There's a growing digital divide in our country, your city doesn't have healthy broadband, you see is not going to suffer. When you don't have sufficient access to broadband, you're not going to be able to participate in everyday decisions that our democracy makes cities and towns need to be able to decide their broadband future, that should be decided for them by incumbent providers can't solve our biggest problems in America, without bribery. My parents really shaped my perspectives. When it comes to broadband access and affordability. I come from a family of immigrants, my dad, immigrated from Ethiopia, during the 70s when he was facing political persecution, and he came to this country with really nothing but his own hard work and ingenuity, and he raised a family, and that really showed me that there's a lot of inequities in this country, and broadband access just one access to broadband service is critical in the 21st century, it is access to opportunity, to education, to healthcare, financial services, we talked to one state legislator who worked on bringing broadband his community. He said, grab them in a safe this community, but not having broadband, climate change, and agricultural economy, the list goes on and on each of these different problems requires solutions that ride on broadband networks. That's why broadband is fundamental to learning what has been done what can be done. That's the most empowering source of knowledge for broadband going forward, states matter when it comes to broadband states matter when it comes to getting folks online, they can serve as leaders and models for national leaders and for local leaders as well as next century cities is, is a great organization that is really at thefrontlines of trying to bring better connectivity to cities around the country and we're excited to count them as, as a partner and ally, this organization provides such crucial tools and resources for communities who just don't know where to start. For the next 100 cities I think of the broad network of local elected officials what he represents that they're an important voice as leaders in their community leaders who understand that federal policy has an impact on the local level. The reason NCC plays such an important role in this debate on broadband access is that regardless of where communities are at NCC is standing up, whether it be a indigenous community, whether it be rural communities, Midwestern states,That's where NCC is doing their best work and standing up for those communities and making sure that everyone has access, regardless of where they are. When I think of next century cities, I think of cities, connecting citizens, all the people in their communities, so that the communities will be strong.
Afternoon. I'm Aldona Valicenti I'm the commissioner in the Chief Information Officer for Lexington Fayette urban county government. We're a combined city government organization. It's a real pleasure for me to be here and to provide some introductory remarks, you know, long before COVID A growing number of cities, placed a high priority and broadband focused on the needs of the people who live and work in their cities and the leaders understood the power of broadband, they recognized that that tool could connect them and improve them to health care, emergency services. It supported new educational models, workforce development and training opportunities in order to attract innovation and to boost population growth, high speed, affordable and reliable broadband is the must have and let me repeat that because I think you heard that in the video earlier, high speed, affordable, and reliable broadband is a moustache. So next century cities was intended to serve as the dedicated point of collaboration. And by the way, I'm going to comment on that from my own personal experience in a few minutes at full bloom. It would provide a forum for local leaders to share knowledge, learn about possibilities and best practices. Find ways to improve and collaborate and to replicate things across municipalities and cities. You'll also provide a pathway for local officials to elevate the community level of perspectives into a national conversation about choosing, and about closing the digital divide, and by the way that is extremely important, you heard, you saw that on the video a couple of times. So let me talk to you from my point of view. I have joined personally in is recording in progress. We've joined next century cities in 2015, and we did it with a lot of forethought, we needed all of those things. Our mayor put out the challenge that he wanted Lexington city to become a Gig City, we've had, we had providers but the providers had not invested in a long time. So it was a way to educate ourselves. It was the quickest way to educate ourselves. Secondly, we were able to talk in within a network and to collaborate with other cities that have looked for solution, and found solutions. And third, but probably most importantly, these days, it provided us an opportunity to give voice at that national level. I can't tell you how important that is in today's environment. We all know that we're going to get federal funding. We all know that that's going to help us to close that digital divide. But to do that, within an organizational structure that is recognized that for many many years was invaluable. And by the way, Lexington city is now one of the largest gig cities, we were able to build out, and we were able to do that with the help of next century cities.
Now I'd like to introduce Ryan Johnston, he's the Policy Counsel for federal programs, who has been a valuable addition to the next century cities team, but before coming to next century cities in 2020. Ryan completed a legal fellowship, I'm going to read it so I get it right. With the Computer and Communications Industry Association. He also worked as a tech policy issues, As an intern at the Federal Communications Commission and the White House Office of Science and Technology policies. And by the way, I have benefited from this our city has benefited from his involvement. His leadership on low income programs, spectrum and network resilience, have helped to expand next century City's policies footprint at a time when community level perspectives are desperately needed to inform policy. Ryan works to create opportunities for local officials to document insight and proceedings where federal broadband policy is made his personal experience with the digital divide, that continues to affect people in his hometown, it's coupled with the opportunity to impact policies that will be there for years to come. Our constant motivation, and trust me, we as a city have benefited from that. So we are grateful for his contributions, Ryan, I'm going to turn it over to you.
Thank you all for that absolutely lovely introduction. As she mentioned, my name is Ryan Johnston the Policy Counsel for federal programs here at NCC. And over the last year, we've seen so many great strides in federal broadband level in federal level broadband policymaking. The establishment of the emergency broadband Benefit Program and the emergency connectivity fund are helping to bring connectivity to more households through affordability programs, and allowing schools and libraries to do more to help the communities that they are so central to, as we continue through these programs. We're working to document community level concerns, and trying to take those to the FCC and take those to the people that need to hear them to make sure that as we're working towards creating a more permanent program, or new policies, it's easier for consumers to get enrolled. It's easier for communities to understand what they need to do to get signed up, and it's easier for us to get people connected. Additionally, and this is really critical broadband has become such a serious priority for both the White House and Congress, we've continued to see time and time again that senators, representatives, and White House staff are working so very hard to really reach into the communities that they represent. To find those stories and those challenges that they can then implement into new policies to make sure that we're actually meaningfully closing the digital divide. And really, at the very base of this. We're trying to make certain that communities are consulted, as new broadband funding opportunities are crafted debated and implemented. We're working very hard to ensure that new broadband connectivity solutions meet community needs regardless of geography or demographics, really. It doesn't matter who you are where you are or what you have. We need to make sure that you're connected, and with all of that said, it is my pleasure to introduce the creative genius that has masterminded much of today's events. So Britney Ray Gregory is our communications director and she is the artistic visionary that is responsible for our outlet, our outstanding newsletter content. And many of the things that all of our members and those who sign up for our emails, interact with regularly. Pretty raise dedication to our team's perfection is incredibly motivational. She's consistently striving to support us and to make all of our work better. And she does all of this while caring for her new family which is monumental in and of itself. The amount of passion that she puts into everything that she does. And I think I can speak for the entire team when I say this is nothing if not all inspiring. So with that, I'll turn it over to Brittany rate to give you an update.
