NorthEscambia.com reports Escambia County is resoliciting bids for a company to high-speed internet to North Escambia businesses and homes. The Board of County Commissioners had approved into a memorandum of understanding with Escambia River Electric Cooperative to provide it within their electric franchise area – about 4,000 homes and businesses.
Cox Communications filed a formal protest against the award. According to NorthEscambia.com, Cox proposed to provide the service to only about
2,500 homes north of 10 Mile Road.
On WCOA this morning, Commissioner Steven Barry said the resolicitation is done to avoid a long delay fighting the protest with the hope of delaying the project for a month or so.
“After spending some time with Administrator Moreno and County Attorney Alison Rogers, the timeline to dispose of a protest, regardless of the merit, can draw out to be a lengthy timeline,” said the District 5 commissioner. “My real responsibility is to try to be an effective representative for my friends and constituents and bring that service more so than just trying to prevail and be right in an instance.”
I am very familiar with all of the documents that were posted to the agenda item last month. The mystery is how the EREC bid was accepted. If you read the Request for Proposal, its bid was very obviously non-responsive. It makes you wonder what extraordinary measures were taken behind closed doors to avoid rejecting the EREC bid. This is not a reflection of EREC. However, if you’re going to put out a RFP for a project you should stick to it. That said, it seems odd to divide the project by geography starting with North Project and then South Project. I would have thought the better approach would have been to have it countywide and ensure that whatever the county did tied in with all of the local governmental entities in the county and perhaps even being interoperable with the three adjacent counties or at least speaking with their IT folks first. It seems like the priority is to give broadband access to people who live in the boondocks. A better priority would be to tie in all county facilities first, then focus on businesses and then tie in people living in remote areas last.