Bridging the Digital Divide in LA County - Episode 608 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Eric Sasaki (00:07):
You have to start somewhere. You have to start with a vision. You have to be trying to solve a problem that is worthy of public investment. And especially since it's limited and we have many challenges in government, how do we look at creative ways in order to start solving the problem?

Christopher Mitchell (00:26):
Welcome to another episode of the Community [00:00:30] Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self Alliance, and today I'm speaking with Eric Sasaki, who is the Manager of Major Programs for the Internal Services Department at the County of Los Angeles. Welcome to the show, Eric.

Eric Sasaki (00:47):
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (00:48):
I am thrilled to be talking to you. I've been tracking loosely what the county has been doing, frankly, southern California. We think of Southern California in [00:01:00] my office as being really amazing, but it is the county of Los Angeles, a lot of leadership there, some good leadership from the city of Los Angeles, a lot of the communities in that area. And so we've been sort of waiting until we got further down the line to bother you all with interviews. But because you are taking real action to try to resolve Internet access concerns, we wanted to really jump in on that and focus on that. Los Angeles has 10 million [00:01:30] people. I'll set the stage there. If you want to give us a sense of the scope of the challenge that you're working on, that would be wonderful.

Eric Sasaki (01:39):
You can indulge me a little bit. We can do a little bit of storytelling in terms of how we got to where we are. And along the way I think you'll kind of understand and all the listeners will understand what some of the challenges are here in the most populous county in the United States. And this really goes back decades in terms of [00:02:00] processes and policies and then obviously the commercial sector followed along in terms of investments that really are the equivalent of redlining in the digital era. And so because of those decisions and the lack of investment, you see all sorts of infrastructure in a lot of areas of Los Angeles County that have never had the investment. They don't have the aesthetics, the training, the resources, [00:02:30] the options that many of our other communities within the county and in the nation have. And this was obviously compounded by the pandemic and it really put, as it did across the country, put into the spotlight, the lack of sufficient broadband access as well as all the other digital equity elements including training and devices that are simply lacking in a lot of areas around that time.

(02:59):
We were looking [00:03:00] for solutions specifically for when we were on lockdown and we were looking for ways to provide the distance learning capability for households that simply did not have Internet access. And so from the images we saw about children in a Taco Bell parking lot, I think that most of us have seen to similar situations here in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County. [00:03:30] The question was what do we do about it? So during the time we were looking at options, I remember working with our county library system to figure out how we could put antennas potentially on the rooftops of our county libraries. And they weren't able to do that at the time because of restrictions on E-Rate, but they were able to obviously put Wi-Fi in parking lots. So it was a start, but then that got us thinking what could we do, especially with [00:04:00] the recovery funding that came out, started out with the CARES Act and then went into the American Rescue Plan Act. How can we make a big difference and impact the lives of all of these households by getting them quality, affordable Internet? And again, it goes back to that discussion we had about it's a longstanding result of practices and inequities that have gotten us here and that it's not going [00:04:30] to resolve itself by itself.

Christopher Mitchell (04:32):
I want to make sure that people have an appreciation that when we're talking about the county of Los Angeles, 10 million people also, you're talking about people that have been left behind in rural areas, urban areas and suburban areas. You got everything.

Eric Sasaki (04:45):
That's absolutely right. That's a misconception that Los Angeles is fully urbanized. We have rural areas, we have suburban areas, and we have densely populated urban areas. And when we did our research and mapping, you see [00:05:00] communities all across the county in all of those categories that are experiencing the digital divide. And there are many different ways that people have measured what or tried to quantify what the digital divide is for the county. We are focusing on areas that show 20% or more of the households that lack an Internet subscription. It's a starting point and it's a good indicator that when you look at it against demographics, it attracts very closely with household income, which also attracts very [00:05:30] closely to our minority communities. So we know that's a place to start looking for the solution, the problem. But I think it's great that you pointed out that fact because I think there are a lot of misconceptions that LA has plenty of broadband and nobody is without, and that's simply not the case.

(05:49):
And the other piece of it is the issue of quality speeds and affordability are also really key to that because you can have a provider that could provide [00:06:00] you service at whatever cost that they charge. And from a lot of perspectives, you might think that then they don't have an access issue. Well, technically they may not have an access issue, but it may not be affordable. Or they may have something that might be affordable that they subscribe to that drops out and is unreliable or that you can't do anything in our modern world like telemedicine or telehealth, tele learning that requires [00:06:30] not only good download bandwidth, but also upload bandwidth.