Thanks so much, Ryan, um as Ryan said I'm Brittany Ryan Gregory and I'm NCCS communications director in our increasingly digital world, especially over the course, we know that communication is critical to fostering relationships with members and our stakeholders. I encourage you to keep up with what NCC and our members are doing through our publications like Ryan mentioned, we have our monthly newsletter that features the voices of on the ground leaders and discusses current issues in broadband. We also have our blog and of course our social media channels where we keep up with the broadband conversation in real time. We do know that communication is dynamic, so we're always looking to improve. If you have suggestions for how you would like to receive the information that we share, or if you have information that you would like for us to share about your community please do feel free to reach out to us via the email address provided on the last page of the program booklet. And I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Lucas Peters at Lucas is truly the backbone of NCC. He's a great team player, and he's always willing to step in to assist or take the lead, a lifelong student, he's eager to learn, but I have to say that we learn the most from Lucas. He keeps us on our toes when it comes to current events in both the broadband space and outside of the broadband space. One of my favorite things that he keeps us abreast of our workplace tick tock trends. But in all seriousness, I've learned so much from Lucas about digital redlining, and the significance of broadband access in the LGBT community, especially among you know he's pretty accomplished in his own right, he's definitely just getting started. I look forward to seeing what positive impact Lucas has on equity and digital inclusion in the broadband space. Lucas Pietrzak.
Thanks so much, Brittany, right. I was bringing her he said, my name is Lucas Pietrzak and I have the honor of serving as the program director for partnerships and campaigns for next century cities, as some of you know I've been with MCC for about two years and over the course of that tenure, I've held a number of positions but all of them have given me the pleasure of interacting with the local officials that you're going to get to meet today, with over 220 members, our network is full of active dedicated and passionate elected and career officials who are working day and night to close the digital divide in their communities. It is our honor and our privilege to listen to them every day, whenever I sit down in the meeting, I always think about what NCC uniquely brings to the table, and it's truly these stories, as someone who has a background in academia and Washington. I think a lot about how quickly we can lose sight of what is happening on the ground and outside of the beltway. This conference allows us to step back and listen, something that people in DC can often forget to do our communities range from small villages to large metropolises, and the governments that support them vary widely. While we have many part time mayors, all of our officials are full time neighbors, they see their constituents in the grocery store at the soccer field and walking down the street. We must continue to rely on them for more than ceremonial insight, but instead return arguments and policy proposals and what they bring to the table. We're also extremely thankful for the generous support of our sponsors who have made today's conference and the fantastic platform possible our platinum sponsor Google Fiber our bronze sponsor the seagull family endowment, and our official streaming partner the greater Washington DC chapter of the Internet Society. We're also always grateful for the ongoing organizational support of the Ford Foundation. Open Society Foundations, the media democracy fund. The Robert Deutsch foundation and Google, they ensure that next century cities can continue to make an impact all year long. And I would be remiss not to mention the thanks we have for our organizational allies, both in Washington and across the country. They collaborate with us regularly and they contribute to this amazing policy ecosystem. Since 2014 Our allies have ensured that we can create strong coalition's and partnerships that help us set our two of our foundational goals, elevating local voices and closing the digital divide. I now have the honor and pleasure of introducing one of my favorite humans on planet Earth, and my partner in this mission, Korean Zacher before coming to next century cities Korean researched and worked on telecom policy issues at the University of Colorado Law School, where they earned their JD, while at Colorado, Colorado Law, excuse me, Korean studied communicate telecommunications long policy, and served as the editor in chief of the Colorado technology Law Journal, and their student note paving the road to fiber readers learn about federal technology policies impact on local broadband deployment, I always joke that somehow Korea as our policy council for state and local initiatives can somehow keep up with 50 state capitals, the territories, and what's happening locally in almost every municipality across the country. I would now like to introduce someone who I consider a superhero and a whiz when it comes to broadband, our policy council for state and local initiatives, Korean Zacher.
Thank you so much for that warm welcome Lucas, I'm Korean Zacher in CCS Policy Council for state and local initiatives in the last year his states and communities across the country have joined the local leaders and NPCs membership by making broadband access and adoption priorities. At the same time, those communities face numerous challenges to ensuring that every person in their community has the broadband access they need a little over a year in DC has uplifted local voices in numerous states, supporting communities nationwide. California is an excellent example of NCCS increase in sharing community perspectives at the state level, since last fall when Governor Newsom signed the state's broadband Executive Order NCC has filed letters to the governor's office and legislature and shared policy recommendations with the California Public Utilities Commission. Each of those filings discusses the importance of centering community needs in the state's broadband policy and inviting local leaders to be a part of statewide strategies to address the digital divide in May and Tuesday's Executive Director Francisco Chiloe took the that perspective a step further in her congressional testimony, lifting up community voices to the US House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on communications and technology, raising attention to the vital importance of developing collaborative, innovative, and inclusive solutions to reach those who remain disconnected is Transalta signature move. Now, it's my great pleasure to introduce NCCS fearless leader and tireless digital equity advocate, friends, hello,
hello. Thank you so much Korean. You are my ambassador of Kwan. I want to start by just, number one, a pointing out Korea and your outstanding uncompromising that work ethic and Compassionate Leadership that charges our team. Lucas Britney Ray, and Ryan, the overwhelming success of this conference is in particular because of you. And I also want to mention that Altona rhondella and Josh, your voices, and elevating local leaders helps shape how we do what we do. Clearly, we are a small organization with big ambitions that really dwarf our size. We believe in each other's work. We value good ideas over tenure, we treat requests from local leaders like calls for help from neighbors that our own hometown for years local leaders have faced obstacles in participating in federal and state policymaking forums and don't always have adequate resources to be able to support broadband programs. So that's part of what makes next century cities work so critical. We stand in the gap as a partner. We Center Community perspectives into broadband PolicyMaking at every level of government, making it better. We lift up the voices of local leaders in rooms where they are rarely invited at next century cities we not only work to close the digital divide, that's in front of us today, but we're also working to avoid the digital divide, that's around the corner in the future. We want to make sure that Petaluma Petaluma, California is able to discover East Liverpool Ohio as a tourist destination. We want sixth graders in Sumter, South Carolina to be able to have the same ability to study robotics as those in West Des Moines, Iowa. We want the people in Greenville Illinois to be able to age in place while the graduates in Gainesville Florida and Rochester New York see possibilities to stay and give back to their communities, instead of finding ways to search for ways out. Whether you're a local leader, starting to improve your broadband strategies or a community advocate that is just looking for a place to start. There is room for you in our village. We are constantly looking for ways to incorporate research into policy discussions, lift up organizations who are working on the digital divide, and to find new partners on cross sectional issues that relate to climate change, food insecurity housing insecurity, and other issues that are all tied to broadband access. We believe that the most revolutionary ideas are in places that are far away from the Capitol. That's why last year, we set out to unearth the stories in places like Albuquerque Detroit Long Beach Huntsville Mesa and Memphis. And we were lucky to tap into Memphis Jackson's talents. He is a writer, a community activist and a public servant. And we're lucky to be able to have him here with us today to introduce our keynote speaker.
