Decorah's Telecommunications Utility Board is told the feasibility study it had done might not have been accurate

On November 1st of 2015 a referendum asking whether the City of Decorah should be given the power to establish a municipally-owned telecommunications utility (including data, video, voice and all other forms of telecommunications) passed with 1,289 "yes" votes to 95 "no" votes--93 percent approval.

The Decorah Telecommunications Utility Board began its work after the election, but ran into trouble when the consultant it hired--Uptown Services--concluded Decorah was too small a town to support a municipal telecom utility.  That recommendation came despite a telephone survey of 400 city residents which concluded that 72 percent of the public were "definitely" or "very likely" to become customers.

That feasibility study came under fire from several sources, including a withering critique from Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a non-profit organization that has been deeply involved in promoting community broadband (https://ilsr.org/lessons-learned-not-feasible-could-reflect-consultant-not-your-community-network/).  Decorah Telecommunications Board members also expressed some skepticism about the Uptown study.

Now those critiques have been joined by another voice.  The City of Decorah's bonding consultant, Michael Maloney of D.A. Davidson & Co., has worked with the city since 2012.  Maloney worked as a telecommunications consultant before switching over to working in public finance, where he has overseen 250 municipal bond issues that had a combined total of $1.6 billion.

In a presentation to the TUB in Decorah this week, Maloney criticized Uptown's prediction that only 30 percent of Decorah's residents would get Internet service from a municipal utility.  "I don't agree with their findings," he stated flatly.  Customers, said Maloney, "are going to pick the highest quality service," and fiber optic service by the city would meet that definition.

Maloney also praised the work of the Telecommunications Utility Board, saying, "You are a lot farther along than a lot of other communities." 

Board members will now decide whether they want to ignore Uptown's feasibility study and work with Maloney to get the money the city would need to create a telecommunications utility.

(Note: decorahnews.com's Paul Scott, who wrote this story, is a member of the citizens group "Decorah Fast Fiber," which got the municipal telecommunications utility proposal on the November 2015 ballot and continues to promote such service in Decorah)