While some cities fantasize about municipal internet, Tacoma has squandered Click Network
Tacoma, in the blunt assessment of former mayor Bill Baarsma, has a long history of “getting played.”
“It’s almost like we’re chumps,” he says.
Baarsma and I spoke by phone this week. He was vacationing in Hawaii, but for some reason he picked up the phone. I called about the potential sale of Rainier Connect, the local phone, TV and internet provider, to Palisade Infrastructure, a firm with ties to Australia and New Zealand.
More specifically, I called because the recently announced deal, for an undisclosed sum, once again puts the future of Tacoma’s Click Network in the spotlight. Baarsma played a role in creating the Click Network roughly 30 years ago, during his time on the City Council.
As The News Tribune’s Debbie Cockrell reported, the proposed deal would allow Palisade to slide into Rainier Connect’s existing lease contract with the city of Tacoma, pending approval from the city and Tacoma Public Utilities, among others. The global entity could then access the city’s municipally owned Click Network, just as Rainier Connect currently does, to sell cable and internet service to local consumers.
That prospect, in Baarsma’s mind, would represent the massive squandering of an asset Tacoma had the foresight (and good luck) to invest in and build way before municipal internet was cool.
Displaying his typically historical flourishes, Baarsma compared it to things like the original Narrows Bridge and the Tacoma Hotel, one-of-a-kind chances that we botched and let slip through our fingers.
A bit dramatic? Sure. But the former mayor does have a point: Over the last several years, at a time when other cities would kill for what Tacoma already has — the infrastructure to offer internet service to residents as a public utility — we’ve seemed dead set on fumbling it away.
“We had the largest municipally owned telecommunication system in North America when the Click Network was established,” Baarsma said. “There have been a lot of these stories over the years, of Tacoma missing out. It’s frustrating. I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished and hopeful that we can achieve in other areas, but gosh, it’s tough to take.”
Let’s back up for a moment. As readers may recall, in early 2019 the Tacoma City Council voted to pursue a public-private partnership with Rainier Connect, eventually resulting in a 20-year pact allowing the local provider to operate its Click municipal cable and internet service. It was a big to-do with lots of public process. But beyond all the technical details, the cost-benefit analyses and the potential legal ramifications (more on that in a moment), the question the city was grappling with was simple:
Should Tacoma utilize the cable and broadband network it built in the 1990s to go “all in,” as it was characterized at the time, with TPU offering internet service to residents like any other public utility?
Or, given the potential costs and commitments, would it be better to partner with a local private provider to accomplish the same objective, ensuring residents have options beyond the cable conglomerates while protecting the city and TPU’s bottom lines in the process?
Tacoma chose the latter, for various complicated reasons, as we’ve already discussed. And at the time, the deal that was struck with Rainier Connect — a family owned company with more than 100 years of Pierce County history — was seen as a best-case compromise. The city maintained ownership of its network, while a local company with long ties to the community got to do business using our network.
The problem? Now, only two years after Rainier Connect took over, the cable and internet provider’s potential sale to a global infrastructure and assets firm with no ties to Tacoma or Pierce County would seem to threaten the bedrock of that decision.
Sure, it’s not Comcast and it’s not Wave, but how much different is it, really? Throughout the long process that led up to Tacoma’s decision to enter a public-private partnership with Rainier Connect, the city heard time and time again that maintaining elements of local control was important to residents. We built the Click Network for Tacoma, not for some firm from a different part of the world to profit off of.
Then there are the things we know now that we didn’t know then, which add salt to the wounds.
Beyond concerns that getting into the internet and TV business would be a money-loser for the city, one of the main reasons the Tacoma Public Utilities “all-in” plan was abandoned came down to legality: Tacoma was being sued by a group of TPU ratepayers who argued it was illegal for TPU to subsidize Click’s TV and internet business, and there was legitimate fear the city would lose.
But Tacoma didn’t lose. The state court of appeals ruled in the city’s favor in late 2019, months after Tacoma decided to partner with Rainier Connect. Though there was a chance the case would proceed to the state Supreme Court, that didn’t happen, either. In essence — at least at the time — the all-in plan survived a legal challenge.
More recently — as recognition that the internet has become an essential service has grown — the state legislature has taken actions to make creating municipally owned internet networks easier. Last year, lawmakers passed legislation giving public utility districts and local municipalities the legal authority to sell broadband services directly to subscribers. This statewide momentum comes at the same time that the Biden Administration has made billions of federal dollars available for broadband expansion.
Hindsight is 20-20, but that stings.
Fast forward to the present, and the question becomes: Where do we go from here? While the city technically has the authority to reject the deal through its agreement with Rainier Connect if it determines the proposed sale would violate the agreed-upon terms and conditions, that seems like an unlikely outcome, barring any major revelations, particularly given the potential ramifications of starting over.
According to city of Tacoma spokesperson Maria Lee, Rainier Connect has yet to submit formal written notice of the proposed sale. Once that happens, the clock will start ticking on the city’s decision.
Until then, Tacoma residents are left to ponder what could have been — and the future.
Will Palisade Investment be bad for the future of internet service in Tacoma? There’s no way of knowing. Can you blame Rainier Connect for wanting to sell, seizing upon a prime opportunity that president and CEO Brian Haynes says will be good for the network, customers and current Rainier Connect employees? Of course not. That’s business.
Still, when it comes to the Click Network, it’s hard not to feel like we dropped the ball, yet again.
“It’s galling. It sticks in your craw ,” Baarsma said.
“And it’s a story that seems to repeat itself in Tacoma.”
