From: Jacob Patterson
To: Whippy, Isaac
Cc: City Clerk
Subject: Public Comment 2 -- Re: Notice of Public Hearing for the Fort Bragg City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 6:00 PM
Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2025 1:18:44 PM
City Council [via BCC],
After some back-and-forth, I was finally able to review the detailed calculations for the proposed monthly fiber rates--I am still waiting on more detail for the legacy MCN fees and rates. I am pleased to say that I find the documentation for the proposed new fiber rates to be both reasonable and adequate to proceed so please ignore my earlier comment even though it was accurate based on what I had access to at the time. (That said, in the future, it would behoove the City to have all the supporting documentation available and ready to provide to anyone who requests it before the public hearing notice goes out.) I assume that the legacy MCN rates and fees will probably be justified too since they are based on actual past data rather than projections from our business plan for the new services. I have high hopes for this exciting new service and will be an early subscriber to convert the legacy MCN services at my house to our new high-speed fiber (all the better to stream our City meetings from my home office).
Best regards,
--Jacob
On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 1:45 PM Jacob Patterson <[email protected]> wrote:
Isaac (& City Clerk for the record),
Before I get into the substantive concerns, this public hearing notice is not accessible and violates the ADA because OCR has not been added to the PDF so screenreader software can't read its contents. The City is required to provide all documents for public meetings in an accessible manner, meaning anyone trying to access the document has a way to read the content (or listen to it through screen reader technology). I had to OCR the public hearing notice myself. This should be corrected and always implemented going forward.
Regarding the substance of the proposed fee updates, I've looked at the spreadsheets that purportedly support the proposed fees for the broadband utility and they don't contain any calculations, instead they are just numbers entered into the fields. These records are nothing more than a price list, not the underlying calculations, which are legally required, btw. I suspected this might not be handled properly based on the City's past issues with updates to the fee schedule and I wasn't wrong, this is concerning. Fees need to be based on something, not just be made up. The supporting documentation that is supposed to be available for public review must answer the following questions. How did we get to these numbers? How did the various amounts get calculated?
We are required to have more data than this to establish fees for services. The notice recognizes this but it was issued without what it says will be made available (aka "At [sic] Pursuant to applicable law, at least ten (10) days prior to the public hearing, data indicating the cost or estimated cost of providing the services for which the fee is proposed, along with the anticipated revenue sources, will be made available to the public for review" but no such data has been provided. Is this an oversight or does it not actually exist? For example, the fee structure needs to show that the monthly different tiers are based on the cost of providing the service, not just our revenue targets (or however we came up with these numbers). Each tier doesn't need to directly correspond to the cost of providing that specific level of service to that tier's customers but the overall revenue projected to be collected from the ratepayers as a whole needs to not exceed the cost of providing the service. These projected costs should have been calculated when we developed the business plan and applied for the loans to pay for the project. We have ongoing operating costs, debt service costs, and reasonable capital reserves. Where is this data and where are these calculations? For our water and sewer rates, we literally run projected expenses over a rate study time period and then calculate the fees based on generating enough revenue to cover the operating expenses as well as reserves for maintenance and future capital projects. That involves a lot more analysis and calculation than simply writing a price list. A broadband utility is not a water or sewer service but it is still bound by similar legal requirements when it comes to establishing fees for service and utility rates. I expected to see those calculations as part of the information available for this scheduled fee hearing but, alas, it doesn't appear to be available. Did Isaac just accidentally omit the sup[porting calculations? If so, please forward the relevant documents ASAP. If they don't exist, then the City has a big concern that will likely prevent us moving forward with the proposed fee updates at this time.
I recommend the City cancel this public hearing until you can run a compliant rate study for the new utility. We have plenty of time before any services will be able to be provided anyway. Alternatively, you could proceed but just with the rates for the existing MCN customers we are taking on and wait in the broadband. I am not even sure this is the proper way to go about establishing our fees and rates. We don't have our water and sewer rates in our fee schedule, we have cursory fees for things like the physical water connections or inspections, special equipment use, and connection fees. The rates for water and sewer services are in a separate document that went through a different process. I assume that other process would also apply to broadband customer rates as well, although it would require some legal research for me to state that with any certainty. Our fee schedule should contain line items for tertiary fees like broadband connections fees (if any) or service calls for existing customers, as well as account deposits, etc. If we want it to also contain the monthly service charges for basic internet service, we need to have a rate study to establish those rates and no such study is yet available.