Hello everyone, my name is Memphis Jackson. And next century cities, Our team is committed to research that highlights our current challenges and available solutions. While 45 of US households have access to the Internet of some kind in 2018 US census data show that households where the homeowner has a bachelor's degree or higher. That's laptop computer ownership exceeds 93%. However in households where the home owner did not graduate high school, that figures sharply Josh to 45%. I encourage each of each one of you to take some time to browse the case studies, reports and articles in our website, you will realize the importance of a nuanced and critical view of the challenges we face, and an understanding and an understanding of how visionaries and engaged community partners are critical to our future success. Today we have with us a special guests who embodies the optimism and leadership so necessary at the local level, for working for world class, Internet access and adoption, that is fully accessible to all residents data and pass as Waltons Ward nine city councilor. Austin born and walk them race, pause, and seated that 30 year incumbent, by running a grassroots campaign that prioritize working families, and as first times. And as our working families, and as first times pas has proposed ubiquitous ordinances to provide tenant protections, realistic, affordable housing and tree protection measures, measures. Constant applause. As an experienced union representative, having worked at both public and private sector unions. He's worked with SEIU Local 888 And most recently, SEIU CIR where he supported medical residents and fellows at Boston Medical Center and Cambridge hospital throughout the pandemic, his engagement with and deep focus on Washington's working classes, provides him with a critical and understanding critical understanding of the role of that equitable and world class broadband access and adoption can play in the economic and social well being of our cities and towns in his spare time constant apos dedicates himself to advocacy salsa dancing bachata and chess. He's excited to give back to the city that gave so much to him. So relax, and enjoy the next few moments of thought and discussion. I believe that you will come away with a sense of our collective future. That is both inspiring and unifying. So the floor is yours.
Thank you so much, madness. And thank you to century cities next century cities for the opportunity. It is quite an honor here to share the story of wealth and struggle for digital equity. Again my name is Jonathan fosse I'm the ward nine Counselor of the city of Waltham, I have the privilege and honor of serving here in the south side. And yeah, I just would like to thank everyone here who either you're an elected official or an advocate. Thank you for helping develop this social movement for next generation, Internet. This is a social movement, unlike any in recent history the fight for digital equity is a 21st century phenomenon, and one that is uniquely intersectional access to reliable broadband intersects all facets of social life, from access to virtual classes to working remotely from working remotely from home to telemedicine, the Digital Highway is universal. Furthermore this matters intersection in who it impacts this issue, this, this issue impacts our youth seniors, working families, people of color, just about every marginalized and underrepresented group is deeply impacted by lack of access to reliable broadband. So with the following I want to I want to share some local insights and some stories about our efforts in Waltham, and I would like to end on a more global note. And I would just like to emphasize digital equity is as universal as it is intersectional. So in short, I want to share the good the bad and the ambitious, so bit about Waltham, everyone thinks about Massachusetts we think about Boston Boston's like the center of the Massachusetts universe, it's not. We have a lot of towns and cities, and the greater Boston region, where basically next to Boston Waltham exists as a blue collared city for 63,000 people. We have a lot of immigrants. We have a lot of Central American and Ugandan immigrants, just to give you an idea of what our school system look like. We have over 50% of our student population that's English language learning. So we have a huge Latin X population that's growing, and we have a great need. Actually that we're, we have, it's like a microcosm of what diversity would look like in Massachusetts. So, it is, you know, maybe a little bit, Uh, it was, it was a bit of a learning experience for me as I got into office, just how great the digital gap was here. So I want to share two stories as to how we, from a public policy perspective, address digital inequities, and these stories have mixed results. I want to start on a more successful note, and then on the less successful note, but really my goal here is to encourage folks to learn from, not just my experience but out of people, of working class people here in Waltham, there's absolutely, I think a lot to learn, not just from a substantive point right technological access, but also from a process point, how do we actually develop better public policy that uses technology to serve the public interest. Right. So I want to share the first part on. I think in a more successful note. So when the quarantine started, we realized immediately, immediately that there was a huge digital divide. I got a lot of phone calls from neighbors, some people that were close to me about a lot of families having to go to Burger King parking lots to access their homework assignments. We had quite a spectacle happening at a private establishment. I remember one particular family that went to a HANA efforts to upload documents to receive rental assistance, those type of stories traumatize me in a way because these are people that I represent and serve, but also they, they educate you and inform you that there is a need. So what I did in response to hearing these stories right because a lot of our students weren't able to access online education. I sent a strong worded email to our school committee, I copied the mayor and I copied all my fellow city councilors, one would have thought I was being passive aggressive but in the email, I just made sure they understood. You know my rule may not be an education but this is a deeply intersectional issue. So what started as an emails, sparked a broader conversation with administrators. And we did a survey. Essentially, we knew the survey was that it was for people who had Internet.
