Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
County Commissioner Betsy Barfield was joyful at a recent meeting, ladling out the praises to those who had helped expedite the process in terms of her long pursued endeavor to expand broadband accessibility to selected areas of the county.
Barfield announced at the commission meeting on Thursday evening, Sept. 3, that the Request For Proposal (RFP) for the broadband initiative were finally out. She thanked and praised Clerk of Court Kirk Reams and County Coordinator Parrish Barwick for their diligence and work in smoothing out the process and getting the RFPs out.
Barfield’s announcement came nearly two months after she notified the board that the U.S. Treasury had finally approved the expenditure. The U.S. Treasury has the ultimate say on how the settlement money from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill may be spent by the five affected states and their jurisdictions.
The U.S. Treasury's approval came nearly two years after county officials began the efforts to increase internet connectivity in the county by use of a part of the money from the Restore Act. Before they could proceed with the project, however, the project had to undergo stringent reviews by various state and federal agencies and receive their okay, with the U.S. Treasury as the last stop.
“The money has finally been approved for the broadband initiative,” Barfield, who has been tracking the project since its inception, announced in mid June, adding that $71,000 would soon be released for the project’s planning and design phase, with the balance of the $1.2 million to follow thereafter.
The Restore Act is federal legislation that was passed in the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to help the affected states with their economic and environmental recoveries from the untold damage caused by the disaster.
As the broadband initiative was presented in mid 2018, when county officials first proposed the idea, the enterprise was to be carried out in partnership with CenturyLink, which was to do the actual work of improving the county's fiber-optic infrastructure network.
“The proposed project will expand Jefferson County's position as a location for businesses, as well as create new educational opportunities for Jefferson County students,” read the plan's original language.
It went on to state that, “access to high-speed internet service would allow businesses to locate in Jefferson County and existing businesses to grow, therefore benefiting the economy.”
Broadband service also, according to the plan, would allow for additional education opportunities that would grow Jefferson County's workforce skills.
At the time, CenturyLink, which was working closely with the county on the initiative, identified four areas that it considered having unmet fiber-optic infrastructure needs and that it targeted for the upgrade. These four areas, which presumably are still on the table, are Lloyd, Lamont, the Sanctuary development near Lloyd, and area of U.S. 90 west of Monticello.
The four areas were selected based on their population densities, barring the City of Monticello, which already has internet accessibility.
Earlier this year, however, the U.S. Treasury questioned why the county was looking solely at CenturyLink as a broadband provider.
Per Treasury, the county would have to put the contract out for competitive bids, even though CenturyLink is the only available provider in the area, in effect further delaying the project.
“We're going to have to put together a Request For Proposals to bring broadband to areas of the county that we've been talking about,” Barfield said in July, after getting the word from the U.S. Treasury.
The reason Barfield is in the lead on the project is because she sits on the Gulf Consortium, the public entity created in the wake of the oil spill to develop a state plan for the dispersal of the Restore Act monies to the 23 Florida counties affected by the spill.
So far, Jefferson has received $3.4 million of the about $4 million that it is slated to get from pot 1 of the BP funding. It’s also to receive another $12.7 million from pot 3.
British Petroleum in 2015 agreed to pay $5.5 billion for its part in the petroleum disaster, which monies were to be dispersed to the five oil-spill affected states in three pots over a 15-year period. The five affected states were Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
The BP oil spill began on April 20, 2010, and lasted more than four months, releasing upwards of 200 million gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill, the largest in U.S. history, wrecked havoc on estuaries, harmed commercial fishing, marred beaches and adversely impacted the region’s general economic viability and its tourism.
On a related issue, the city may also revive its former quest to acquire high-speed Internet connectivity within its own jurisdiction. Councilman Troy Avera, at least, raised the possibility at the Monticello City Council on Tuesday, Sept 1.
Avera, who regularly attends Florida League of Cities events and conferences, noted that the organization had adopted, as one of its priorities for the coming legislative session, the high-speed Internet accessibility.
“It’s one of the League’s issues now to get affordable Internet to cities,” Avera said, adding that he thought it was timely to reconsider and revive the resolution that the council had adopted in 2019.
The resolution, which the council adopted last December, aimed to make the governor and lawmakers aware of the lack of Internet connectivity in many Florida communities and asked that the state leaders address the problem. The resolution specifically asked the state to provide funding for the “last mile” of infrastructure for Monticello and similar rural communities.
The last mile is a phrase widely used in the telecommunications, cable television and Internet industries and refers to the final leg of telecommunication networks that deliver telecommunication services to the individual home or business.
The resolution held that affordable high-speed Internet connectivity was a necessary and critical component of economic development and quality education in a technology-driven modern world. Conversely, argued the resolution, the lack of affordable high-speed Internet in rural communities hindered their progress and made for less than a quality education.
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