Actually, I don't think we have enough data yet to even run a rate study. For existing MCN customers, we should at least have their past rate studies that they used to come up with the existing rates and fees. Where is that and have we evaluated it for accuracy as well as legal adequacy? If not, we need to before trying to adopt it ourselves. The "existing" fees (at Mendo Unified) that I assume we are merely proposing to carry forward to our fee structure must have been calculated with something. (I should say they should have been; I don't know if their process was legally compliant and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't. We can't assume their work was justifiable and need to have the supporting calculations before we try to enact comparable fees for the customers we are taking on as part of the acquisition.) Even if the City hasn't evaluated Mendo Unified's calculations, I expect to be able to and that data should have been made available as part of my request to review the data mentioned in the public hearing notice.
If the City proceeds with this non-compliant effort, the entire utility's ability to operate and bill for services will likely be undermined. As it stands now, this proposed fee update is not legally adequate, IMO, and the City is well-advised to correct the errors and omissions before proceeding. This cannot be done and still hold the public hearing on the 9th because the data and analysis need to be made available for the full ten-day public review period. As such, the hearing must be rescheduled until after the supporting data and analysis have been generated.
Regards,
--Jacob
On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 11:52 AM Whippy, Isaac <[email protected]> wrote:
Jacob,
Please see the attached spreadsheets for the Fees.
From: Jacob Patterson <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 2, 2025 10:13 AM
To: Whippy, Isaac <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Notice of Public Hearing for the Fort Bragg City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 6:00 PM
Thanks, that is easiest. I am surprised you even have the necessary data to be able to compute the fees and am not sure why there are fees associated with this anyway.
Rates for utility services aren't included in the fee schedule and secondary costs for things like hookups are supposed to be covered by the utility. I guess there could be a customer service charge for unusual service visits or something.
On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 9:44 AM Whippy, Isaac <[email protected]> wrote:
Sure- i can email it over. Please look for an email before noon today.
From: Jacob Patterson <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 2, 2025 9:02 AM
To: Whippy, Isaac <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Notice of Public Hearing for the Fort Bragg City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 6:00 PM
You can't just email me the spreadsheet(s)? It would be easier to do that since I would need to review the electronic file and that requires a computer, which someone would have to set up in the conference room. If not, I will come in later this morning. Probably around 11:00 or 11:30.
On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 8:38 AM Whippy, Isaac <[email protected]> wrote:
Thank you for your email, Jacob. Please let me know when you would like to come in to review the fees?
From: Jacob Patterson <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2025 3:29 PM
To: City Clerk <[email protected]>; Whippy, Isaac <[email protected]>
Subject: Fwd: Notice of Public Hearing for the Fort Bragg City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 6:00 PM
Isaac or Diana,
Pursuant to this public hearing notice, I would like to review the supporting calculations and analysis for the fee schedule update as is my usual practice. As noted, this information is required to be made available for 10 days prior to the meeting. Can it be emailed to me or do I need to come in and review it in person? I need the spreadsheets with the actual calculations so I can review any formulas, etc., not just a list of the proposed fees themselves or a PDF print of the calculations spreadsheet. I'd like to review these documents starting tomorrow.
Thanks,
--Jacob
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: City of Fort Bragg, CA <[email protected]> Date: Thu, May 29, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Subject: Notice of Public Hearing for the Fort Bragg City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 6:00 PM
To: <[email protected]>
Notice of Public Hearing for the Fort Bragg City Council Meeting on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 6:00 PM
Post Date: 05/29/2025 2:57 PM
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Fort Bragg City Council will conduct a public hearing at a regular meeting to be held at 6:00 p.m., or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard, on Monday, June 9, 2025, at Town Hall, southwest corner of Main and Laurel Streets (363 N. Main Street), Fort Bragg, California 95437. The public hearing will concern the following item:
Proposed Resolution Adopting Revisions to the City’s Fee Schedule for Municipal Broadband Utility Public Hearing Notice can be found here This email was sent to [email protected] using govDelivery Communications Cloud on behalf of: City of Fort Bragg, California · 416 North Franklin Street Fort Bragg, CA 95437 SE NOTIFICA que el Ayuntamiento de Fort Bragg celebrara una audiencia publica en sesion ordinaria a las 18:00 h, o tan pronto coma se trate el asunto, el lunes 9 de junio de 2025 en el Ayuntamiento, esquina suroeste de las calles Main y Laurel (363 N. Main Street), Fort Bragg, California 95437. La audiencia publica tratara el siguiente tema:
Propuesta de Resoluci6n que adopta revisiones a la escala de tarifas de la ciudad para el servicio municipal de banda ancha El aviso de audiencia pública se puede encontrar aquí.
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