A RESOLUTION establishing the City Council’s goal to implement Internet for All Seattle, a vision of enabling all Seattle residents to access and adopt broadband internet service that is reliable and affordable.
Agenda Item three. Resolution 31956. Establishing City Council's Goals to implement Internet for All Seattle Edition of enabling all residents to access and adopt broadband Internet service that is. Reliable and affordable. Thank you, Madam Park. Councilmember Peterson, we'll get to you right now. So just wanted to queue you up there. I will move to adopt resolution 31956. Is there a second? Second? Great. Thank you so much. Councilmember Peterson, you're the prime sponsor of this resolution that I had an opportunity to co-sponsor with you, and I'll hand it over to you in order to address the resolution. Thank you, Council President. I will also be reading the remarks from Councilmember Juarez, who's also another co-sponsor. So this, colleagues, is the Internet for all resolution resolution 31956. I announced and distributed the resolution on May 18 and we introduced it officially on July six. And we are happy to have the leadership of Council President Gonzalez and Councilmember Juarez and I know other Council members support this. So thank you for your commitment and leadership to this, the social justice technology issue. I do want to acknowledge the Executive for their efforts thus far to pursue digital equity and to acknowledge the over 25 meetings. My staff had initial preliminary meetings with stakeholders. This will continue this outreach and engagement process. Our Department of Information Technology will continue this process, really this resolution. Kick starts the process of expanding access and adoption of Internet that's reliable and affordable. There is a substitute resolution. So Council President can remind me on the parliamentary procedure for that. That substitute simply makes minor and technical corrections and fleshes out a few sections. Staff distributed this. It's on the agenda today. The big picture is that this is just a resolution that outlines our aspirational goal. It states the importance of providing Internet access to all residents in Seattle and begins the work of hearing back from our Department of Information Technology. In a city that prides itself in leading the world in technology, the COVID crisis has laid bare the inequities and injustice of the digital divide. We can no longer allow limited Internet access to prevent learning, to impede our workers or to hinder our small businesses and nonprofits. In the words of a local nonprofit leader here in Seattle that supporting this resolution. Inequities in Internet access lead to disparate outcomes. Access to the Internet has become a fundamental way people participate in society. This proposal will move us closer toward equitable Internet access. It's time to ensure reliable and affordable access to the Internet as part of our city's vital infrastructure for social justice, for education, and for economic development. Let me now please read the comments from co-sponsor Deborah Juarez. Councilmember Juarez writes, With the advent of the COVID crisis, inequities in our society have been exposed. We have seen schoolchildren unable to access school work because of lack of access to technology. We've seen small businesses challenged to adapt to an economy that is more dependent on the Internet than ever before. This resolution presented today will help us take a solid step forward. We need to expand Internet access and make it more affordable to empower all students to participate in remote learning and to enable our small businesses to succeed in this new economy. I, Councilmember Juarez, have long advocated for equity and access by working with groups such as literacy soars. Our public library system and I'm pleased to have been a co-sponsor on this resolution to further expand Internet access for all. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Peterson. We do have to get a substitute version before us. So I would look to you to make the formal motion to introduce substitution version three for version to be. Yes. I'd like to move the substitute version to resolution 31956 as published on today's agenda. Thank you so much. Is there a second? Second? It's been moved and seconded to adopt the substitutes. Councilmember Peterson, I know that you just addressed the substitute. Are there any additional comments either from you or other colleagues on the substitute? Hey, hearing none of the Clark, please. Probable. Sorry. Okay, now, that's. That's okay. We're just voting on a substitute bill right now so that we'll will be voting on the on the whole whole thing in just a minute. Okay, great. So let's go ahead and have the clerk call the role on the adoption of the substitute. Morales. Yes. Mosquito? Yes. Peterson. Yes. So want. Yes. Strauss. Yes. Lewis. Yes. Verbal? Yes. Council President Gonzalez. Yes. Eight in favor and unopposed. I thank you so much. The motion carries the substitute is adopted and version three of the resolution is now before the council. And I'm going to go ahead and open it up now to colleagues for further comments on the resolution. I think I saw Councilmember Sawant first, then Councilmember Morales, and then Councilmember Herbold as a person, please. Thank you. I will be voting yes on this resolution, of course. Comcast and other for profit Internet service providers are not interested in internet for all or even in quality internet for some. Actually, they are interested in their own profits. That's why they make the internet so expensive. And that's why they sign up. Sign you up at one rate only to have your bills skyrocket. That is why your internet runs is at 1/10 the advertised speed. If you're lucky. What we really need is municipal broadband run like a utility. Public utility. My time with the council, I've seen many, many studies and reports on Internet for all and on municipal broadband. This resolution requests another report, and I will support that. But what has been missing in all these years is not another report. What has been missing is the political will to take on Comcast and actually build out a municipal broadband network in the city. Political will is the central component here because Comcast is completely opposed. Pass and other telecom corporations are completely opposed to municipal broadband. And winning municipal broadband, therefore, will require elected officials willing to take on the might of Comcast. The people's budget movement in the past has fought for the funding to build the pilot. It was proposed by one study that is building municipal broadband as a public utility in one neighborhood. Seeing learning lessons from that and then building out and building it out in the entire city. But at that time, the majority of the council did not agree. This autumn, though, this coming autumn, this year, the people's budget will bring that proposal back, the proposal to have a pilot program for municipal broadband. And I believe that all council members who will vote yes on this resolution today should vote yes on that proposal also. