Title
RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING APPROVING THE DIGITAL ACCESS MASTER PLAN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DIG-ONCE POLICY FOR THE CITY OF DULUTH.
Body
CITY PROPOSAL:
WHEREAS, the city council of the City of Duluth, Minnesota ("city council") has
investigated and determined that expanded broadband access via a fiber optic network in the City of Duluth, Minnesota ("City") is a fundamental aspect of the infrastructure required to educate students, create jobs, promote public safety, improve citizens' standards of living and deliver essential services such as health care; and
WHEREAS, requiring conduit to be installed as part of public improvements projects or
developments in order to accommodate anticipated future demand for access to fiber infrastructure and services will assist the City in responsibly managing such facilities and areas by reducing or eliminating the need for excavation within public streets and rights-of-way when fiber service providers seek to locate underground facilities within such streets and public property, easements and rights-of-way in the future; reducing or eliminating the traffic disruption that occurs whenever excavation occurs within or around these areas; and reducing or eliminating the loss of pavement integrity and diminishment of the useful life of pavement that occurs whenever paved or improved streets and rights-of-way are cut and excavated; and
WHEREAS, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the largest cost
element for deploying broadband is burying fiber optic cables and conduit underground and the
Federal and the Federal Highway Administration has indicated that up to thirty percent of the cost of deploying broadband is when the work requires significant excavation of the roadway; and
WHEREAS, according to a study by the GAO (Government Accountability Office), Dig-Once policies can reduce the cost of deploying fiber under federal highways in urban areas by 25-33 percent, and by roughly 16 percent in rural ar...
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