September 21, 2019
Saturday AM

The purpose of this letter is to encourage voters to ‘Vote Yes’ on Proposition 2 – a Revenue Bond for construction of KPU Telecommunications’ undersea fiber optic cable to Prince Rupert, BC - in the municipal election scheduled for October 1, 2019.

I encourage you to visit KPU’s webpage for a review of frequently asked questions/answers about the project and the Revenue Bond.

Notably, a Revenue Bond cannot and does not rely upon property taxes – Proposition 2 will not increase or otherwise have any impact upon property taxes.

Rather this $11.5 million infrastructure project that is designed to pay for itself via cost savings. Simply put, by owning its own cable, KPU will be able to stop ‘renting’ Internet capacity from a competitor, and will use the savings to make the annual bond-payments.

Proposition 2 ensures Ketchikan will have affordable access to high-speed Broadband / Internet services no matter what the digital future might bring. In the context of economic development, this project effectively extends KPU’s extensive local fiber network all the way to Seattle – which means Ketchikan will be the most ‘wired’ community on the West coast of the United State. Technically, the citizens of Ketchikan will enjoy better Internet service than most neighborhoods in Seattle. Given the ongoing and rapid development of ever-increasing data-intensive services on the Internet, this is a critically important infrastructure project for Ketchikan.

It is worth noting that roughly six years ago there were no smart phones, no smart TV’s, Netflix DVD’s came in the mail, people rarely streamed movies, on-line gaming was in its infancy, and 4G/LTE wireless service was barely on the horizon. Today, of course, everything has changed and all of those data- intensive devices and services are ‘normal’. And all of those services and devices – and all the future Internet services and devices - require very large amounts of data (which requires a fiber cable between Ketchikan and Prince Rupert).

As noted above, I encourage you to visit KPU’s webpage for comprehensive information about Proposition 2 and the KPU undersea fiber optic project.

Thank you, and please Vote Yes on Proposition 2.

Bob Sivertsen
City of Ketchikan Mayor
Ketchikan, Alaska

Editor's Note:

The text of this letter was NOT edited by the SitNews Editor.

Received September 20, 2019 - Published September 21, 2019

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