But we realized that over 10% of our student population lack the access to reliable Internet. As you can tell there's an irony behind the statistic because the numbers, probably larger right we had people who were not able to fill out the survey and actually share their need. But we, what we did was essentially, we started realizing and observing and studying the issue. I ended up connecting a number of our school administration to a neighbor who happened to have a partner. He had a previous experience with T Mobile, so he had experience in the industry, and he helped us develop a beautiful private public partnership with T Mobile where we invested, we fast tracked an investment for hundreds of hotspots. It's like a multi year year partnership, and we were able to deliver. We delivered hundreds of new hotspots to youth pretty sizable coverage, and we were able to ramp up our investment in distribution in Chromebooks. So this is, you can say counselor, this is a great story, you know, you solve the problem, not quite. We were able to respond to let's say the fire right then to start a quarantine we're able to increase our distribution of hotspots and technology right Chromebooks, but it wasn't enough. We did not have enough hotspots to go around, we do not have enough Chromebooks to go around and we essentially put a bandaid into what is a broader problem, and that's just my insights, I think it's a remarkable thing that we came together to help our youth, but what I began to understand right, was that we had our seniors who didn't have access to technology, they don't even know how to, you know, navigate, Internet Explorer. So, we realized that we needed a broader more ambitious solution, me and another counselor, a few other counselors filed a very ambitious resolution to provide public Wi Fi in the city. We wanted to create kind of a digital comments right so if you needed something you can step outside and actually access the Internet. We, we had a did a lot of research we learned what the differences from public Wi Fi to municipal broadband, they're not the same. And we came up with a three stage plan. First we wanted to just provide public Wi Fi across several key points in the city, from where our points of public transit to our playgrounds to Moody Street which is kind of the commercial Heart of the South side, you know we have a lot of shops, we have a lot of barber shops and restaurants. We wanted to make sure that we at least provided access that attracts, we wanted to show people this is something we can invest in and this is something that can disproportionately benefit your life. The second phase would have been mesh mesh networks, excuse me, essentially for public housing. And the third phase would have been actually investing in municipal broadband, where we would have invested in fibre to home technology. So we did all this research we presented this resolution. And four months I advocated to the mayor and to my peers, and unfortunately got a lackluster response, we had this beautiful resolution we had these amazing people research, you know, subject matter experts come in. And the response was, was really I think insightful. If, of course disappointing but very insightful. I remember, you know there are parents at our PTOs, who, from Latin X backgrounds decided to sign a letter of support we had 75 Latin X family sent a letter of support. And basically, advocating for themselves and saying we really want you to invest in public Wi Fi. And the response I got was from other counselors because you know you're trying to fill the room, trying to see what is the political will and it fell on deaf ears. I had some people, I don't want to name names and I'm this is not anything antagonizing any anyone it's just these are some of the responses I got some council, some people municipal leaders, you know basically asked me, Are you super persistent in giving people free stuff,
that it's hard to have to get me to loose, to have a lack of words. But when I heard the word free stuff, I just realized there's a real disconnect, no pun intended, between our understanding of this issue. And I had another one mentioned another leader mentioned, why can't they just work harder and pay for their Internet service like everyone else. So, you know, it was clear that, you know, they thought that just providing hotspots to the youth, and, you know, doing it for a very short period private part, private public partnership was enough. So obviously, there wasn't this understanding that this is a very intersectional issue and it's not just an educational issue. And what ended up happening is you know we ended up not doing anything remotely. Beyond the the hotspots, we didn't actually do anything with our capital budget or operational budget that would have amplified or invested on it towards public Wi Fi or municipal broadband. And of course, you know, the fights not over, and of course I think that there's a lot of room for people to learn, and of course we have federal money that's on the way that can be dispersed in this in this way, but what I what I learned from these couple experiences right, one of them are more successful and one of them less successful experience is that we will not achieve digital equity from a top down approach. There needs to be a community led effort, and we need community education and leadership as to how broadband works. I'm reminded from the quote by Lionel Watson. If you, if you have come here to help me. You're wasting your time. But if you have come, because your liberation is bound up with mine. Then let us work together. So we ended up developing. After you know, after I couldn't actually have my resolution up for a vote because it wouldn't have actually accomplished much, we ended up developing a community group called high tech walsim, and this community group is still in it's an initiation phase, we've, we've amassed quite a following from educators to neighbors to other subject matter experts, I am not the most technical person in the room, but we do have very technical and ambitious people who have been willing to volunteer and work together. And we, we've, we've run into several. We have several projects in mind like having a digital equity townhall, but we also have diverging bowls, let's say diverging views because some folks come from different backgrounds, and this is the nuance, right, this is the new ones that we can get away from this is, this is the grassroots, at its finest, because we do have differences as to how we view the problem. And but we have more differences as to how we will solve it. And this is all to say, we're very much a committee that's up and running, but it's also, I think, representative of some of the actual grassroots efforts and struggles that we will have along the way, because again, this can't be top down. This needs to be a bottom up effort. So I want to end on a more global note. And I apologize that this goes a little bit beyond the scope of this conference, but I do want to know I love the comparison to broadband being the new electricity. I think it's, I think it's genius I think it's great. But just like electricity, we need to, you know, let's think about electricity, we nuanced electricity nowadays, because we want clean and renewable energy, right, we understand that global warming is a thing. And it's not suffice to say, electricity for all right we need clean and renewable, we need to clean, renewable energy grid. And in the same way. We need to advocate for for broadband, that is net neutral, that ensures data privacy, and ensures algorithm fairness, we can't just talk about the Digital Highway, and not mention how worldwide technological innovations are being used against democratic participation. We all heard in the past, past few days about spyware against journalists and activists, it's old news about government surveillance systems, putting down social unrest and social movements, or worse, how algorithms are reinforcing misinformation in America about elections, and unfortunately about COVID we need to do much more than just advocate, advocate for broadband. So the question I have for everyone. Can, can the struggle for high speed, affordable and reliable broadband, be one that promotes democracy, and not derails it.
We do it. I know this is a loaded question, and I believe broadband is part of not just our country's infrastructure, but the social infrastructure of our time. This is a movement for digital equity and justice, and let us remember that we work together as we advocate together. And as we push together for a more visually united world, and I hope you agree. Thank you again for the opportunity to share with you some of our stories, and I'm very much looking forward to questions and answers.
Thank you so much counselor paws and there are so many layers that need to be peeled apart in the things that you said, and one of the things that you ended on specifically talking about can we together. Think about how we can advance broadband and also promote democracy at the same time. Can you talk a little bit about what you think, even if you were to be successful in expanding broadband access, how would that shape democracy and civic participation in Waltham.
Clearly, I mean, we can simultaneously. And the achievement gap right. It's an old term but, you know, educational achievement right, you have a lot of students of color who are underachieving again it's a loaded term but we can make sure that we have better educational achievement because students can actually participate in the classroom, participate offline. And we can also make sure that people have access to the local economy. Right, we can bridge, a variety of things, whether they're economic or related to public health. We have a lot of seniors right now who are afraid to step outside and they may be in need of therapy, or they may want to connect with their families, and those are some of the more heartbreaking stories right. I remember fielding a question from someone who was like, I don't know how to use my computer and I miss my family. And it's just interesting how bridging the digital divide can also bridge, a social divide. So I think in Waltham we have, we're really a microcosm of what diversity looks like and what those inequities look like and it's funny because everything points towards digital equity, everything, and bridging the social inequalities inequities really translate to that technological need,
when you are thinking about your work to socialize ideas about digital equity Build Community Support, and really thinking about what it takes to take those first few steps, especially after you recognized that not everyone had the same understanding of why everyone needs equal access and why some people will always need just a little bit more support, because the comment that you made specifically about saying why should we give things away. There are people in other cities that are facing that same opposition. So when you're thinking about the work that you did to start building support for digital equity. How did you get started and what advice would you give to other local officials working on those same objectives.
Yeah, I mean I think the first one is just making a mental note that if you want to participate in this. You have to be willing to be almost the dumbest person in the room. And that's what I ended up feeling we reached out to a lot of journalists, people who were in the industry, private industry, and they had a lot of technical technological know how that I had no idea what they were talking about. But that's just on a mental note, you have to be willing to learn, and it's a beautiful thing when you can amass a diverse a diverse coalition, and that's really the goal is to make it a diverse coalition. We have folks who are educators in a school system to parents to people who are seniors or helping seniors get access to technology and broadband, and it's just a really, I would say, be humble, build the right coalition, and ensure that, you know, you do focus on that educational piece for the rest of the community, and that's something that we really want to emphasize is sharing more information right in this conference we're using a lot of beautiful words, but some of them, you know, it could create a more technical barrier, at least linguistically, because a lot of people don't know what the difference is between public Wi Fi and broadband or what it means to be, you know those digital inequities what those look like. So that's something that we're very much. We learned from Cambridge, we have a lot of advocates in Cambridge, and we really took their lessons to heart because they said hey, when you're going to get involved in this, make sure you're not just advocating to the powerful people, right, they said they told us from day one, form a community group because power is slowly moving or recognizing or maybe unwilling to recognize this issue. So we have been thankful for folks in Cambridge, but I'm also thankful for my, for my intern and now ally and struggle Julia Geller, who has been helping me push and develop a lot of materials to, to spread the good word.
