# Building Networks: A Committee Meeting on Fiber and Food Waste On a crisp Monday afternoon in February, the Bellingham City Council's Public Works and Natural Resources Committee convened in City Hall to tackle two infrastructure challenges that, while seemingly unrelated, both spoke to the city's efforts to build a more resilient and sustainable future. Committee Chair Hannah Stone led the session with Council Members Lisa Anderson and Jace Cotton, working through agenda items that would affect everything from internet connectivity to garbage collection across the city. ## The Digital Backbone: Bellingham's Fiber Network Plan The meeting's first major item was the adoption of a 10-Year Fiber Network Comprehensive Plan — a document that represented the culmination of years of study and community engagement around municipal broadband. Interim Public Works Co-Director Joel Pfundt and Fiber Optic Network Engineer John Gaven presented what they characterized as a "reformatting" of previously approved work rather than new policy direction. "This comprehensive plan that we're presenting here today directly links back to the resolution that City Council passed back in September of 2024," Pfundt explained, walking the committee through the long journey that had brought them to this point. That journey began in August 2020 when council directed the formation of an ad hoc broadband advisory work group to examine policy considerations around municipal broadband. The advisory group, known as the BAW, had met for about two years, gathering extensive community input before presenting its final report to council in September 2022. Council adopted that report in May 2023, directing staff to hire consultants and perform the technical analysis that would ultimately inform the plan before them today. John Gaven, the city's fiber optic network engineer, outlined the guiding principles that shaped their approach: prioritize the city's operational needs, maintain financial responsibility given the lack of federal funding opportunities, and provide long-term resiliency and redundancy in the network. "The challenge is there is no federal funding that is going to be available to the city to build this network out," Gaven explained. "So we will have to self-fund this plan. So that was definitely one of our guiding principles." The plan focuses on improving the city's existing 71-route-mile fiber network, which currently supports city services and key partners including Bellingham Public Schools, Whatcom Transportation Authority, Whatcom Regional 911 Services, and the Whatcom Unified Emergency Operations Center. Rather than upgrading infrastructure wholesale, the plan called for reconfiguring existing assets to create network "rings" that would eliminate single points of failure. "Currently there is lots of what I'd call hub and spoke single point of failure fiber from, say, public works ops out to a facility," Gaven said. "If we take a cut or a break in that fiber, that facility goes down. This plan says we're going to now build rings so that if we take a cut along one route, the network can self-heal, we can route traffic, and that city location stays in operation." The need for such redundancy became clear when Gaven described the network's vulnerabilities. Much of the system was built "very cost consciously" during other projects, resulting in conduit that's less than six inches below the surface. "Two weeks ago we got hit on the guide. Fiber was dug up, one fiber cable was broken, one was damaged, and luckily the one that was carrying most of the traffic actually was undamaged in the hit. So we were very fortunate." The plan proposes five rings: a core network ring connecting key city facilities, rings serving the north and south portions of the city, a downtown ring, and a "downtown collapsed ring" for areas where geography makes true redundancy impossible. The total cost is estimated at just over $8 million, with Phase 1 funded through the street fund and subsequent phases requiring identification of new funding sources. Council Member Anderson pressed staff on whether the plan would address the shallow conduit problem, given that much of the $8 million investment focuses on upgrading vaults and handholes rather than replacing buried infrastructure. Gaven acknowledged that the shallow conduit would remain, but argued that the ring architecture would allow the network to function even when sections are cut. "The fix of the shallow conduit is we'll have rings and we can get hit and not take an outage," he said. However, staff confirmed they would take advantage of other construction projects to replace shallow conduit when the opportunity arose. Chair Stone and the committee acknowledged that while this plan represented a narrower focus than some in the community might have hoped for, it addressed the practical reality of providing reliable service for city operations within available resources. As Pfundt noted, the $150 million cost of providing fiber-to-the-home service throughout the city was simply not feasible. Council Member Anderson emphasized that she viewed this as "one slice of the pie" rather than the end of the city's broadband work, noting that the original broadband advisory work group had identified other components that hadn't been fully explored. The committee voted 3-0 to recommend adoption of the plan, with the understanding that it addressed the city's immediate infrastructure needs while leaving room for future exploration of broader broadband goals. ## The Challenge of Mandatory Composting The meeting's second major item proved more contentious, as the committee considered amendments to the city's waste management code to align with new state requirements and the city's climate action plan. The changes implement mandatory organics management — commonly called "Food Plus" — for all residential customers, effective January 1, 2025. Interim Public Works Co-Director Mike Olinger explained that the code changes address four main areas: aligning ordinances with day-to-day solid waste management, implementing mandatory organic management, transitioning to single-stream recycling, and improving rate transparency. The mandatory composting requirement stems from Washington State House Bill 1799, which requires diversion of organic materials from landfills through prevention, food rescue, and organics management facilities. While the state law doesn't take full effect until 2027, Bellingham has moved ahead with implementation as part of its climate action plan. Council Member Anderson raised immediate concerns about community feedback she'd been receiving. "We're hearing from community members who are now getting the extra totes and the extra bills," she said, noting that many residents weren't aware