Council tries to free up Verizon

Dave Brooks

In an 11th-hour attempt to save a high-speed Internet deal, Mayor

Cathy Green has asked the City Council to intervene in a design

dispute between Verizon and a city advisory board.

Earlier this month, the city’s Design Review Board rejected an

application by the telecommunications giant to install 150 utility

boxes that would service a citywide fiber-optic network billed as the

fastest consumer Internet service available.

Fios, as it is called, would be up to 10 times faster than cable

Internet, Verizon officials said, and would be capable of downloading

a full-length feature film in about 15 minutes. The technology would

be test marketed in Huntington Beach and several other U.S. cities

before being made available to about a million customers by the end

of the year.

The technology requires the installation of about 300 utility

boxes throughout Huntington Beach that have to be approved by the

city’s Design Review Board, which make decisions on aesthetics of

city projects.

Design Review Board member Robert Eberle said the advisory board

was not impressed with the utility box design Verizon submitted.

“They looked like a five-drawer metal filing cabinet without the

doors,” Eberle said.

The Design Review Board told Verizon officials to go back to the

manufacturers and ask for a project that was more pleasing to the

eye. When Verizon returned with its revisions a few months later,

Eberle said that the cabinets had only been reduced by a few inches

in height and essentially looked the same.

At that point, the Design Review Board then denied the

application.

“Instead of easily allowing it, we wanted to tell them that the

town doesn’t want this,” Eberle said. “We want them to do something

better.”

Verizon’s spokesperson Eric Rabe was not available by press time,

but Mayor Green said company officials told her they were working on

a tight time frame and might temporarily halt its plans to bring the

high speed Internet service to Huntington Beach.

“This whole project is worth $10 million,” she said. “To throw

one’s nose at it is kind of silly.”

In hopes of saving the deal, Green undertook the appeals process,

first sending it to an emergency meeting of the Planning Commission

Thursday. If the Planning Commission also rejects the boxes, the

issue will be brought before the council at the Monday meeting.

Green said she was not upset about the Design Review Board’s

denial, but said she thought it was important the City Council get

involved.

“This is really a policy decision,” she said.

City Councilman Dave Sullivan backed Green’s decision to pull the

issue before the council.

“On a big issue like this, elected officials should make the final

decision,” he said.