Well we are fans and also your allies, and you'll also have some support in the chat from David Eisenberg and brink Jones, I want to lift up a question from Quincy B, how do we best ensure we are providing digital inclusion, without transferring community agency and equity upstream.
Yeah, I mean I think that's something that I mentioned a little bit but I think the community needs to be involved or asked where we're are, and we need better, better than digital surveys, but we really need to survey our communities and ask people, How do you need it and where do you need it, because there are places where I think folks really want to have access to broadband and then there are other people who may feel like there are specific ways that they may need it and we, we can't as public officials, we can't just guess, or try to speculate into people's lives, right, and I just knew, for example, the playground, idea was something that was pushed from a lot of students at least something that from a lot of student issues, because students always go to the playgrounds, and if they can bring or do their homework there, we would be elevating this this issue the situation a lot more than just advocating for something else somewhere else, if that makes sense.
It does. And we do have time for it. We'll take one more audience question but I do want to share some, get your opinion on something. So, very often in our filings, we are very always want to make sure that we're highlighting that local officials have a different type of accountability to their constituents, specifically because very often you guys might shop at the same grocery store your kids might go to the same school, you might go to the same church, I think there are different layers of accountability when you are confronted with the people that you have to serve. If you were speaking directly to either federal or state policymakers about the conversations that they are having without local officials, or the conversations that could actually benefit from local input, what would you share.
I would, I would tell them so much. Give us the tools we need to do our job. That is my message give us the tools because if the federal government doesn't do its job, state governments struggle, and if state governments can't do their job, towns and cities pay the price. And I think if COVID has taught anyone anything, at least about government is that at least municipalities will have your back, because we couldn't flinch or we couldn't think twice before we made investments. Unlike the federal government that's slower unlike state governments that are a little bit slower. And we we we had budget deficits to overcome, you know, and we are nearest to the pain. And I just, anyone who wants to I'm lucky to have a great senator here, who's a great advocate but other senators and US officials like, I just want to tell them, give us the tools we need. Don't walk away from the job don't walk away from the responsibility we have to provide to the folks here back home. This is an opportunity maker, it's not something that's free. And this is really the way that we can secure access to what we call the American dream. So I just want them to give us the resources we can do our job. I do
want to ask you one last question as we wrap up for what's at stake for Waltham and even all of the cities that you touch that I do want to highlight in the chat for those people who are watching on the live stream from Sol tenant Banach bomb a comment saying that as one of those folks in Cambridge, we appreciate Councillor pauses, shout out and wish are our own leaders will could listen and learn to this lesson, the city believes in top down solutions that have failed in the past. We hear you saw we appreciate your input. Councillor pause when you are thinking about what is at stake for your residents, and you're thinking about basically galvanizing not only local leaders but also community support. What is it that you want them to know about your work and your tenure as counselor.
Thank you. Um, I mean I think I'm just reminded of people in Burger King parking lots in people needing to go to Burger King parking lots in the 21st century, right, people needing to get kicked out of the Hannaford superstore to to access legal documents or get support. I think about working mothers who suffered from domestic violence, and don't have access to the Internet to fill out court documents before they're evicted from their house, right. This issue is more salient than ever. And the only way we're going to actually address it as we address it from a lens of compassion and intersectionality. No one owns this issue. Everyone, everyone is deeply impacted by digital inequity, so we are going to bridge, other inequities in our social world, we need to make sure that it's also rooted in technological infrastructure, or else we're not going to get very far. So, so those who want to listen. My message that
you shared that to remind people that this is everyone's issue. It doesn't matter if you're a broadband expert or just a concerned citizen, this touches each and every one of us, we can't thank you enough just for sharing your thoughts in your words, and I want to remind you that your passion is contagious. Because when we have one municipality that is fired up about broadband, all of them in this policies that they touch benefit. So, thank you so much. Councillor pause for people who continue to have questions we are happy to pass those along, we will be sure to share information in the chat but again we appreciate your time. Now we are going to be turning to some of our allies in Texas, to talk a little bit about the work that they are doing to actually partner with philanthropic partners, nonprofit partners, and also what they're doing to initiate change, all the way from the state office down to communities. So Kelty Garbee I will turn it over to you.
Thank you so much. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Kelty Garbee and I'm the Executive Director of Texas rural funders. We're a statewide philanthropic membership organization focused on bringing attention and resources to rural Texas, And we focus our efforts on projects that require collective action and that can't be solved by one organization alone. I'm going to start by introducing the two panelists who are joining me today. We have Cassandra hewn, who's the vice president of workforce development and analytics at borderplex Alliance in El Paso, where they work across the borders between Texas Mexico and New Mexico. We also have Lonnie hunt, Executive Director of the deep East Texas Council of Governments based in Lufkin, Texas, serving in 11 County regions, we're gonna hear much more from Cassandra and Lani in a few minutes, but I want to start by sharing some background about how Texas rural funders got involved in this work and some state level contexts that will inform the conversation in 2017, Texas rural thunders began discussing ways to meet the broadband needs of rural regions and we approached it very much from an equity lens that participation in the modern world requires access to high quality brought broadband, and that, as you all know includes everything from education and health care to applying for jobs and running businesses. So we began by reaching out to an organization called ConnectED nation and funding them to conduct listening tours in rural communities across the state in a rural community that wanted to talk about broadband connected nation was willing to go there and listen, and based on what we learned we funded connected nation to work with 30 communities to develop Community Technology action plans.
