CLIC has received permission to post a terrific letter recently written to Wilson’s Mayor Bruce Rose from Mayor Joey Durel of Lafayette, underscoring how municipal deployment of fiber internet is not a partisan issue, it is an infrastructure issue. Local communities need to be able to decide for themselves the best means possible for ensuring that no one in their communities go without access to 21st century infrastructure. (Both Mayor Durel and Wilson’s City Manager, Grant Goings, will be speaking at CLIC’s April 13 event @BBC in Austin.)
March 2, 2015
Dear Mayor Rose:
As Mayor of Lafayette, LA, a city that proudly provides electric and communications services to our businesses and residents, I want to congratulate you, your colleagues, and your constituents on your achievement in delivering world-class Internet services to the residents and businesses of Wilson-and on the strong endorsement you received last week from the Federal Communications Commission.
As in Wilson, the Lafayette community has been united in our support for high-capacity broadband connectivity to the Internet as an essential tool of economic development and as a means of securing our community’s economic future. While some will use any means possible to distract you from achieving your goals for your community, our deeply conservative electorate has consistently supported our electric utility’s great achievement in building a future-proof broadband Internet infrastructure, and this support has been consistently bi-partisan. My Democrat colleagues have joined me and my fellow Republicans in insisting that we in Lafayette should have the right to choose our broadband Internet future. We here in Lafayette will determine how our community engages this essential economic development tool, and we will not have our economic future dictated to us by others.
As you in Wilson have, we have seen the increased politicization of the local Internet choice issue in Washington, and we regret that it has. At the local level, in our community, this is not a partisan issue and we have resisted letting it become one. Like you, we do not believe this issue is about politics or partisanship or electoral politics or the public versus the private sector. Rather, it is about strengthening America, local self-reliance and the opportunity of our citizens to live in a community with all the same opportunities – for jobs, education, health care, public safety, and much more. Wilson, like Lafayette, has built a network that ensures that your community will be second to none in these respects. Congratulations to you for taking this important step, you are obviously interested in doing the right thing for your citizens, so stay strong. And, please feel free to contact me anytime, I’ve been in your shoes.
Sincerely,
Joey Durel
Comments are closed.