Editorial City learns a lesson in Internet protocol Threat to cut off service defused but not before disgruntled resident creates a scramble at City Hall
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n what was clearly a black eye for one of Silicon Valley’s most high-tech cities, Palo Alto found out last week that a little-known Internet provider planned to cut off the free service it had given the city for 17 years due to an unrelated spat with one of the nonprofit’s volunteers. Although it appeared this week that saner heads prevailed and the 14-day termination deadline will be pushed back, the city was blindsided when Stephen Stuart, one of the founders of the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), announced March 29 that he was going to pull the plug on Internet service to City Hall and several other municipal buildings after the city approved a cell tower he opposes at St. Albert the Great church on Channing Avenue, in the Crescent Park neighborhood. An obviously relieved City Manager James Keene announced Monday that the city had reached an agreement with the ISC to keep the Internet up at City Hall until either a new agreement can be reached or the city finds a new provider. The threat to end service by April 14 was not mentioned in the press release issued by the city. Keene’s statement said the city will have a reasonable amount of time to make a transition if it is decided to part ways with the consortium, which has promised to provide some technical assistance if needed. The two sides will meet soon to work out the details, Keene said in the press release. When playing back the way this incident unfolded there are plenty of missteps to consider. For example, it appears that over the years the city may have simply lost track of the fact that it had no signed contract with the consortium to provide Internet service for City Hall and other city buildings. This is a shortcoming that should have been discovered long ago by the city’s information technology department, which apparently did not realize that the service could be shut down at any time. Such a contract could have protected the city from the threat to cut off service by Stephen Stuart, who built the original server and arranged the deal to provide free Internet service to the city back in 1994. Stuart’s fit of pique and mean-spirited threat to end the service came after the city’s planning department tentatively approved a permit for a 50-foot cell tower on St. Albert’s church at 1095 Channing, across the street from his home. It also showed an inability to understand the city’s limitations when it considers applications to install cell-phone equipment, and at the time, left no room for negotiations. Stuart claims that the planning department chose to ignore city laws when it approved the tower, is misreading the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and is ignoring ordinances it has in place that would protect residents. He also contends that a tower would lower property values in the neighborhood. “This is not a threat. This is not a punishment. This is the consequence of the city not enforcing its laws,” Stuart said in his letter to the city, adding that the failure “has vaporized 17 years of good will in one thoughtless act.” Besides threatening to cut off service to City Hall, Stuart said that service to the Arts Center “...will be physically disconnected.” In an attempt to explain the city’s position, Keene said the Planning Commission approval was just the first step in a process that sends the cell-tower application to the Architectural Review Board this week and to the Planning Commission, which plans to hold a public hearing on the tower May 4. In the long run, it is fortunate that this brouhaha brought the city’s Internet connection up for public scrutiny. The lack of a formal agreement or service guarantee can now be remedied, and we hope the city will find an Internet provider that will not be swayed to terminate service by the whim of a volunteer worker, who in this case was highly upset by his perception that the city was not listening to residents who opposed the cell tower on his street. In a March 23 editorial, we suggested that the city find another way to approve cell-tower requests. Rather than forcing residents and wireless carriers into needlessly confrontational hearings, the city should write a new ordinance that would not violate federal telecommunications regulations but simply create a framework for industry and the public to cooperatively decide where new towers are needed. A model ordinance exists in Richmond, which was patterned after similar measures in the East Bay cities of Berkeley, Albany and Orinda. They are proof that cities can stop the often contentious, and needless, debates about cell-phone towers that can, as it did last week in Palo Alto, lead to clearly counter-productive controversy. Page 10ÊUÊ «À Ên]ÊÓ䣣ÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii Þ
Spectrum Editorials, letters and opinions
Ban cell phones? Editor, I have read your readers’ concerns about radiation from cell towers being harmful to their health. To relieve their fears I propose that the Palo Alto City Council pass an ordinance banning the use of cell phones within the city limits. This ordinance would also prohibit the sale of cell phones and require all cell phone towers be removed. This action would protect their health and especially that of their most vulnerable children by forbidding the use of cell phones, which are usually placed next to the brain. And what about the radiation from Wi-Fi and other wireless networks? John Hyde Center Drive Palo Alto
College costs Editor, As high school seniors are receiving their “thick” acceptance letters for admission to private colleges and universities, dismay over higher-education tuitions escalates. Why are tuitions so high and why do they increase at rates well above inflation? Leaving aside specialty schools and church-related universities, consider four California “privates” and their 2010-11 tuitions: Stanford ($38,700), University of Southern California ($40,384), Pomona College ($38,087) and Occidental College ($39,870). All top-tier institutions, and all with nearly identical tuitions. Why? Are their costs of education all the same? Not likely, as two have very luxurious endowment-perstudent (Stanford, Pomona) and two have substantially lesser endowment-per-student. Earnings on the endowments augment the revenue from tuition, but to very different extents. If Stanford and Pomona are so well endowed, why do they need to charge such high tuitions? They may not need to, but they can — that is, the market allows them to do so. And so, why shouldn’t they? Their students and faculty will be the beneficiaries of this added revenue: more recreation amenities, lighter “teaching loads,” richer financial aid packages, close-in parking. Simple economics: demand and supply tell the story. Note the increase in numbers of applications at these institutions. Stanford, Pomona and most other colleges increase tuition each year, yet this year alone applications grew 10 percent at Pomona and 7 percent at Stanford. The “buyers” of higher education — applicants and their families — seem not to balk at these high tuitions. Yes, many get financial-aid help in varying amounts from these institutions, but others pay full price. The colleges and universities play Robin Hood.
Will tuition rates at prestigious colleges and universities continue to escalate in the years ahead? You can count on it, so long as “demand” continues to out-run “supply” by a wide margin. Top-tier institutions set prices, publish them widely, and less well-endowed and less prestigious places follow suit. Henry E. Riggs Peter Coutts Circle Stanford
Seismic retrofits Editor, While the public’s attention is on earthquakes, we should consider what we should do to prepare for the next big quake. It will probably come from the Hayward Fault, which for thousands of years has reliably produced a major earthquake around every 140 years and is now three years overdue. The USGS says it could hammer us the way the 1989 Loma Prieta quake hammered downtown Santa Cruz. And the biggest damage here will probably happen in older apartment and condo complexes built over garages (called soft-story buildings). They can be retrofitted to current
standards for around $9,000 per unit. But whenever homeowners’ associations try to do this, they’re invariably opposed by a few suspicious, shortsighted homeowners who claim the retrofit is just a scheme to defraud them — that the board of directors is getting kickbacks from the engineering firm — that it’s unnecessary because the Loma Prieta quake in Santa Cruz didn’t level us here — anything to avoid spending anything for any purpose. And if they can’t browbeat the board of directors, they turn to lawsuits (usually thrown out), then try to get on the board. Few homeowners care who’s on their board, but look what just happened in Japan. They didn’t prepare for the worst, with tragic results. Condo owners need to make sure their board isn’t captured by people who reflexively oppose infrastructure investment and who use misleading candidate statements to conceal their penny-wise, pound-foolish goals. Lee The San Antonio Road Palo Alto
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