Mayor Cutter at EBBC (#3/Final): Public Private Partnerships

This is the final in a series of posts summarizing Mayor Cutter’s responses at a Mayoral panel discussion at the 3rd annual East Bay Broadband Consortium summit last week.  This City’s fiber optic infrastructure represented by Lit San Leandro is an economic game changer.  What we are doing with it is changing the game.

The final topic focused on public-private partnerships, an area in which San Leandro is exercising significant leadership.

Do you see public-private partnerships as a strategy to promote and expand broadband in your city? Can you offer some examples where your city has succeeded with public-private partnerships?

• Lit San Leandro: The City of San Leandro’s partnership with Dr. Patrick Kennedy and the U.S. Economic Development Administration is building an 18-mile fiber optic network that will connect its businesses, non-profits, and community organizations to a blazing fast 10 gbps fiber optic network.  11 miles are complete; the remaining 7 miles will be completed in 2015.

• Chief Innovation Officer: New position created in 2012 to market the City’s commercial fiber optic asset and to build a tech and innovation ecosystem. San Leandro’s CIO is the first East Bay municipal Chief Innovation Officer, the 2nd Bay Area municipal CIO, and the third municipal CIO in the U.S. The position is co-funded by the City and Dr. Patrick Kennedy for 3 years.

• Fiber to Schools: With support of a 10% matching donation contributed by Dr. Patrick Kennedy and Lit San Leandro, SLUSD successfully applied for a $5 million Qualified Zone Academy Bond (QZAB). The QZAB funding will support the technological infrastructure needed for Science, Engineering, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) Academies; for construction of the laterals needed to connect to the fiber optic loop; and for needed equipment, servers and switches.  The San Leandro City Council approved a License Agreement with SLUSD in January 2015 to provide the District with access to City-owned fiber optic strands.  This connection will enable each District site a dedicated, synchronous 10 gbps connection to the internet.

• Smart City Hall: In 2014, OSIsoft offered to install its PI software at no cost to pull data from City Hall’s HVAC and electrical systems. The goal is to provide accessible energy data from throughout City Hall, 24/7, enabling assessment of energy inefficiencies and provide opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce energy costs. This collaboration currently includes the City, OSIsoft, its partner echoMESH, and staff and students from San Leandro Unified School District; students and their teachers will be provided the opportunity:
  –to read and assess the data
  –build an interactive, real-time energy dashboard to be located in a public area of City Hall, and
  –provide elected officials and staff with recommendations to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy costs

In the last two weeks, the Presidio Graduate School and Cisco Systems have asked to join this collaboration and have applied for a US-Ignite-National Science Foundation grant to fund the proposed collaboration. The goal is to provide Sustainable Building Management curriculum for teachers  and staff. This curriculum, designed to teach-the-teachers, would be delivered real-time via Cisco’s Telepresence video conferencing systems and enabled by the City’s fiber optic infrastructure.

• Founders Circle: A coalition of San Leandro industry leaders in high growth economies is partnering with the City, its two school districts, Career Pathways, Alameda County and a growing group of education institutions to generate effective, innovative career programs that incubate student and youth talent for direct-to-work placement. Initial focus will be on creating career paths in information technologies and advanced manufacturing.

The City of San Leandro’s model of creating opportunities through public-private partnerships is attracting tremendous interest by international companies and organizations like U.C. Berkeley, Cisco, Nissan, Kaiser Permanente, U.S. Ignite and others.  I’ll be writing much more about these in the months to come.