This work which began in 2019 brought communities together to survey their residents and outline their broadband needs in order to make a business case and to execute a plan for bringing broadband to their communities, and one of the most important aspects of this work was testing data speeds and mapping infrastructure in order to get an accurate picture of what is and most importantly what's not available in rural regions specifically. So the goal was to translate that into accurate and useful data that could be used to guide the work across the state. Fast forward to 2019. We knew three things we knew that our legislature which meets every other year would convene again in 2021. We knew that Texas had no statewide broadband office, and no statewide broadband plan and so what that meant was that when communities in Texas applied for federal funds. They were automatically at a disadvantage and lost points on their applications, because we didn't have a plan. We knew that we needed to address our challenges through policy, and that while we firmly believed in equal and do believe in equal access. We also needed to appeal to others through the lens of economic competitiveness. So even if we had had a crystal ball at that time, there's no way we could have known that a global pandemic would painfully expose all of the inequity in both urban and rural communities and highlight the specific challenges related to access adoption in use, which can differ as you all know in urban and rural communities. So when the legislative session began last year we had a new set of operating conditions, and we realized that there was an opportunity to be much bolder because we didn't have to convince others or explain why broadband is so important, because everyone was living it already. So two things that Texas rule funders did at the beginning of the legislative session last year were to commission case studies on rural communities, working to bring broadband, And when we did this for two reasons. There are so many deficit based stories that show what not working in rural areas. But these stories show what is working and what rural communities are doing. And we also know that stories are an important way for people to understand the challenges and the opportunities so we wanted to be able to show the legislature that rural communities across the state are working hard to help themselves, and that they can be much more successful if there was a statewide broadband office and broadband plan. The second thing we did was partner with two other organizations Greater Houston partnership, and Texas 2036 to form what's called the Digital Texas coalition, the statewide coalition is focused on ensuring that all Texans have access to reliable and affordable digital connectivity. And so while it began with three organizations it expanded to a coalition of 40 different organizations all speaking with one voice. And as it became clear that there was momentum and support in the legislature for creating a statewide broadband office, there was a lot of differing opinions about where it would be located the coalition, sent a letter signed by over 90 organizations supporting the creation of an office, and requesting that it be located in the Office of the Comptroller, which handles a significant amount of federal funding already. So, I'm happy to report that the legislation passed and just last week there was a signing ceremony for House Bill five so that's a victory. But the work has required and will continue to require the support and participation of both urban and rural communities and leaders, as our office is established and the plan is developed. And so I want to say that the I think the most important thing to recognize is the ongoing efforts of communities who are on the ground doing the hard work, and we need to continue to elevate and recognize that. And so that includes communities like East Texas, where the DPS Texas Council of Governments, under Ronnie's leadership commissioned a 12 counties study to look at the economic impact of having broadband in the region and in El Paso where borderplex Alliance is coordinating the digital El Paso coalition, and this is a partnership that's addressing both urban and rural broadband needs. So I'm gonna start off our first question and ask Lonnie to speak and then Kassandra. Can you all give us a brief overview of where you are in your broadband work, tell us about who your partners are and what the progress has been so far.
Thank you Kelty. I'm going to start with the partners and of course. Money makes the world go around so I'm going to start with our funding partners because we've, we have too many partners to try to name all of them. But, as far as funding our efforts so far. We've had one state agency which is the Texas General Land Office of Federal agency which is the US economic development administration, private foundation which is the tll temple Foundation.
And those are really the funding partners who help have helped us financially get where we are. We've also worked very closely with the four electric cooperatives that service, our region. And they have been extremely helpful and cooperative to us. In fact, our proposed network design for what we hope to do and plan to do is based primarily upon using the infrastructure existing infrastructure of the electric cooperatives. As far as where we are and what we've done, as you mentioned, the first step we took was to commission a regional feasibility study and market analysis, and we started this three and a half years ago, no one had heard of COVID-19. We believe we are one of the most, maybe the most underserved regions in the state in the nation because we are a totally rural region we have no urban centers. We have over 10,000 square miles geographically we're larger than six complete states, but it's totally rural, and so as a result, we saw what our problem was, but three and a half years ago, I don't think the rest of the world could grasp what we were dealing with so we felt we had the need to prove up our case, and do it with actual, factual data. And so we contracted with Ericsson, and using a big name worldwide technology leader like that, I think, added a lot to our case, and they developed the the feasibility study market analysis which showed us what we already knew but proved it to the rest of the world that we were trying to get the attention of and also gave us a roadmap as to how to go about trying to deal with it. After that our next step was developing network design which is the high level desktop engineering and design of a broadband network that would serve our rural region. This is the type of thing that you have to have in order to go and successfully apply for funding from the FCC, or USDA or are various other federal agencies where funding is available. They want to see that you have a solid certified engineering plan and cost analysis to prove up what you're trying to do and what you're asking money for. And the third big step which is where we are now is simply pursuing the money to start construction, so far we've had one success we've had one near miss. We have been awarded a $9 million grant, which will allow us to begin constructing our rural regional network in one of our counties Newton County, which is our Far Eastern county along the Louisiana border. At the same time that we applied for the 9 million we applied for a separate $100 million grant. If we had been successful with that that would have been the game changer that we were looking for because that would have funded a network that would have gone into all 12 of our counties wouldn't have completed our mission which is to serve every single inch of our region, but it would have given us the framework and started providing service in all 12 counties, and it would have been a game changer. Unfortunately, we missed out on that 100 million dollar grant by two and a half points in the grant competition. And so, you know these things are very competitive and the particular competition we were going after, there was a billion dollars available and there were $6 billion in applications, most of which were traditional infrastructure projects. We were trying to take advantage of this opportunity for broadband but we got close not quite so we're now really getting ready to start our progress, progress project in Newton County. At the same time analyzing reevaluating where we are, where we can get funding to move the entire regional project forward. And we are encouraging our local counties and cities, not to sit back and wait for us to get this done but to look for any and every opportunity so as a result we now have at least one of our counties and I think we're going to have a second one. Partnering with their local telco and making an application for the NTIA funding that's coming up. So, while we're trying to address this need on a regional basis, we are supporting anybody and everybody, whether it be a local government or a current industry provider, or the electric cooperatives who are not in the broadband business in our region, yet it's very much interested in seeing that it happens. And we're just looking for every opportunity, whether it be regional level, with us, our individual efforts throughout our region. The one thing we have to keep in mind we're dedicated to is at the end of the day, everybody has to be served. We cannot allow the cherry picking to continue, and we just cannot sit by idly and let millions and hundreds of millions of dollars of our federal tax dollars be awarded to providers who are not going to blanket coverage, a blanket covering the entire area but continue to cherry pick some of that is not the providers fault some of that is the FCC fault because they're hung up on trying to direct money specifically to unserved households, and as a result, they're missing the boat on a lot of things but anyway that's where we are right now.
Thank you, Lonniei so Kassandra, can you give us an overview of your work, including the partners and the progress that you all have made.
