
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
In this episode of the podcast, Chris speaks with Mayor Tim Rosener and IT Director Brad Crawford of Sherwood, Oregon, about the city’s journey in building a community-owned broadband network.
They discuss Sherwood's unique approach to expanding fiber access, how they’ve leveraged Urban Renewal funding to support the network’s growth, and their commitment to keeping service affordable for residents.
The conversation highlights the importance of local control, the economic benefits of broadband investment, and Sherwood’s expansion into surrounding rural areas.
Tune in to hear how Sherwood is proving that community broadband can be both cost-effective and high quality, all while prioritizing local service and support.
This show is 22 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
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Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license
Tim Rosener (00:07):
Number one, people appreciate that the money they're paying for their service stays in the community. The second thing is the service they're getting. When they call in with a problem, they're talking to someone in our community.
Christopher Mitchell (00:17):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I'm speaking [00:00:30] today with Mayor Tim Rosener, who is a Mayor of City of Sherwood in Oregon. Welcome to the show.
Tim Rosener (00:36):
Thank you. We're happy to be here. Looking forward to talking a little bit about broadband.
Christopher Mitchell (00:41):
Yes. And you're a mayor that doesn't only get that it's important you actually work in the field and know quite a bit about it, so this will be fun. We also have Brad Crawford, who is your IT director. Welcome to the show.
Brad Crawford (00:53):
Thank you. And nice to be here.
Christopher Mitchell (00:55):
So Sherwood is one of these cities that we're always interested in in [00:01:00] particular because you do not provide your own electricity, but you are beginning to provide Internet access to nearly half the city. Why don't we start with just, I'll ask you Mayor to just tell us a little bit about Sherwood and then we'll get into how you got into the fiber business.
Tim Rosener (01:19):
So Sherwood is a urban community on the south side of the Portland metro area. We're the gateway to wine country is, we like to talk about it down here, about 21,000 population, [00:01:30] about 85% residential. So we have quite a few residential homes here. We got into broadband years and years ago. I'll let Brad go into the detail, but we've been doing this a long time and I think an important thing to note is we look at broadband. It's not just about serving our businesses and our households within the city. We were actually reaching out into the rural areas around us and between fiber, we own and fiber that we lease. We have fiber all through the Tri-County area around the Portland metropolitan [00:02:00] area and service mostly outside the city commercial customers, but we are expanding our residential footprint outside the city as well. So we've been doing this a long time. Team does a great job, very proud of what we're doing.
Christopher Mitchell (02:12):
And Brad, we'll get into this in a second. I think you got started to support some of the businesses in your community, but you're primarily residential, that's what you were saying, right?
Tim Rosener (02:21):
If you just look at raw accounts now, that's correct. But we got started to support businesses and we've really viewed it as not [00:02:30] just an amenity for our residents, a very important amenity, but also as an economic development tool in terms of bringing high quality jobs to the city.
Christopher Mitchell (02:39):
Excellent. Now, Brad, this goes back quite a ways. Were you here at the beginning?
Brad Crawford (02:44):
I was, yeah.
Christopher Mitchell (02:45):
Wow. So you must be older than you look. Give us a sense of what was going on 20 years ago.
Brad Crawford (02:52):
I started at the city, was it November of 2000? 2000 and I feel like it was [00:03:00] about a month after I started here. The then city manager said, what do you think about building a community broadband network? And it kind of started there. And I guess we fast forward to 2003, 2004, we formed the Sherwood Broadband Utility. Had a little bit of seed funding from the Urban Renewal Agency to kind of build some backbone fiber to some of the data center in Portland that allowed us to buy some wholesale services and then slowly started to pick away fiber connections to a lot of city buildings. And then as we passed [00:03:30] public sites, like parks and schools and everything, we made sure to leave capacity there and some business parks as well. And started out as an open network where we had a partner that was actually providing the Internet and we just provided the pipe and we did that and continue to do that today.
