Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
A contract calling for Jefferson County to fund Tri-County Electric Cooperative, Inc., (TCEC) up to $3.5 million to help it bring broadband accessibility to all or most of the county failed to be concluded recently.
The Jefferson County Commission declined to approve the contract on Thursday evening, April 20, instead scheduling a workshop in June to further discuss the issue and get a better understanding of the project before committing the money.
The funding agreement that Assistant County Attorney Evan Rosenthal presented to the board for approval stemmed from an assessment that Government Services Group, Inc. (GSG), conducted in 2022. This assessment determined that the county suffered severe gaps in broadband availability, with many residents and businesses lacking access to high-speed, reliable and affordable Internet service.
In his presentation, Rosenthal reminded the board that as a consequence of GSG’s assessment, it had budgeted $3.5 million of state and federally awarded funding, along with NextEra money, to provide the needed broadband accessibility, and had chosen to partner with TCEC to accomplish the mission.
TCEC, in turn, was charged with designing, permitting, installing and constructing a broadband system that would provide Internet connectivity to almost every part of the county, he said.
Per the contract that Rosenthal presented, the scheduling called for completion of the following projects in 2023: the Ashville Highway area by June; the Boston Highway area by July; the Lake Road area by September; and the Aucilla subdivision area by November. It called for the completion of the St. Augustine area by no later than December 2024.
It further called for the county to release the stated amounts in conjunction with the completion of the following milestones:
• Milestone 1, the Ashville Highway area, consisting of 492 eligible service locations and an estimated 65.95 miles of fiber optic cable, $896,920;
• Milestone 2, the Boston Highway area, consisting of 260 eligible service locations and an estimated 32.33 miles of fiber optic cable, $439,688;
• Milestone 3, the Lake Road area, consisting of 357 eligible service locations and an estimated 60.99 miles of fiber optic cable, $829,464;
• Milestone 4, the Aucilla Subdivision area, consisting of 799 eligible service locations and an estimated 99.27 miles of fiber optic cable, $1,333,928.
It was Commissioner Stephen Walker who raised questions about the proposed agreement, noting that TCEC had received $65 million in state funding to provide broadband services to its customers and the portion that the county was contributing was supposed to be specifically to connect Duke Energy customers.
“I’m wondering why are we giving this money if we don’t have any Duke customers hooked up?” Walker said.
He knew for a fact, he said, that Taylor County had not contributed any funding to TCEC, yet the company had done much work there for its customers.
“It seems to me like, if we do this, we’re just basically giving them money to hook up Tri-County customers and there is no guaranteed that our Duke customers will be served,” Walker said.
He proposed that the board hold a workshop so that everybody could get on the same page and the commission would know exactly what it was getting for its money.
“If we spend all this money and no Duke customers are served, where is that going to put us?” Walker said. “I think we need a clear understanding. That way, we know the expectations, and they know the expectations. It just clears the air.”
TCEC CEO and Executive Director Julius Hackett agreed.
“I think Mr. Walker is exactly right,” Hackett said. “I think we can really dig in deeply into this and have a clear understanding if we move to do it in a workshop.”
Tri-County, in partnership with Conexon Connect, is in the process of installing fiber-optic broadband across its four-county service region, which consists of Jefferson, Taylor, Madison and Dixie counties.
TCEC announced its planned launch of a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) project in April 2022, with the idea of eventually deploying nearly 2,400 miles of fiber network to provide high-speed Internet access to approximately 12,000 to 15,000 homes and businesses in the four-county area.
TCEC and Conexon, which together have invested about $65 million to construct the network, expect to see it completed within two to three years.
Specific to Jefferson County, the commission last October voted to give Tri-County all $3.5 million that the county had received in state, federal and NextEra funding for broadband expansion, to ensure that the Internet connectivity service being provided by TCEC was extended to all residents, not only the company’s customers.
At the time, Hackett told the board that his company’s plan was to bring border-to-border Internet service to every resident in Jefferson County.
He further affirmed that TCEC’s would not be fiber to the road, where residents would have to bear the cost for bringing the service from the road to their homes at their costs.
“Ours will go straight to the home,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re 2,000 feet away from the road, if you’re 1,500 feet away, or if you’re 50 feet away.”
The same applied to businesses, he said. The cost of the extension from the road to the home or business, he said, would be on Tri-County.
Duke Energy customers also, he said, would be included in the project. It is the latter aspect that apparently has come into question, at least with Walker.
The workshop with Tri-County is set for 5 p.m. Thursday, June 1.