Escalon approves wireless agreement with Iara Technologies for city network access

Escalon City Council voted unanimously to approve an agreement with Iara Technologies to install and manage wireless networking equipment on the city’s vertical assets, council members said during the meeting.

City Manager Frank told the council the city has worked on the procurement for more than a year and negotiated a package that provides free Internet service to city facilities while generating a modest lease payment and potential revenue share. "We've been working on this issue for over a year now," Frank said as he summarized the negotiations and the key deal points.

Under the agreement approved by the council, Iara will pay a fixed fee to the city for use of vertical assets: $800 per month for the first six months, then $950 per month after startup. The contract also includes a 15 percent revenue share of monthly subscription revenue attributable to new customers using equipment mounted on Escalon assets; the city will receive the greater of the fixed fee or the calculated revenue share. The agreement term is five years with three five-year extension options, for a potential 20-year total if both parties agree.

The staff presentation said the city currently pays about $885 per month for Internet; the Iara deal is expected to eliminate that recurring cost for city operations and provide improved connectivity to remote sites including the wastewater treatment plant and city yard. Frank described an additional operational benefit: private Layer 2 connectivity between city sites so those facilities can communicate on a private network.

Council members questioned service reliability, outage response, insurance and customer accounting. An Iara Technologies representative said the company can identify which customer terminals connect to which vertical asset and that the vendor would provide periodic reports to the city with anonymized customer identifiers and revenue amounts so the city can verify revenue-share payments. On redundancy and repair timelines, the representative said the system will be architected with redundant core connections and typically next-day repair for routine outages; in emergency cases they said same-day response is possible if access can be coordinated.

Council Member Kaye asked how long installation would take; the company said main sites could be turned up in less than a month, depending on equipment availability. Council Member Straumann and others raised insurance questions; staff said Iara will carry a $1 million per-occurrence policy with the city listed as an additional insured, and the city retains its own risk pool as a backstop.

Frank told the council the agreement includes a city-friendly termination clause allowing the city to end the contract on 120 days' notice for any reason; Iara may terminate only for cause. The staff report also allows periodic review of the revenue-share and lease terms if market conditions change.

A motion to approve the agreement passed on a voice vote; meeting minutes record no nays.

The council directed staff to return quarterly updates showing revenue generated under the agreement so the council can track whether the revenue-share or fixed fee is producing greater income for the city.