(03:47):
But about probably four or five years after that, we started to sell direct and really quickly moved to that. As the mayor said, we started out really doing a lot of enterprise and large business connections, but I think it was around 2019 we did [00:04:00] a pilot project for Fiber of the Home where we had some conduit in about 10 neighborhoods already done. That was a pretty instant success. And council at that time said, Hey, we want to do the whole town. And around 2020 started the engineering on that and began constructing 21 with kind of first service turnups in 22 and 23. And now we are about 50% done with our residential single family homes.
Christopher Mitchell (04:26):
You said 21,000 people, Sean wrote an article [00:04:30] and he occasionally gets things right. I'm assuming that the 7,000 structures more or less that you're passing, you're nearly halfway there. That doesn't include, we'll talk a little bit about some expansion to some of the rural areas around you, I suspect.
Brad Crawford (04:47):
Correct. Yeah, that that's just in town. But yeah, we have a fairly sizable rural network as well.
Tim Rosener (04:53):
And I just want to add to that, that I'm really proud of how the city has approached this. We've been very creative. We didn't [00:05:00] go ask the voters for additional tax dollars to make this work. We were able to use Urban Renewal Agency funding very creatively to get our backbones in and really balance out making sure we're getting into neighborhoods that we know we're going to get high adoption rates and we can start to earn some income with the neighborhoods where we also know that they really need this service and may not be able to afford it. So we need to offer some kind of economic benefit so they can get it. So kind of weighing those two things, we've been really successful at that and [00:05:30] the team has done a great job.
Christopher Mitchell (05:32):
One of the things that I found remarkable from afar is your prices, $60 for a gig is great for a number of networks that's as low as they go in terms of the pricing. You have two tiers below that to make sure people are able to afford it. I presume that that means that you've set a priority of connecting homes above making money or trying to maximize revenue in the way that your rivals [00:06:00] in the marketplace probably do.
Brad Crawford (06:01):
Councils helped set some of those prices, but we wanted to be reasonable and cost effective to folks. When ACP was around, we saw that we could have a $30 lower plan that would make service free for those that qualified. So we quickly jumped on that and added add a hundred meg, $30 plan, really helping some ACP type programs come back so that we can offer those incentives again. And then, yeah, our pricing, we tried to just monitor where the [00:06:30] current rates were with our other providers in town and tried to match them. And those rates have since gone up quite a bit and ours have kind of stayed the same.
Tim Rosener (06:38):
And I think it's important to note, we're effectively a nonprofit so we don't have millions of shareholders that are expecting certain returns on those investments. So we're able to put all the money back into the program, which helps with our rates quite a bit.
Christopher Mitchell (06:55):
And one of the things I also thought was interesting is you don't [00:07:00] use much in the way of contractors, right? You're moving methodically through the community read online that it was entirely underground and that you're doing it with city crews. So I'm curious, you want to tell us, I'd love to know why that's been something that you decided to do, but then also if that has changed any of the challenges of getting it done.
Tim Rosener (07:24):
Anecdotal to this, when I first got on council in 2017, my knee jerk reaction to this was, [00:07:30] there's no way we can do this cheaper than a private sector. This is government, right? Everything's more expensive. And I was proven wrong. I mean I won't go into exact numbers, but our cost per foot to put fiber in the ground with our own crews is significantly cheaper than what we can go out and contract for it. So that drove a lot of our decision to bring those crews in house. But Brad, feel free to add on to that.
Brad Crawford (07:52):
Yeah, I think that's right on. I mean, our project is definitely taking longer than we expected and we were excited for the day that it's done, [00:08:00] but we've built this crew of people that are very skilled in lots of experience now that can then ride with us as this utility continues beyond Sherwood, we have our own in-house capability. So let's say we have an outage, we've got people that are just down the street from us that can roll a truck. We've got our in-house, got our in-house testers, like installers. We can do it all now. And in those first few years when we started, when we'd have an outage, it was a scramble. It's like, okay, who do we call and what do we need to do here and what do we do [00:08:30] there? And now it's a well-oiled machine in a sense. The benefit of contracting it out is you could have hired a contractor that could scale up and probably get it done faster, but you would pay a higher cost for that. So happy with the route we chose.