of the coming state requirements. Her particular concern focused on residents who already compost heavily or have large properties where the standard toter system doesn't make sense. "I do have concerns now that we're getting feedback from community members, like someone who has a small house and they have an ADU, and there's one person in one and one person in the other, and you know, do they need two totes? Or the people who compost heavily, having to have a tote when they really don't use it?" Sean O'Neill, the city's solid waste management manager, explained that while exemptions were theoretically possible, the state process would likely be extremely staff-intensive. "The conversations that we've had at the state level imply that the exemption process that they're going to put forward at the state level will come with a lot of hooks attached to it. So it will require us staff to go verify that they're composting, verify how they're composting, verifying how they're using that compost." Chair Stone acknowledged the tension between environmental goals and individual circumstances. As someone who had opted into food waste composting for years, she supported accelerating the program citywide, but she also recognized the concerns of residents already composting at home. "The reality is, the way that we would have to go through an exemption process is sending city staff to ensure on-site application of the compost, and that is something that would essentially require an additional utility tax increase to afford the city staff," Stone explained. "So an exemption process for some would lead to higher rates for all." The discussion revealed the complexity of implementing environmental policy at the household level. While the goal of diverting food waste from landfills to prevent methane emissions was widely supported, the practical realities of enforcement and equity proved challenging. O'Neill did outline some flexibility in the system. A pilot program allows duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes to apply for combined waste service waivers when appropriate. "We have received, I think we've had eight approvals for that situation and only two decline applications over the last month," he reported. The committee also discussed rate discounts for low-income seniors and disabled residents. The current 15% discount applies to all service levels and is available to both homeowners and renters, contrary to some earlier communications that had suggested it was limited to property owners. Council Member Cotton asked about the origins of the 15% discount level and whether it could be increased. Staff acknowledged they weren't sure where that number came from historically and suggested it could be revisited in the future. ## Improving Municipal Transparency A significant portion of the waste management discussion focused on how the city communicates rate changes to residents. The original ordinance language allowed notification either through direct mail or newspaper publication, following state law requirements. Council Member Anderson argued for more direct notification. "Nowadays, I mean, we don't have a lot of printed paper and people have to go online, and so it's not as readily evident that there's a change. I mean, I don't go looking for that. Twenty years ago, I used to read it because you had the paper in hand and you'd be bored and you'd get to that section." After discussion with City Attorney staff about state law requirements, the committee voted to amend the ordinance language to allow notification "via direct mail, billing statements, electronic notice, or by publishing the rate increase in a local newspaper." This change provides more options while still maintaining compliance with state requirements. Finance Director Andy Asbjornsen clarified current practices, noting that rate increases are already communicated through notes on utility bills and that SSC also notifies customers directly of rate changes. ## The Politics of Environmental Implementation Council Member Anderson's closing comments captured the political complexity of environmental policy implementation. She acknowledged the difficulty of making decisions that impose costs on residents while recognizing the imperative for local climate action. "Sometimes things that look really easy or straightforward are some of our most difficult decisions, because when you talk to community members about cost and impact, and especially in our state of economy currently, what might for some be like a small additional charge can actually be a large charge depending on someone's economic ability," she said. "But taking into consideration as much as I would like to have waivers, I know that the cost of the staffing of that gets passed on to others who might be marginally able to afford the increase, and now that additional increase puts them in this position... but also our commitment to the climate." Anderson emphasized the importance of local action given uncertainty at the federal level: "When I'm looking at changes on a federal level that are going to impact climate, I think it is just so much more important to dig our heels in and work on the legislation that we have control over, which is on the local level." The committee voted 3-0 to approve the amended waste management ordinance, but also directed staff to return with analysis of increasing the utility discount rate and expanding eligibility categories. ## Looking Forward Both items approved by the committee reflected Bellingham's approach to infrastructure challenges: pragmatic incrementalism guided by long-term goals. The fiber network plan acknowledged financial constraints while building resilience into critical city operations. The waste management changes implemented state requirements while trying to balance environmental goals with resident concerns about costs and individual circumstances. As the meeting concluded just after 2:00 PM, the committee had advanced two significant infrastructure initiatives that would shape city operations and resident services for years to come. The evening's full council meeting would provide the final forum for these recommendations, but the afternoon's work had demonstrated both the complexity of municipal governance and the ongoing challenge of balancing competing interests in pursuit of broader community goals. The meeting's tone throughout was respectful and collaborative, even when addressing difficult topics. Staff clearly understood their role in providing options and analysis, while council members wrestled with policy implications and community feedback. The result was the kind of deliberative process that, while sometimes messy, reflects the reality of democratic governance on issues that affect residents' daily lives.