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. So what next stop is Councilmember Morales? And then we will hear from Councilmember Herbold. Thank you, colleagues. I do appreciate this resolution. Several years ago, I was working with the Upgrade Seattle folks to try to get municipal more interest in municipal broadband at the city council. So I do think it's important that we seek out the kind of solutions that other cities have tried and, you know, understand what lessons they've learned about municipal broadband. I would love to see that language restored. Well, I'm looking at the wrong version of the resolution. But I think more importantly, what I want to say is that there are two things that make sure we continue to bear, Doug, as my Texas family would say. A commitment to ensuring that the dog, once policies are followed so that whenever the city digs up the street or constructs a bike lane, that they put that publicly owned fiber down, that 90% of the costs of expanding a network in the first place. The second thing is that, you know, as Councilmember Stewart was saying, we've got stacks of reports. We know that this is an important tool, especially. That issue has been brought into relief in light of COVID and the understanding of how deeply inequitable access to Internet is in our community, especially for young kids who are struggling with trying to get their schoolwork done. So I really think we need to commit to a plan, a shovel ready municipal broadband plan, so that if there is any federal stimulus money that might be coming down the pike in the next couple of years, we can apply and we have our project ready to go. I think develop developing a plan for how we would build that out could really support any efforts that we want to make for potential federal money. You know, and we will need hundreds of millions of dollars to get this done. But Chattanooga did it. I think we need to be prepared to do it, too. Councilmember Morales for those comments. Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. So as we all know, everybody gets really excited about Internet for all. But in the past, when the city has studied implementing municipal broadband, the capital costs have proven to be a really big barrier. And it's my hope that we can, through the work of this resolution, allow for the consideration and study of more creative methods to building a municipal broadband network. Last year, I was really excited about a statement of legislative intent that I had proposed, and the statement of legislative intent would have directed Seattle Public Utilities to examine the feasibility of utilizing the city's white water pipe infrastructure for developing a municipal broadband network. I put forward the slide last year. Unfortunately, the budget does not bring it forward, and I was inspired by the success in an accord where they achieved significant cost savings and drastically minimized street disruptions by not having to rip up the streets because they were able to feed fiber optic cable into the water pipe. So I want to thank Councilmember Peterson and his staff for including mention of exploring this creative method to build a municipal broadband network. And then lastly, I want to just echo what we all know to be true, that the public health emergency has laid bare the gaps in access to so many essential services in our city. Access to Internet is no exception. And COVID 19 has showed us that it is more important now than ever that the city must ensure that everyone has reliable and affordable access to the Internet so that we can work safely from home, and so that our children have reliable access to continue their education. Thank you, Councilmember Herbold. Are there any other comments on the resolution? Okay. Oh, customer data, please. Thank you to the sponsors of the resolution. Can you just quickly summarize for me what the next steps are after this passes today, which I'm going to enthusiastically support? I sure. I'll go ahead and take that question. The next steps are. It puts it in the court of the executive. So the which who we've been talking to during the development of this resolution, they're already doing digital equity work, but we need them to come back to us with their initial short term, long term solutions and how they're going to put forward the action plan for implementing this. And so they're going to come back. Ideally, we'll be having the committees in September. So they're going to come back in the middle of September right before the budget is unveiled by the mayor for this fall budget process. In case there are any financial implications for what they're proposing to do. So, hope to hear back from Seattle Department of Information Technology, Wednesday, September 16 and the Transportation and Utilities Committee. Thank you very much. I thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for for that description. I think the resolution, the substitute version, aside from reestablishing and reiterating the city council's goals around enabling Seattle residents to access and adopt a broadband Internet service that is both reliable and affordable, and it does also do a thorough and succinct gap analysis. So this gap analysis would include lists, would include no cost and low cost programs that are already available in the city of Seattle, while also then looking at where the actual gaps in affordable Internet access and adoption for Seattle residents exists. And so this would be, I think, an update to excuse me. It would it would be sort of that novel approach that Councilmember Herbold has been sort of referenced. And so I think I think for me, the biggest part about this is sort of really getting into that gap analysis. It's also an opportunity for us to look at lessons learned from other cities who've been able to be successful in this effort. And then and then also creating an action plan that details recommended steps for that the city of Seattle can take to to expedite universal universal access to and adoption of affordable broadband Internet service for Seattle residents. And to do that in the construct of meaningful partnership with nonprofit organizations, business community, philanthropic interests, Seattle public schools, etc., etc.. And so it also, I think, will be important that action plan also include questions around the infrastructure, what resources might be needed in order to implement the action plan and and a timeline that that we would like to finally have as part of a clear workplan action plan on this. Because for those of us who've been serving on the council for a while, we know this is not the first time we've we've addressed issues related to broadband access. And so and so I think it's important for us to to make sure that we're advancing the ongoing analysis around Internet for for all. So I was really proud to be able to work with Councilmember Peterson and his office on co-sponsoring this resolution. And we'll belabor all of the points that folks have made. Obviously, we are seeing in this pandemic the disproportionate impact of the lack of Internet access when most of us are functioning almost entirely in our professions via the Internet. And and I think it's it's it's so important for us to finally pull together an action plan to implement the many previously stated goals of the city. And now is is the time to do that. So really excited about the opportunity to advance this resolution and advance this body of work. Any other questions or comments on the resolution before we call this to a vote? All right. Hearing none. I would ask that the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the resolution as amended. Morales. Yes. Must. S Petersen. S Swans. Yes. Strauss. Yes. Lewis. Yes. HERBOLD. Yes. Council president Gonzalez. Yes. Eight in favor and in oppose. The resolution as amended is adopted and the chair will sign it and as the clerk, please affix my signature to the legislation. Okay, folks. Agenda item for us that the clerk please read. Agenda item four into the record.