Christopher Mitchell (06:34):
The county, and I'm not sure if it was actually you at the point, but underwent a process in which you identified specific neighborhoods and locations in different areas in which you wanted to focus efforts initially. Can you tell us a little bit about how that went?

Eric Sasaki (06:51):
Back in 2021, our board of supervisors really was trying to figure out what investments, what actions could the county take? [00:07:00] Because the county serves a safety net social services function that's different from cities and other municipalities in that we really focus on those who have no other options and who are left behind. And so the way that we kind of look at it is it's similar to healthcare. You could have a private doctor, you could be in an HMO or have health insurance, or you may not have anything. And for a long time, the county's been known and counties across [00:07:30] the country have been known to be that safety net, to be the organization that helps make sure no one's left behind. So we have the similar concept of what could be done around the digital divide and digital equity. So our board of supervisors, they have been extremely supportive of efforts around digital equity.

(07:51):
And they passed a motion that asked our department, which is the internal services department, which a lot of folks are a little bit puzzled by, [00:08:00] I'll say A lot of folks within the county are puzzled by, asked us to look into options. And a lot of that had to do with we are the general services agency for the county. We have a lot of experience in contracting information technology and a lot of other services. And so they asked us, report back to us, take a look at what the situation is and what some of the possibilities are. And one of the possibilities we came back was talking about at [00:08:30] that time what we were calling a community wireless network option, which is to kind of going back to the discussion we had about putting antennas on top of our libraries, could we do something similar in a public-private partnership approach to create what is essentially one of the forms of community broadband, which is it's introducing a different model to provide Internet service [00:09:00] for those who have been left behind or who have no options.

(09:04):
And so the board took that report that we came back with, and we had proposed a pilot of 12,500 households, a single project, 12,500 households that would likely be based on CBRS, which is one of the promising community-based, unlicensed, fixed wireless solutions that's available. [00:09:30] And they said, okay, go do it. And they provided funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, and then we started the actual logistics of how as a government agency would we go about that, how would we frame it? How would we solicit for it? Because if we're using federal or state grant funding, we would have to have that be competitively awarded to the partner that would help us out. And it's really grown from there. What we started out at 12,500 households [00:10:00] at the current agreements, we have more than 50,000 households. And the area in which that we're doing our first two projects that we've announced encompasses about 275,000 households.

(10:15):
So that's a long way from 12,500 households. But that's how we got started. And that's really what my message is, is that you have to start somewhere. You have to start with a vision. You have to be trying to solve a problem that is worthy [00:10:30] of public investment. And especially since it's limited and we have many challenges in government, how do we look at creative ways in order to start solving the problem? And our board really has called this an effort to accelerate digital equity. This is not the end game, this is not the only program. This is not the only option, but it is a way for us to start addressing and getting to a more equitable state with broadband [00:11:00] now in a relatively short amount of time, not 10 years to do a fiber build out, not using billions of dollars, it's how do we find using existing resources options to provide affordable broadband.

Christopher Mitchell (11:15):
So you ended up going through an RFP process, I think, and this is where I'm a little bit muddled, but you had a pilot project and now you've been through, I think the RFP for multiple different projects based on what you learned from [00:11:30] the first project. And I'm just curious if you can give us a sense of how that's going, where you are with those various projects.

Eric Sasaki (11:37):
In trying to address how we were going to solicit for this, we actually started out with a request for comments, which is asking the marketplace, both fiber, Internet service providers, the incumbent telecom carriers, what are some of the models that they would be able to propose? What are some of the things that [00:12:00] would make it attractive to partner with the county? What are some of the structures financially and operationally that would work for them? And we took that information and then we folded it into a process. It's a mouthful. It's a request for statement of qualifications. And that's a way for us to ask the private sector to present their qualifications based on what our requirements are. How are you [00:12:30] a, do you have experience being an Internet service provider? Do you have the ability and the technology to deliver the service at the price point and at the multifaceted requirements that we have?