Christopher Mitchell (08:43):
And now you have money from the state to connect to, I'm assuming many small pockets because when I read about it, I read that there's many hundreds of households you're connecting, but across three counties, I'm assuming it's sort of three houses here, 10 houses [00:09:00] there and that sort of a thing.
Tim Rosener (09:01):
We've got a couple of grant opportunities rolling in. We were able to get a federal earmark from Andrea Salinas helped us get about a little over a million dollars for rural expansion. And then we got a $9 million BDP grant, which the state's administering the program, but it actually came from ARPA dollars.
Brad Crawford (09:21):
So the BDP is the large one that was about a $9 million is a $9 million project. And surprisingly, it's a fairly dense [00:09:30] rural area just outside of Sherwood. And I think that's in our work in this was a kind of eyeopening is how short of distance you can go outside of Sherwood before you got to people that had one Meg DSL pretty common or no DSL at all? So this area is south of Sherwood. It kind of will fill a major void of service just to the south of us, about 600 and I think 77 homes, 600 close to 700 homes that will be in the project area. And [00:10:00] hoping to get that started here within the next couple of months actually.
Christopher Mitchell (10:04):
Does that create any tension for you in particular, mayor or others on the council where we've seen challenges with communities where you're building out and you're going slow, making sure you're financially responsible and then you have an opportunity to go outside the city and people are like, why are you connecting that guy when they're not even in the city? And I want to be connected.
Tim Rosener (10:25):
It is a great question. We're mainly using our crews [00:10:30] to do the city project and we'll continue to do that. So these projects will go out and hire other crews to do that. So it's, that's usually my answer when I get asked that. But in general, our community's been very positive. Most of the comments I get are, I can't wait to get it. It's not, how come you haven't gotten my neighborhood yet? Or anything like that. I mean there's always a few, right? But for the most part, the vast majority of the people are really excited about it.
Christopher Mitchell (10:54):
I'm curious about the net promoter score. We've seen some [00:11:00] real impressive results from the real community focused Internet service providers. How was yours?
Brad Crawford (11:07):
I was going to try and pull it up. I always forget exactly what the number was, but I believe it was an 87. We did it back in, I think it was a November of 23. I think the example that we were given was rural broadband providers had a high score of 40 in the forties and we were, it's either 87 or 92. I don't have it off hand right now.
Christopher Mitchell (11:29):
Well [00:11:30] above other larger ISPs in the region, I'm sure from what we've seen. Yes.
Tim Rosener (11:37):
Anecdotally this story, I love to tell this story because I think one of the reasons we score so high is because, and what our polling has shown is, number one, people appreciate that the money they're paying for their service stays in the community that actually pulled higher than price, believe it or not.
(11:53):
The second thing is the service they're getting when they call in with a problem, they're talking to someone in our community and that person [00:12:00] cares a lot more about the community than someone say that's in New York. Talking to someone in California in a great anecdotal story on Facebook, Brad will remember this story. Someone piped up, Hey, my Sherwood Broadband just went down and one of our counselors picked up on that and immediately let Brad know, and they were on it and they had him up within an hour. And that person posted back on their, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but they say, Hey, the city called I'm up and running. One of the counselors let staff know, [00:12:30] and I won't say who the carrier was, but they go, I bet Carrier ABC's board would never do that for one of their customers. So we got a kick out of it. But I think it speaks to you're getting your service at the community level and people really enjoy that.
Brad Crawford (12:45):
And you as a resident of Sherwood get to put in a request of how the policy of your provider is set, right? When it comes to pricing, there's a public process for that when it comes to if net neutrality ever crops, it's head up again, that's a local decision, not a national decision.
