Remarks To the Board of Supervisors
The following remarks (well, most of them) were made to the Board of Supervisors, as part of the public discussion on economic development:
Good morning. My name is Greg Falken. I'm a partner in webdancers, a web development company in Twain Harte. I'm also a member of an ad hoc group of citizens called Network Sierra, who are advocating for broadband Internet access in all parts of Tuolumne County.
I don't think I need to go into the many benefits to business that broadband Internet access provides, because I know that this information has been brought to you many times before. In the context of business development however, I would point out that few businesses would even consider establishing themselves in Tuolumne County without access to broadband. And for businesses that are already here, lack of broadband access makes them less competitive. As you know, our broadband coverage is spotty and there is currently no publicly available plan to bring this critical service to all parts of the county.
I'd like to tell you about another county, similar to ours, that has looked forward and taken action.
Henry County, Ohio is a rural county in the Northwest corner of the state, in an area once known as The Great Black Swamp. They have a population of about 30,000 and a median household income of $44,200 a year. Henry County's telephone company is currently spending over $6 million dollars in funding from the USDA Rural Development Broadband Access and Telecommunications Program to build a broadband system known as Fiber To the Home. These folks in Ohio will soon have access to the Internet at speeds more than 1000 times faster than DSL or cable can provide. They are thinking for the future. They are investing in technology that will allow them to connect with the rest of the world, where in many countries DSL-type speeds have simply been leapfrogged. This is the difference between running a business using computers, or on pocket calculators.
Would the technology that's being installed today in rural Ohio be viable here in Tuolumne County? I really don't know the answer to that. I do, however, have a suggestion for finding out. This Board should create a County Commission for Communication Technologies. This commission would have the mandate to research, recommend and implement broadband access throughout the County. There are smart, willing people available today to serve on such a commission and many sources of funding available to pay for it. I ask you to give this your serious consideration.
Thank you.
1 comments:
I saw the Supervisor's session on economic development and I think Greg's comments about the need for and value of broadband were useful. Others made similar comments (less detailed) and this will help make it clear to the Supes that there is a clear connection between broadband and economic development.
Several people suggested that a county Broadband Internet Commission be established. Teri Murrison said she was in favor of the idea.
This raises some issues. Should, in fact a county commission be formed? And, if so, what should it be empowered to do?
My suggestion a while back that a county commission be formed was based only on the idea that it would be a conduit for funding--from Calif Emerging Technolgies Fund, AT&T Foundation, or some of the other sources that Greg has looked into. The motivation is that a county commission is more stable and reliable than an ad-hoc 501c3 nonprofit, and it solves certain financial problems. Grants often involve starting work, then sending the funding agency a bill, and a new nonprofit has trouble borrowing the money to do the work.
Some of the speakers seemed to think that a county commission would be some sort of magic bullet to solve broadband problems. And they seemed to expect that a commission might help them deal with AT&T. A Commission might be able to get the attention of someone from AT&T, get information, and post it on a web site, and that may be a useful service, but (as Marv Dealy has pointed out to me), basically nobody is going to get very much real information about of AT&T, particularly about their future plans for providing service, because they insist that FCC rules prevent their from disclosing them.
I think it is desirable to create a county Commission to serve as a funcing conduit, but we need to discuss what other things such a Commission could reasonably do. We need to make to very clear to everyone what its purpose and powers will be, so that expectations are not raised that it will solve problems that it cannot solve. One speaker seemed to expect that a Commission might help interced when a resident had trouble with AT&T providing decent broadband service. I don't see how a Commission could help much here. I don't see how funding could be obtained to pay a staff to do this.
On the negative side, it seems likely that the county would be hard-pressed to provide much resources for a Commission. I think it would be a high enough priority that basic stuff might--like administrative support for holding meetings and posting agendas (required by Brown Act) and so forth, but I don't see any resources beyond this from the county. This means that it really has to be a funding conduit with responsibilities and powers carefully defined to reflect this reality.
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