(12:43):
And then based on that, they present basically what's kind of an application that is then formally reviewed by the county, and then if they want to proceed, they would sign a master agreement with the county. And what that does is that puts them [00:13:00] as a qualified proposer on a bench as we have in construction contracts where when we have an opportunity, like a different neighborhood, a different project, only those who have already been pre-qualified are able to bid on the resulting solicitations. So it's similar, it's kind of a two stage RFP. So instead of going to the market saying anybody can propose for this project, and then potentially we would have dozens or more proposals [00:13:30] to try to resolve by doing the qualification process upfront. There's, at this point in time, we have 11 pre-qualified companies that have gone through that process. So in these solicitations, we know that we'll have it at most 11 proposals, and we have already vetted the financial insurance, all of the acceptance of the county's terms and conditions.

(13:54):
So really when we get to the work order solicitation phase, when we're actually talking about doing work [00:14:00] in these areas, it really streamlines the process because then we don't have to kind of independently verify capability and understanding of what we're trying to do. We already have, we've checked references, we've already seen that. We ask them in the qualification stage to we present some neighborhoods and say, here's some of the characteristics of the neighborhood. Part of the qualification process is they would propose in kind of a mini response [00:14:30] what technology they would use, what sort of equipment, how it would be designed, and then how would they operate it. And so that gives us a lot of insight as we go through that process about what that proposer is capable of. And then we do the work order solicitations. We've done three work order solicitations for four very large neighborhoods.

(14:52):
And I put air quotes around neighborhoods because in these cases in Los Angeles and the region, neighborhoods [00:15:00] are quite large, in a lot of cases, they would be as big as some small cities. So we solicit for different neighborhoods, we receive the proposals. Those are formally evaluated by an evaluation committee of subject matter experts, but just like an RFP would be. And then there's an award process out of that. We negotiate the final contracts and then we move forward. And we've done that process. We've gotten all [00:15:30] the way through the award stage to a company called Welink Communications for two large areas in East Los Angeles and South Los Angeles. And again, between the two areas, there are about 275,000 households and many, many businesses, many schools and other community anchor institutions within that. So that just is to give you a sense of the scale, but then that process could work for a small set of blocks, like [00:16:00] let's say we had a particular area like housing projects that we needed to cover. That process could be very small and it can be very large. And we've made it so that it's flexible for both,

Christopher Mitchell (16:13):
For people who might be listening and thinking, is this a show about government process or is it about building broadband networks? I think it's important to get a sense of this because there's one larger city that I know of where my understanding is they had gone to [00:16:30] a process, they went to the RFP, they put the RFP out on the street and nobody bid on it in part because they had not resolved a couple of things in another city. They had just not gotten through the process of getting actual buy-in from other departments and just actually working through the process of being able to then get to a contracting phase because different cities do things differently. And so I think it's really interesting to see how you've done it and the fact that it seems like the process [00:17:00] you have here is one where a new entity could come in for future solicitations, but also you kind of know what to expect from the existing ones.

(17:08):
And so like you said, if you have a superblock with an area where you might want to do something or you have an entire city where they're motivated, I suppose that you have those tools you to go through again at this point, and people know what the approach is. And for those of us that want to see cities and counties being more involved in this, [00:17:30] these are the things we have to figure out. I know that HRNA works with some entities in Los Angeles. Have they helped you out as you've been going through this? Okay, so I was hoping so otherwise it would be a free ad for no reason. So HRNA is a company that does consulting on this, and so then you were able to get some from them as you were designing this process, I'm guessing.

Eric Sasaki (17:53):
Yeah, definitely. And I think it's important to understand that because we don't do this as one of our [00:18:00] historic services within the county, it's not like that we are doing social services or public works or healthcare where we have hundreds or thousands of employees that are arrayed towards this. Really, this is being done with existing staff and we don't, although we have a lot of expertise in contracting and even elements of broadband in a government sense of providing network services [00:18:30] to our more than, I'm not even sure what the last count was. I think it's like 2000 buildings within the county government in this really large county that we are not resourced to do that, and we don't have experience on the residential side, which is really important. So it was really important for us to find a consultant that understood the Internet service provider space.

