for two of the three months it shows a paper profit. It’s still misleading to cite them.) It’s meaningless because now and for several years into the future LUS is making huge upfront capital investments in plant and customer acquisition. NO business like LUS’ should be making money at this time. It’s also meaningless because the figures mix in the revenues from the mature wholesale business with the still-building retail network. Without accounting for build out and separating mature and growing parts of the division it is impossible for reporting on those numbers to be anything other than sensationalistic—whether they look good or not.
</grump>

“Cabling America: Fibre in paradise”

The Economist, Britian’s venerable and well-respected newsmagazine, reports on Bristol Virginia’s BVU and its FTTH project. Long-time readers will recall Bristol, Virginia: claims that BVU was a failure were a regular and regularly ugly feature of the fiber fight here (summary). The truth was that Bristol was very successful, the first municipal utility to offer the triple play, and has done extremely well for its community. The Economist points this out, emphasizing the rural nature of the location and the jobs it brought to its Appalachian corner of Virginia.

It’s satisfying to see Bristol being recognized as an economic success by the Economist.

It’s also a treat to read the Economist—the weekly news magazine is known for its unusual combination of tight, fact-filled language and light-hearted tone. The reader is encouraged to read through the article for themselves just to reassure themselves that it really can be done. The following is offered up as an example of clean reasoning that will resonate with Lafayette readers:

Should cities be in the business of providing fast internet access? It depends on whether the internet is an investment or a product. BVU could not afford to maintain its fibre backbone without selling the internet to consumers. And it could not build a subscriber base without offering cable television and a telephone line as well; households these days expect a single price for all three services…. Fibre is expensive, and a purely commercial business would not have been minded to pay for it.

All this is true for much of rural America, and it is an analogue of the reason why municipal utility companies were launched in the first place: to electrify thinly-populated areas where commercial utilities would not go.

Good stuff.

(via Christopher Mitchell @ Muninetworks.org)

LUS and Deconsolidation…

The Advertiser runs an article this morning focusing on the City-Parish councilmen’s attitudes toward LUS governance. What makes their positions on so technical an issue a story on this fine Wednesday morning is the burgeoning question of deconsolidation.

It’s good to get this issue on the table early. As far as I can tell the issue of who controls LUS is the nub of the practical (as opposed to more theoretical) fears driving the proposal to take apart the current city-parish government by reconstituting a city of Lafayette. The pretty clear intent of the current charter is that LUS should be solely controlled by the LPUA (Lafayette Public Utility Authority)—a subset of the council made up of those members who have represent areas with 60 percent or more city of Lafayette residents. But that has never been the case in practice as other parts of the charter also require that full council approve matters relating to rates, taxes, and fees with no exception clearly made for those matters covered in the LPUA portion. The thing is poorly drafted and the consequence has been dual LPUA/Council votes on every LUS issue. Traditionally the LPUA votes first and the full council votes with the majority, deferring to their judgment about city matters.

That system came to within a hairs-breadth of breaking down recently.

The current situation is that the 5 members of the current LPUA, who represent city citizens in percentages ranging from 72 to just a hair this side of 100, can be overridden by “rural” members who represent from 48 percent to just shy of no city residents. This became painfully visible recently when LUS’ electrical arm applied for its first rate increase in more than a decade. After patching up poor relations with some members the LPUA passed the increase. But there was real doubt that some of the rural members—who pride themselves on a reflexively anti-government stance and insist on viewing rate increases as “tax” increases—would go along. The final count, in fact, came down to a 5-4 squeaker of a vote with the two most anti-government rural representatives (with the smallest number of LUS customers in their district) voted against it. They joined the two most liberal members of the board who represent poorer, mostly black districts, and had voted no to avoid the cost increase in a bad economy. It’s not a natural lineup and not one that you’ll see often. Had one more rural representative decided to not honor the LPUA majority they could have overturned the vote.

Much of the current feeling that there is a “crisis” is directly attributable to this vote in my judgment. It was apparent that Theriot and Bellard would pursue their anti-government stand even in if it meant overriding the vote of the LPUA. They had made it clear that the old deferral to those on the LPUA was dead as far as they were concerned. As a consequence a lot of folks started to realize just how much the traditional workable solution depended upon “good behavior” by the non-LPUA portion of the council. With Theriot and Bellard making it clear that they could not be counted upon to cooperate other solutions were sought. And so deconsolidation became a hot issue. Theriot has certainly not been happy about that outcome—he’s made his position that now is not the moment for deconsolidation in several venues. That’s most likely because, by most accounts, it is the rural districts like his, and especially those constituents that are not in any municipal area, that will lose the most by the creation of the newly impoverished parish government that will be left when Lafayette becomes a full-fledged city again. The irony, of course is that he and Bellard did more than anyone else to make this an active issue. (Maybe a strong parish government is not such a bad idea after all? Hmmm..)

LUS stands at the center of this gathering storm. Fixing LUS’ governance issue would take much of the immediate, practical, wind out of the sails of deconsolidation. (Though the issue is quickly becoming a question of the city of Lafayette’s sovereignty—a beast that will be much harder to put down once it is awakened.) LUS is, as it stands now, the symbol of Lafayette’s sovereignty. It is both a point of pride and an enormous practical and financial asset. We decided to build our own fiber optic network on the basis it provided. We can use it to carry out policy and attract new business. The ILOT money that it provides substitutes fees for service for taxes—without LUS the city’s property taxes would have to rise. The rest of the parish doesn’t have that asset. But, in my judgment at least, it should—and I’ve always suspected that the endgame in Lafayette parish was to extend LUS Fiber out into the parish. Deconsolidation done poorly or rancorously could make that impossible. And that would be a lasting tragedy for our community.