Christopher Mitchell (13:00):
[00:13:00] Those are the benefits. The drawback is I feel like for a smaller network, if you have a really good net promoter score, often that means the manager is not getting as much sleep over the course of the year because you're actually making sure you take care of stuff.
Brad Crawford (13:16):
One of the things that helped us out a little bit was before we started Fiber in the Home, we had 15 years of experience doing this, so we had some staff in hand that had some history here, knew how network was ran, we had some pain points that we knew [00:13:30] that we'd experienced before. So as we're essentially building a brand new network with the fiber of the home, we were able to kind of address some of those things that we've seen in the past that help us keep reliability at the forefront.
Tim Rosener (13:42):
That's a really important point because in my work on the Oregon Broadband Advisory Council, we're working with a lot of cities around the state that are evaluating the BEAD program and the BDP program. And if you're a city and you want to do this, you can't go from in a year, have a whole fiber to home network running our path was starting out [00:14:00] simple with backbones on an open network as Brad mentioned, and we slowly built this over approaching two decades. There are steps you can take immediately and get a lot of benefit for your community, but it takes some time to build the expertise and the processes and the programs to be successful with this.
Christopher Mitchell (14:18):
Yeah, we saw that also in Sandy, which had a similar run up, but I'm curious when you mentioned that board, two people who are both in the tech sphere, both on local governments of [00:14:30] fairly similar size, are you guys friends or nemesis you and Jeremy over there in Sandy?
Tim Rosener (14:36):
Well, we're not competitors, that's for sure, but I know Jeremy A. Little bit not on the Obac anymore, so we don't interact at that level, but I wouldn't say we're nemesis at all.
Christopher Mitchell (14:51):
I could imagine you two being rivals. There'd be a hilarious story there somewhere.
Tim Rosener (14:56):
Well, in terms of bragging about our broadband networks for sure. Yes.
Christopher Mitchell (15:00):
[00:15:00] Well, did you get together and Brad, I mean, do you run into the folks from My Net or Sandy at all?
Brad Crawford (15:06):
Yeah, absolutely. And actually it's funny enough, we have our quarterly call on Tuesday where all of us Muni broadband operators get together and just share stories and we're very much collaborative. So back in the day, I think Sandy started their utility around the exact same time we started ours. They started the wireless route and then moved into fiber and they definitely have the jump on us on the fiber of the home side, [00:15:30] but definitely collaborative. I think we all want to learn what other people have seen as successful and mimic it.
Christopher Mitchell (15:36):
Yeah, I remember it's been a long time now actually since I think Joe Knapp left after he helped that get built up. I don't know if you ever came back from his mission trip, but I hope he's doing well.
Brad Crawford (15:46):
I haven't heard from him since he left, but Greg is the replacement. He's a great guy too, and all of them are. We are all very collaborative in sharing what we've
Christopher Mitchell (15:55):
Learned. So let's ask about just challenges. Have you faced, I mean you described [00:16:00] it a little bit, there's sort of normal challenges of running a business, but are there any interesting stories that you'd want to share about challenges you've been able to overcome?
Brad Crawford (16:09):
The biggest challenge on my mind is just the time and getting the project done. And you've got anxious customers who really want it really bad and you see those emails come in and the interest come in and you want to give them the services as bad as they want it. So it's just kind of timing that out and knowing that each neighborhood that we do is a little bit different. So one neighborhood may go really fast because [00:16:30] of the makeup of the streets and one neighborhood may not go as fast. So it is hard to give somebody a timeline. I think that's the thing that everybody wants to know is when can I get it? And we really can't give them an accurate number or a day.
Christopher Mitchell (16:44):
Mayor Rosener, I'm curious if you want to share any stories about the good moments where people are excited about it, any anecdotes around that? I'm sure that if someone steps on a flower in the course of underground construction, you'll hear about it. So we know that you hear the negative things. [00:17:00] What do you hear that's positive?