(18:56):
They understood how to what was involved with [00:19:00] delivering that service, but also had a very strong commitment to equity and understood the issues around this lack of digital equity and the needs to inject things such as multilingual customer support and marketing. It was one of the keytones that we had in the county. We have, I believe right now it's 14 threshold languages for which from a language access point, the county services aim to make sure that we're communicating [00:19:30] in all those languages. So there's a requirement in these contracts to make sure that in some form, these providers that we sign contracts with to do these projects will provide that level of customer support, whether that's in the case of customer service, it doesn't make sense to staff agents in 14 languages, but then there's an opportunity for them to use language line live translation types of services in order to provide that accessibility.

(19:58):
So no one has to feel like they can't [00:20:00] call because they're not comfortable speaking in English. Other things that our consultant helped us talk about is what does it look like for pricing guarantees and unlimited bandwidth and not playing some of the balloon games that I like to kind of reference, which is sometimes things start out at one price and then over time they gradually raise up and then pretty soon you're looking up in terms of what your bill looks like. And I think for the [00:20:30] communities that we're serving, that ends up being something that is, it's not something that they can tolerate. It's simply they cannot afford to do that and they make choices to go without Internet or to do things that are suboptimal. I think a lot of folks have smartphones these days. That's what they prioritize because it has value to them, but then only one person usually has access to that device.

(20:54):
It's quite expensive to have multiple lines and those sort of things. So we really look at ways to [00:21:00] try to find home Internet access because we believe that it's really important. It's especially important in Los Angeles. We have a lot of generational households that really are in the same roof, lots of devices using the Internet concurrently that a lot of folks, if they're using it, like when they get home from work, when recreation, that's different than what might be more practical for the entire household. We look at [00:21:30] school aged children that may get until very recently now that the funding's starting to run out on that used to get a hotspot, a Wi-Fi hotspot to take home during the school year and a device to take home during the school year once they're out of school or once they've graduated, that all stops, and then there's an affordability issue around that.

(21:48):
So all of those things are kind of reasons why we kind of coalesced to this approach. The other thing I want to really touch on briefly, as you mentioned it is this whole issue [00:22:00] of coordination between governments. So yeah, it is a little bit of a government 1 0 1 type of course, but I think it's really important to understand that in our case, we're the county government, so we're an overlay. We provide certain services, whereas the cities and the municipalities provide other services and we coordinate in that level. Broadband is pretty interesting because it depends on your perspective in terms of who, [00:22:30] if it was a government delivered service, who would be responsible for delivering that service. And then each municipality has usually its own permitting requirements, its own restrictions, planning funding perspective in terms of whether they have the resources to operate something as a utility or not.

(22:49):
And so one of the things that also we took into consideration was not just where the Internet wasn't or where the Internet wasn't great or where the Internet wasn't being adopted. [00:23:00] It was also where were the city boundaries. And so for example, in the case of the first two projects that we did, which are East LA and South la, there is only one city that is involved. There's the city of Los Angeles that we're partnered with, and there's county unincorporated areas which are not incorporated into a city that the county is responsible for. So in those cases, there are two entities. In an ideal world, we would be able to completely [00:23:30] coordinate and it'd be seamless and everything would be great. But if you can imagine some of the difficulties we might have, even just with an organization as large as the city of Los Angeles, what happens when you have five cities?

(23:44):
So we're looking at a project right now in Southeast Los Angeles, which has more than five cities, but five cities that we're partnering with to execute a project, we need all of them to be together. The way that we've done that to coordinate that is we've actually [00:24:00] executed MOUs memorandums of understanding with those municipalities. And it's a very simple MOUI think it's only a few pages, but it states what the principle is that we will share information as an example, we will try to coordinate our investments so that we're not building in the same area. We agree that we will avoid pursuing grants, the same grant with different applications. We're going to try to coordinate that, and then [00:24:30] we're going to make sure that our discussions are confidential so that they're open and we can share ideas. And then I think the last thing is that to the extent comfortable, these cities and the county have agreed that we will share or make available public assets, and that's another key portion of what we're doing to make it less costly for any of the service providers to situate their equipment.