Yes, definitely. And thank you all for the opportunity for us to talk a little bit more about what digital pasa has been up to. So, as Kelsey had mentioned, I am a part of the borderplex alliance and we are an economic development organization that represents El Paso, Texas, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and to Aquarius, which is in Mexico. And so our organization focuses in two areas. One being advocacy, and the second being business recruitment expansion and retention. And so ultimately our group has been called to manage what is called Digital passo, and what I hope you notice as I talk a little bit more about our group, is that a lot of this is really focused on economic development, even the partners that we include they're all very much involved in economic development. And so, just you know, digital Paso. It's a county wide coalition of public private and nonprofit partners, and we were formally organized in November of 2020 and I say formally because we had a core group that was planning before digital Paso started meeting. And so, our county wide effort means that we have both urban and rural areas that we need to find solutions for as Kelsey had mentioned. And so our partners include the county of El Paso, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the El Paso Community Foundation which acts as our fiscal agent. We also have Cisco Microsoft Rio Grande the Council of Governments, the University of Texas at El Paso, and our local education service center region 19, which oversees and provides services to the local school districts also involved in this effort is our local Workforce Board, also the north the Health Foundation, the city of El Paso, El Paso electric which is our electric utility provider. And of course we also have a couple of our local service providers involved. But since our formal formation back in November. We have established regular Friday meetings, where each Friday is devoted to a specific topic, and the appropriate partners included in those meetings. So for example, at the end of the month, on our last Friday, we host along with our nearby sister broadband group in New Mexico club Banyana broadband, we host a learning session where we just bring in different industry leaders, or people that are working in this field to come and teach us what are they doing so we can always be learning new ideas. So for example, this month last Friday we'll be hearing from Dr. Guy Diedrich. He's the Vice President and Global Innovation Officer for Cisco Systems.
Also, I just wanted to let him know that we have also hosted three events since we started back in February we hosted el Paso's first digital inclusion summit where we had Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, and MasterCard, along with our Mo are multiple local businesses and civic leaders so they could discuss the importance and opportunities of this topic. We also hosted in the second quarter on a session for school districts where we featured opportunities available with Operation conductivity. And so if y'all aren't familiar with it operation connectivity is an initiative launched by Governor Abbott and the Texas Education, we can see, to work offer students in the state, access to a device. And so during the session we also highlighted two case studies. The first being in ector county audience D, and what they're doing with SpaceX, and the second being our very own kind of do ISD and their project called canopy or connect now canopy Connect is a project where the ISU is offering free Wi Fi to students that can be accessed from their homes in partnership with Cisco. And then recently, we just hosted an event to overview the state of broadband in El Paso County, the county of El Paso's currently working on a feasibility study in collaboration with the University of Texas at El Paso, and we hope to have that done by the end of the year. Now this is a great opportunity for our community here from the county about what their upcoming plans are and know that there is a bit of backup all that we're trying to do. And so along with these three events we've been coordinating with our local partners to apply for grants to help them three particular projects that we're currently pushing for the first hold 79905 projects in the central part of the city of El Paso. The second theme the cotton Valley connect project which will target the rural east part of El Paso County. And then the third one, even though it's fully funded. The coyote o connect project on the west side of El Paso, which is on the outskirts of the city. The last thing I would like to mention is that we have also been selected by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to take part in their first ever Digital Inclusion cohort. So we are one of four cities selected from the Dallas Fed district to participate in this three year partnership. And so digital passes extremely proud and thankful to have the opportunity with the Fed and their consultants Magellan advisors. Yes, thank you.
Thanks for sharing the, the momentum and activity in both communities. Now I want to get you all to talk about some of the challenges that your partnership has addressed, and how you will did that so Lonnie Let's start with you,
you're on mute. Thank you. We have tons of challenges. The thing I learned a long time ago is you have to sell the need before you can sell the solution. And you can't assume that other people see the need and understand the need, the way you did. And so, again, that's why our original feasibility study was so important to us because it was at a time when the rest of the world had not come to the realization which they have now of how important bro broadband is for everyone. Someone starting today, I think could skip that first step that we did, but for us it was really important to make our case, and give us the ammunition we needed to be able to go and pursue funding and pursue partnerships and stakeholders to make this happen. Among the obstacles that we have, because we are totally rural region. We're also heavily forested there for National Forest in Texas. They're all located within our region. The three largest reservoirs in Texas are here so it's very much a rural pine forest and lakes region and hilly and not mountainous but hilly and the hills and the pine forest just seem to soak up, you know Internet signal and makes it difficult, because of our rural nature, realistically, I don't know if we will ever get to the point that we literally have fibre to every home. So we probably need to have a multiple approach solution which includes as much fiber as we can get and a strong fiber backbone, and then probably wireless delivery to some of the more hard to serve more real remote locations, but right now they have nothing so we can get them 100 megabit wireless signal that's a home run for a lot of the people in our region. The, you know another obstacle we have is we're a historically depressed region, high unemployment, high poverty, you know, in just about every socio economic index we rank low health outcomes, educational attainment. We've seen ourselves falling farther and farther behind of our 12 counties, it's 11 now, but we're still working with the 12th wind so I want to say 12 But of those 12 counties, nine of them have had a decline in population since the last census, we're waiting on the new census but you know we are we are most of our communities are declining in population, it's all about jobs and economic opportunity, and so we have to figure this out and get everyone access to broadband and things like health care and educational benefits, those will come and everything it's like the rising tide lifting all boats. That's what we're looking for in our region. We fall a little farther behind the state and national averages, every year, as far as economic statistics and various other statistics, broadband is the key to turning that around. We won't catch up with the rest of Texas and the rest of the nation overnight, but with broadband, we can start to narrow that gap and gradually start to catch up and close the divide.
Kassandra, can you tell us about some of the challenges that your partnership has addressed
so far. Definitely so. You're gonna, you're gonna hear it and I know that Lonnie had already mentioned it but a really, the issue is identifying the need, like, really pinpointing the need. So as communities are doing work in the broadband space there is a barrier reencounter and that being the Federal Communications Commission or the FCC maps. So these maps they review, broadband access by census tract. So if there's a person on that blog that has access to broadband, they consider the whole area served, which unfortunately is not the case. So in order for us to be able to apply for pools of funding, or even make the case that an area needs to be served. We actually need to take the steps to be able to challenge those maps. And, you know, not only do those maps come into play but also our proximity to Mexico so you might not be able to see but like down the street, Mexico is right there in case you all haven't been here or been in the area we are on the westernmost part of Texas. We are along the US Mexico border, and our sister city and quad in Mexico is called squatters so to give you a perspective, if you were flying into the area. It literally looks like one huge city with like a little divider cutting through it. That's just how close we are. And so in some parts of El Paso, especially in the rural parts of El Paso County, there's an overlap where our residents would have a better signal coming from Mexico than they would in the US. And so how do you deal with that right. Well, we are taking all these factors into account with the feasibility report and market study being done by the University, which is being funded by the county of El Paso. So, ultimately we can challenge the maps and come up with a strategically to approach getting our entire community served. This also plays into digital passes vision of becoming the largest by national connected community in the world. So yeah, a lot of things, of course, once we hopefully set really strong groups here in El Paso, and like I had mentioned before, there is a Vinyasa broadband group that is doing work in Banyana in New Mexico right and right next to us. We are also going to start looking at ways that we can start working in aquatic Mexico because, like I mentioned, we're a whole region. And we want to make sure that all residents in our region have access to broadband. But another thing I wanted to point out to you all is, as many other communities probably already know we also face the issue of making sure that residents know what resources are available to them. So one way that is currently being tackled is through program that is common to border towns called the Roma tourist program. So our culture, Hispanic culture is very influenced by relationships are very tied to relationships so what these parameters are, they are well known individuals in their respective neighborhood, and they share programs and resources with the residents of the neighborhood, so they are a trusted individual, and they have that relationship and can persuade people and show them that they can actually take advantage of stuff that's available to them. One example of this is what we're doing in the 79905 project right where we're trying to actually upskill individuals in the whole digital space, so the Pramod todos program, initial goal was to serve 150 individuals, and have them complete a credential in the span of a year within her first two months 175 people completed their credential so it is a very effective program, at least for our border talent and we will probably take advantage of that as we continue to work in different pockets of the area but yeah those are two kind of areas that we see that there's problems and
thank you both. So this next question. I'm going to recap some of what I heard from you. Well, you talked about jobs and economic opportunity being so important. So my next question is, what will happen broadband available enabled in your community that's not currently available. So feel free to go into a little bit more depth if you want to give Anna anecdotes about jobs and economic opportunity or if there are other things that it will enable please share that as well and money will start with you.
