Yesterday, the Escambia County Commission voted 4-1 voted to approve a plan to partner with Escambia River Electric Cooperative (EREC) to bring high-speed fiber internet directly to over 4,000 homes and businesses in rural northern Escambia County
Escambia County will contribute $6 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to the project across EREC’s franchise area, while EREC will come up with the remainder of the estimated $23-$24 million project.
Last week in WCOA, Commissioner Steve Barry, who has championed making high-speed internet available county-wide, said, “We’re going to have high-speed fiber to extremely rural areas probably by the summertime. The project completions might be 20 months out or so, but we’ll start to light people up as soon possible.”
The commission vote allows staff to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with EREC and provides support as EREC applies for Florida Department of Economic Opportunity grants.
District 2 Commissioner Mike Kohler was the lone negative vote, saying he hadn’t had sufficient time to research the issue. Kohler won the GOP primary for the post and has had third months to gear up on county issues.
Not the Navy’s finest moment. New Commissioner Kohler’s “My Dog Ate My Homework” excuse – “I can’t vote for something if I don’t have complete knowledge on it, and I don’t.” – is just lame. On his campaign website Kohler promised, “Mike will be a full-time commissioner. His only job will be to work for YOU!” In response to a WKRG News 5 questionnaire Kohler wrote, “The citizens will get a full-time Commissioner.” Well, when does the “full-time” part start? Kohler had been in office for a full week prior to Monday’s meeting. Seven days was more than enough time to study up on one agenda item. If something was not clear, county staff would have explained it to him. Most of the documents in the agenda item were short or self-explanatory. The only issue here was if this project was the best use of $6 million of the ARPA dollars allocated to the county. That is a simple YES or NO. Kohler was elected on August 23. That was 98 days before Monday’s vote. What did he do for 98 days after being elected? The issue might not be important to him but it is to the county and to Commissioner Barry and his constituents. Kohler filed his initial paperwork to be a candidate on January 25. What has he been doing since then? As a candidate, did he carefully review BOCC agenda items, attend BOCC meetings and become an expert on county government anticipating his election? If not, why not? Kohler says that he wants to “restore trust in county government” – the inference being that the four incumbents returning or reelected are not trustworthy – but being too lazy or too confused to vote at the first real meeting is not a good start. Kohler needs to take a mulligan, apologize to the BOCC for his lack of preparation and start over.
This is one of the most important initiatives ever brought to the County, period. Commissioner Barry and the three commissioners who have supported it, and slogged through hours and hours of public discussion and private research to get their arms around some pretty complex issues, can always carry this legacy with pride. Hats off to them on what they have accomplished so far. It was pretty amazing to watch the culmination of the two years research and deep dive Commissioner Barry has done at this point…from a starting point of “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, and it’s going to be difficult, but we’ve got to figure it out–I’ve got to figure it out,” to his command of the subject yesterday.
It’s sad that our new commissioner didn’t understand the importance of supporting this infrastructure, but hopefully he’ll get up to speed on a project that has been discussed in depth at public meetings for two years now. “I’m so honored and lucky with the timing to be able to vote with you all, and be a part of bringing this essential service to the residents of Escambia” would have of course been the appropriate call. Thinking he could abstain from a vote was a pretty clear indicator that he doesn’t have the basics down yet of how business gets conducted on the dais–and the legality of it–so perhaps now the holding court period can come to an end and the hard work of his learning curve could start. Not just the broadband, but the parameters of abstaining have been hot topics with a ton of public discussion and media coverage even recently, so the lack of awareness on the two issues was a bit unsettling. Hopefully he’ll get his bearings soon, because the West Side really does need his commissionership to be a smash success, if we’re ever going to get out of the hole Doug dug for us.
Really hoping the commission will now get hard data–cost and maps–for getting the entire rest of the unincorporated County covered. Of course that will take a ton of money, but there is federal grant money right now for that sort of thing. Rather than try to determine which areas are unserved and underserved and target those, why not just try to do everybody? Let Cox come to the table on running fiber to ALL the houses and how much it would cost and how willing they are to do it. Because of course the way they roll now is to run it where they feel like it, sometimes very cheaply (given the customer), quote outrageous prices for others, or refuse to even consider doing it at all for many neighborhoods. There is no reason that either Cox or ATT (if they have any interest) can’t compete on an RFP to run fiber *everywhere*. And it should cost relatively less for either company, since they already have the infrastructure in place, right?
If they won’t do it, then let the other companies compete for running it themselves. Because as pleasant as the Cox reps have been at the podium, their companies service is crap for a lot of customers, and they know it. They lost 600 dollars a month on our two houses in Navy Point because they refused to get a bucket truck out and fix our lines, cancelling a half dozen service tickets with no explanation after going through rounds of contractors and Cox employees each time. And we certainly aren’t the only ones who have experienced that lack of service from them. Let them compete for the rest of the County and see what they can and will actually deliver. Because what’s implicit in this discussion is that they have NOT delivered where they have the ability to, or we wouldn’t even be having this discussion of how to get better internet in areas they already service.