(24:56):
So I mentioned antennas on libraries, [00:25:00] imagine fiber landing at a school potentially by a provider or by middle mile technology, and then dropping off from there versus a provider having to build out a HUD as an example to where they put their equipment. So there's the prospect that they can save some additional funding, and then this is something that we as government will bring to the table. So that's another element of these agreements and the coordination and those agreements typically [00:25:30] need to be approved at an executive level or by the city council. So we've done lots of presentations to local city councils to make sure they understand our strategy. And then also in these cases of these first few projects, we were able to use ARPA funding, which is the American Rescue Plan Act funding that was allocated to the county. And so that is not an investment that we're asking them to contribute to.

(25:56):
So it's kind of a different model, and it really is [00:26:00] a product of the time. And working through some things, I think is the best way to put it is we started out not knowing really anything about how we would do this to then getting some traction in some areas. We get some political agreement, we get some funding, we look to our strength, which is in contracting as an example, and then we find a way that we can marry all those together. And I have no doubt that we have our first two big projects that are already underway. [00:26:30] I have no doubt future projects will be informed by what we're doing right now and any strengths or weaknesses, we can definitely adjust our approach to doing that.

Christopher Mitchell (26:40):
So I think we've gotten a sense of why they put this in the major projects office, major programs office. Yeah. I'm curious then if you can share a little bit about maybe one of the Welink projects. I suspect they might be a little different, but if Welink had got money from the CPUC and the awards that will soon be announced, [00:27:00] the state of California would be paying for everything. I presume that the county of Los Angeles is not paying for everything. So just give us a sense of how it breaks down what the county is offering and what welink will have to bring to the table.

Eric Sasaki (27:13):
I'll be very brief on the county side of it because we're bringing funding, which is in this case, ARPA funding. And we're also bringing our perspective in terms of what we and the community need to see out of these contracts. So [00:27:30] we've developed some pretty stringent requirements. Pricing plans have to be fixed. They have to be $30 a month or less for the low cost plan, which was going to be coordinated with ACP, which is now run out of funding. But hopefully that might change in the future. So it may be less than $30 a month at a minimum. So in the case of wheeling, they're offering their low cost plan starting at $25 a month, and that's $25 a month for [00:28:00] 500 megabits per second, both upload and download. And that's starting and meaning. That doesn't mean that the price goes up over time. What it means is there's the option for higher tiers. If households need additional speed, that for another $10, it's a gigabit speed symmetrical, and then for another $10 or $20 more, so $45 a month would be two gigabit speeds. So we believe that that is an unbelievable offer, [00:28:30] especially at scale.

Christopher Mitchell (28:32):
Right? Quite remarkable.

Eric Sasaki (28:34):
So that's something that we're very excited about. I think everybody I've talked to said I'd love to have that service. I'd love to have that service now in my house. And I'm the same. I have fortunate to have fiber in my neighborhood and it's been extraordinarily reliable, but it is expensive. So there's lots of elements to that. The other thing about Welink is that they are a new entrance to this particular market. They do have a project [00:29:00] that they executed with private funding. It's actually the I am Angel Foundation with the artist will. I am actually grew up in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. And so he came back and helped get a project that we link actually is delivering gigabit service, two gigabit service to households for $30 a month. So they're already doing that. So they're expanding this and their model has proven in that area, and they'll be continu to expand [00:29:30] in these areas.

(29:31):
Their responsibility is to execute. They're responsible for design, installation, operations, customer service, cybersecurity, multilingual, customer service, outreach and marketing. Also multiple languages, partnering with community-based organizations in order to do that. And then obviously meeting their requirements, including reporting so that we can report to the folks that gave us the money to actually do these projects. In this case, it's going to be the federal government to make [00:30:00] sure that we're reporting out on that. So they're doing the heavy lifting. We did a lot of the heavy lifting in our part to get the partnerships established, to get the solicitations going and executed and doing the evaluations of that. And now they, as the county's contractor will be the ones that are actually executing on this. And that's really our model is that we don't have the resources to operate [00:30:30] a broadband network, do customer service and all those sort of things.

(30:34):
But we know that these companies that do Internet service providing for a living, have marketing, they have billing, they have customer service, they have strong operations, they have the trucks to roll out to residents to do the installations and troubleshooting. So really that's why we said that a public private partnership is really important. And I want to emphasize that it's probably in a perfect world, we would [00:31:00] potentially like to explore other options. I think I'm of the opinion that it makes sense that broadband be treated as a utility, as an essential utility, and therefore there could be different ownership and operational models and things around that. We're not there right now, even in California. We're not there right now to do something like that. So certainly we don't have the money, we don't have the laws, the collective will [00:31:30] to do something at that scale and certainly not the money to do it.

