Joining the council in 2020 gave me the opportunity to closely examine CityNet’s finances. I was appalled. We had been subsidizing huge yearly losses by appropriating money from the general fund for over 10 years. It was painfully obvious that with the ever-rising cost of content, running a municipal cable and TV enterprise is no longer financially feasible. During the 2023-24 budget year, in order to finally account properly for our financial situation with CityNet, we were forced to appropriate $21.5 million in community benefit funds from the YouTube development in Bayhill to cover CityNet’s debt. That was an incredibly painful vote.
This had to end. As one of our council strategic initiatives for the 2024-25 budget year we finally took the step (by unanimous council vote) to authorize staff to explore selling the CityNet enterprise, and we finalized the sale of the enterprise to Comcast in March 2025:
KQED.org article: San Bruno Deal With Comcast Marks End of an Era for City-Owned Internet, Cable Service, Matthew Greene, KQED
Press Release announcing the completion of the sale: https://california.comcast.com/2025/03/06/comcast-city-of-san-bruno-announce-agreement-for-comcast-to-acquire-citynet-services/
San Bruno District 2 Newsletter article announcing the council decision to approve the sale: https://app.robly.com/archive?id=43a0dafe9be2b8610672679c79e9e82a .
2020 Vision: San Bruno CityNet Services
San Bruno is one of the last communities in the country to maintain their own cable TV and internet provider services. There are definite advantages to not dealing with a large corporation and the council has advocated for keeping it and focusing on providing new services like fiber. However it’s hard to ignore that the services provided currently by San Bruno CityNet Services are inadequate when compared to services provided in neighboring communities. If we are to keep this service, we must be creative in finding adequate funding to make upgrades. First, we must immediately end the practice of diverting profits from CityNet into the General Fund to balance the budget instead of reinvesting in CityNet to improve services and stay more current. We should explore selling the Citynet office site on El Camino (the City might get $5M to $7M for that property based on recent sales) and moving those services to City Hall, then use the proceeds to start the fiber project and make other changes to improve the service experience for our residents.