The MC city government reports that Verizon and its subcontractors are back in Mill Creek to install additional fiber optic lines around the city. The Huckleberry neighborhood is currently under construction, with Fairway, Brighton, Red Cedar, Cottonwood, and Vine Maple to follow in the near future. The tentative schedule is for construction of the "backbone" of the fiber optic network to be completed in early 2009. Next month City staff will be bringing a franchise agreement for Verizon television service to the City Council for review.

We note that full service to individual households is still in the future. Citizens should be prepared to comment on the nature of TV service. In the past the populace has been inclined to accept the offerings of service providers, which tend to lag far behind the state of the art, to include redundand programming and to assert benefits to the city that are of dubious value. One hopes the Council will do a better job of educating itself on technical and programming options than has been evident in the past.