(31:34):
So the short version of that is we will look to whatever models that are out there right now that we have the funding for that we can advocate for additional funding for, and that we can do this what we call the accelerating digital equity, which is folks need help now. They don't need help in five or 10 years or when we pass laws or get big bills through Congress or through [00:32:00] the State House to give the resources that are needed. They need help now. And even $40 a month discount can make a huge difference in many of these families lives making choices right now. And they're choosing not to have Internet, which is terrible. But it's also recurring this historic disinvestment that if people don't adopt the Internet, then providers will not put investments, [00:32:30] new providers will not enter the marketplace. And then the types of jobs and training and opportunities that are available for those families are less by default than others that can't afford high quality fast broadband. So we're really looking at this as a way to jumpstart that process.

Christopher Mitchell (32:51):
Is the county providing all of the capital costs then and owning all of the network, or is it mixed?

Eric Sasaki (32:57):
Yeah, it's mixed. So [00:33:00] the other thing about the solicitations is we not only were agnostic, meaning we didn't say it had to be wireless or it had to be fiber optic or wired in any sort. We basically said here that the pricing points here are the requirements for things like cybersecurity or capping pricing increases and things like that. And it was up to the proposers to say, this is the technology we're going to use and this is what financial investment [00:33:30] we're requesting from the county, and that is different from every proposer. And we also asked whether the proposers would have the county being the owner of that infrastructure or not, or whether there was the opportunity for a buyout over time if we chose to exercise that. And there were different responses, those were all factored into the evaluation. So the specific details in terms of the investment is not something that I can talk about, but [00:34:00] relative to the question, it's no, it's not going to be county owned and we're not paying for a hundred percent of the investment, which is why it's really important for us to make sure that this is a sustainable model because not only are the households that are receiving the low cost plan, counting on the fact that they can sustain operations, but we want them to grow.

(34:22):
We want them and other providers to see that there's the possibility for this, what some would consider to be [00:34:30] not an ideal customer base where they can have a lot of different options and can count on revenue, that there's that possibility. We also fully expect that the marketplace will obviously respond to this. And so we have incumbent providers who by the way, are also part of our bench. They've also pre-qualified and in some cases are proposed for some of our solicitations that I am sure that they will react to that. And [00:35:00] everybody wins, I think from that discussion because competition will result in, we believe lower cost and higher quality services for our residents, and it gives people options. The thing about our community broadband network approach is it's not a county service. We're not paying for it. We're not forcing people to use it.

(35:22):
We're not saying that you can't use whatever service you choose to or no service at all. It gives another option in areas where [00:35:30] there aren't a lot of options. So we think that that's a good approach. We know that there are other approaches that are looking more towards municipal or community ownership. We are fine with that approach as well. We are supportive of, there's an effort up in the Antelope Valley, which is the northern part of Los Angeles County, which is also, I think would be considered rural because there's not a high population density and not a lot of infrastructure, and we are supportive of their effort [00:36:00] to develop a community cooperative approach to deliver fiber service in that area. The problem is so huge that every little bit that will contribute to that is worthy, and we want to try to support. So that's kind of our approach is that there's not a one size fits all approach, and we're not suggesting that any particular provider or any particular approach that we've done is necessarily the right approach. It was the right approach for [00:36:30] the county at this time with all the circumstances, and it was based on a competitive process, which is we believe is the best way to use the public's money, is really to try to find a way to find the best value for the investment, to really benefit the most number of people.

Christopher Mitchell (36:50):
Well, we could name more than one West Coast city that decided to try to look at doing a big splash and building everywhere all at once and [00:37:00] ended up doing nothing. And I've long said that. I think it makes more sense in these very large cities, metro regions to be focused on specific issues, learn lessons, and build from there. So I celebrate what you're doing and I'm looking forward to checking in to see how it's going in the future. But thank you so much for your time today and explaining all that to us.

Eric Sasaki (37:22):
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Ry Marcattilio (37:24):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash [00:37:30] broadbandbits. Email [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at Community nets. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter. The handle is at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcast from ILSR, including building Local Power, local energy rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our [00:38:00] initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative Commons.