Broadband Planning Regional Meeting

Yesterday, Bob Ingalls and I attended the second planning meeting for an ambitious project, currently called Central Sierra Connect. It is being spearheaded by the Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency (A-TCAA), with funding from the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF). Although the project is in its early stages, its objective is to facilitate broadband availability to unserved and under-served areas of five counties: Mariposa, Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador and Alpine. Significantly, all five county governments have indicated that they will participate and several business communities were also represented. Of the 25-30 people who attended yesterday's all day session, several expressed the opinion that there is currently a window of opportunity for this issue to be addressed by the counties of the foothills and if we do not start the process now, we may fall so far behind the urban areas of the state that we may never catch up.

A-TCAA has been invited to apply for a $250,000 grant from the CETF, which could be received as early as Q2 2008. They have already received a "pre-grant" of $10,000 to prepare the application. Part of that process has been the two planning meetings that took place in Sonora, aimed at bringing together participants (stakeholders, in planning-speak) from the five counties. Those of you hoping to see new wireless towers springing up in the next six months are likely to be disappointed. This is a long term project and the first step will be to develop a comprehensive plan that addresses the issues concerning all of the stakeholders. This phase of the project is likely to take a least a year from the time the grant is awarded. Years two and three of the grant cycle will implement the plan.

So, to recap, A-TCAA has received some money to help them apply to receive more money to pay for a plan. Believe it or not, this is real progress and I'm excited about it. It means that there is agreement across all of the foothill counties that this is a serious issue that requires action (or at least a plan of action). They have the support of a major source of funding in the CETF, which can open the doors to other sources. The participants in the meetings so far have been committed and capable. Bob is a member of the Infrastructure team and I have chosen to work with Outreach. The other teams in the project are: Advisory Council (administration), Demand Survey and County Liason.

The next milestone will be a completed grant application to the CETF, which we plan to submit by the end of February, for consideration at CETF's March board meeting. There should be a Central Sierra Connect web site available soon and I will continue posting here as we progress.