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Item No: 8A Meeting Date: May 11, 2015 Type of Business: Consent City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Honorable Mayor and City Council From: James Ericson, City Administrator Item Title/Subject: Resolution 8415, a Resolution Approving an Exemption for CenturyLink to Install and Deploy Aerial Fiber Optic Facilities in Mounds View Introduction: On May 4, 2015, CenturyLink representatives appeared before the City Council to review a request to be exempted from Mounds View City Code Section 911.05, which requires that all new or repaired utility facilities be located underground. The section of Code does provide the City Council with the discretion to approve an exemption in situations where undergrounding is not technically or economically feasible. CenturyLink asserts that undergrounding is not economically feasible at this time. (Refer to their attached letter dated May 4, 2015.) Discussion: On March 19, 2015, Interim Public Works Director Don Peterson and I met with representatives from CenturyLink to discuss a fiber-to-the home project that was initiated without a City permit and installed contrary to the City Code which requires undergrounding of new or replaced facilities. The company acknowledges they made a mistake in initiating the project without a permit and apologized for the oversight and any problems it caused. The company suggested they would like to apply for an exemption pursuant to the City Code. At the March 23, 2015, City Council meeting, staff asked if the Council would like to have CenturyLink come to a future meeting to address the “work without a permit” issue as well as to consider their request for an exemption. The Council indicated a desire to meet with CenturyLink and suggested that occur at their May work session, on May 4, 2015. At the work session, representatives from CenturyLink were in attendance and took full responsibility for the work that had begun without the necessary permit. They answered questions about the proposed fiber optic deployment and addressed why they felt the deployment wasn’t economically viable if forced to underground the fiber facilities. The City Council reviewed Section 911.05 of the City Code which allows for the exemption and agreed that since CenturyLink already had its copper infrastructure hanging from poles and the fiber new service would be supplementing the existing service rather than replacing it, they would be amenable to an exemption. While CenturyLink was targeting only two neighborhoods to begin with, the exemption would apply on a city-wide basis, but only where CenturyLink already had existing copper services deployed aerially. The exemption would NOT apply where there were no services or where the services were already under ground.