Tim Rosener (17:01):
Well, yeah, I mean, anytime you're tearing up streets, put a conduit in the ground, you're going to have some challenges. And Brad's team does a great job of mitigating those. And it's comparative, right? Because compare it to the other utility that was out there. So we usually farewell in those.
(17:17):
I just told one of the positive stories in terms of broadband, I'm really excited about getting it out into the rural areas. We're getting the city side done, but there's real need out there. And that really came out in [00:17:30] the pandemic and we had a lot of kids stuck at home where they didn't have good service. You heard all the stories about putting Wi-Fi routers on buses and loading up libraries and all that stuff. So even though the pandemic's over that need is still there, and so much of what we do in our communities from healthcare to education and all those things are so dependent on Internet service and good Internet service. So I get excited about that and expanding our reach on the [00:18:00] communities and I hear just constant little stories. My neighbor, I won't say who the other carrier was, but he had a fiber get busted and they came out and just laid fiber across his grass up to the house and wouldn't come back to bury it. And he's just excited that he's going to get five buried under the ground. So you hear little stories like that, but I think the net promoter scores, we also got really excited about what we were doing. It was a nice affirmation that we're doing it right.
Christopher Mitchell (18:27):
As a leader, you never really know if people are telling you the [00:18:30] full story or not. It's nice to have that validation.
Tim Rosener (18:32):
Well, it is, and we're blessed that since we really started this Vibrant Home Project, I can't say enough about my counselors that I work with, my peers on council. It's a very collaborative, diverse group that works together and we almost always come to a consensus, and I think that steady commitment to the project over all these years has been a big reason. It's gone so well. I can't say enough about staff, [00:19:00] but staff takes direction from council. So if you don't have that solid continuous leadership on these issues, it's really hard to get things done. And so I think that's a big part of it.
Christopher Mitchell (19:12):
Yeah. Brandon, I have a last question for you because I feel like there's a lot of places, whether you're a large city, a small city, a small town where people in IT are like, I'm busy enough, we've got hackers from the entire world trying to break in. We've got all kinds of things we're trying to get done. [00:19:30] I don't want fiber optics to be on my plate. It sounds like I'm always curious with the folks that are responsible, if there's some special skill you have or if it's a matter of just recognizing it's a responsibility, how exactly did you manage to be doing it all these years? And if you have advice for others in places that might be contemplating getting involved?
Brad Crawford (19:56):
I don't know that I ever set out to be the leader of a broadband [00:20:00] utility, but it just kind of grew organically and anecdotally, I am a resident too, so I see the benefit of the community and the benefit that it can bring for kind of generations to come. So I think it's like any technology that a IT person picks up as you start small and you play around with it and you grow and you learn it and you stub your toe and you figure out how to fix it so it doesn't happen again, and then you just grow. I think it's a little bit of trial and error, but once you've done it for so long, [00:20:30] it's almost automatic. We still have our struggles, we still have our things that crop up, but you just learn to adapt, I guess, when those things happen.
Christopher Mitchell (20:38):
Yeah. My friend Travis, who runs USI Fiber in Minneapolis on almost anything that he's going to be doing, he'll start the first year small and try to get a handle on it before he's in over his head, and it seems like a good process. Thank you both for taking the time and also for your local leadership. Running for Office can be challenging and [00:21:00] being able to serve the community. And Brad, I'm always want to thank anyone who sticks with a position for so long. I think there's a lot of value you can bring to the community when you know it that well. So thank you both.
Brad Crawford (21:11):
Thank you. And thanks for having us.
Ry Marcattilio (21:13):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available at communitynets.org/broadbandbits. Email [email protected] with your ideas. For the show, follow Chris on Blue Sky. His handle is at Sport Shot Chris. Follow communitynets.org [00:21:30] stories on Blue Sky. The handle is at communitynets. Subscribe to this and other podcasts 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 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 [00:22:00] us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative Conference.