Well, jobs, jobs, jobs, Steve, the regional feasibility study we did and this was a conservative estimate done by Erickson, says that if we can flip that proverbial switch today and load up our region with broadband and we know we can't just flip a switch and make it happen overnight. It's going to be over a period of time but, but if we can bring broadband to the entire region. We will create 10,000, new jobs over the next 10 years in a, in a region of about 385,000 residents scattered over 10,000 square miles that is definitely the game changer. That will have a ripple down. I won't say trickle down or ripple down effect on just about every aspect of life, education, health care, you know, among the other issues we have is we have a lack of doctors in our region. The solution could well be telemedicine, but the problem is you can have the best Internet connection at your doctor's office or at your medical facility, but if the patient doesn't have really good broadband, where they are, then you might as well just be talking to your doctor on the telephone, you've got to have a two way connection the real benefit of telemedicine, is that the doctor actually can see you and hear you in real time, just as if you're sitting there in their office, so we don't have a big problem with hospitals and medical facilities having broadband. The problem is the patients don't have the broadband. Same thing with education during the pandemic in urban areas of Texas. They were able to do a lot more than we were even though I know they still had a lot of challenges and issues, but our teachers, our schools were not able to do remote tele learning, because too many teachers. Most of the students did not have access to broadband at home. So while other schools that were served by broadband, were able to do online classes and online lessons. Our art schools had to prepare paper homework packets. In some cases the schools, sent school buses out and deliver those homework packets in other cases the parents drove by the school and picked up the homework packets for their kids, went home, you know, tried to help their students with their homework as best they could, and then turn around and bring the paper homework packets back and turn it in, You know, it just was not a very good solution to dealing with remote education during the pandemic. And while the pandemic we hope is, you know we're coming out of it. We don't know what the next big disaster is going to be or what the next big issue is going to be. and even if it's not a disaster, our students are just missing out on too many opportunities, because they do not have access to the rest of the world.
Thanks Lonnie, and Kassandra?
Yes, so if we are looking at the El Paso area. Right now we know that one household in El Paso with a median income of $35,000 or less do not have access to broadband subscription. We also know that lack of access barrier that can lead to a deficit of digital skills which contributes to lower interest in sciences lower testing scores and a lower interest in higher education, right. So, this is an economic development issue and a workforce development issue, having these current barriers, reduces the potential of our labor force, right, and it keeps our residents that don't have access, stuck in their current situation. And so as we're looking to bring new companies or help companies expand, or even just help our residents move up the social ladder, this is something that we need to take into account. One thing I'd like to point out is that many of our students are first generation students. And so this means that they will be the first in their family to graduate from college, and in some cases some of our residents or students are the first ones to graduate from high school, which is an awesome achievement. So, our schools and our community as a whole wants to make sure that those individuals are supported. Right. And our goal is to have the highest social mobility rates in the country. So one example of this is an effort shown through our university, the University of Texas El Paso, which was ranked number one in research productivity and social mobility by the Brookings Institution. Right. And so really that's one core thing that we are trying to push for but of course on top of all of this, you know, lack of digital skills and a lack of access to a device is an issue for our working students, you know a lot of our students are having to work while they go to school, and imagine, copying, taking care of their family with school with working full time, and then not having access to that, you know these things just continue to compound so if we can support them in any way we can we want to. And then of course there's the elderly population that we want to also make sure that they have these digital skills and they have resources to to utilize but you know there's so many subcategories of people that we also have to consider with our broadband efforts but um, you know, it's always just chipping away at different programs or different ways that we can engage them and make sure that they have access to all of this.
And I mentioned earlier that House Bill five which supports a statewide broadband plan and a broadband office very recently passed. What will having the broadband office and the Broadband Plan, Do, for your communities.
First of all, it was an absolutely necessary piece of legislation we're thrilled and we're thrilled that our two of our local legislators carry this legislation in the state house and senate so we're very pleased. The devil is always in the details. Cassandra mentioned the mapping issue, having accurate maps is going to be a huge help for everybody in the state of Texas, and that's one of the things that we are hoping and believing will come out of this. The, the other thing is just having a plan. The first, the very first funding we looked at was USDA reconnect program and once we started looking at the Notice of Funding. It became obvious we were, we were going to be penalised I forget if it was five points or 10 points but there was some number of points that you got, if your state had a statewide broadband plan and you didn't get the points if they didn't, and again this the competitions are so competitive. We didn't have a chance to get that money without a state broadband plan so we check that box and pick up those extra points so that will certainly be a huge help. The devil is in the details. So a lot remains to be seen one concern I have is we just have to try to make sure that our, our legislators and our agency personnel in Austin. Don't let the existing telecommunications industry, overly influence what they do because, you know, we understand I'm not being critical of anything. I understand the existing telecommunications companies or for profit companies they have shareholders to answer to. They have to make a return on investment. But what I also understand is in a region like ours. There are too many residents that will never be profitable. Even if you could get enough money from the federal government to build out the service, they wouldn't be able to sustain the service, the only way to sustain that service is by putting those people inside a larger group and using a cooperative or a nonprofit type model and leveraging a larger population to be sure that every single resident in there is served. And so I'm hearing a little bit of feedback, like, Well, you got to be sure you don't give anybody any of this new federal money that's going to overlap with an existing service area. There's nothing wrong with overlap. In our case, There's a lot of people that have no service right now, but there's a lot of other people that have one option, and they pay four times literally more for it than what our neighbors in Dallas Fort Worth favorite Internet service, and they get poor service because there's only one option, giving that rural resident or urban resident. A second option is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with having some overlap of service areas that is a positive thing in the United States of America, in my opinion.
Thank you Lonnie, Kassandra, what will it do for you well in El Paso.
You know, it's hard to follow Lonnie after that because you really did hit most of the points that you know, we'll also be facing as a community, but, you know, along with the obvious benefits of Bill five right so you're going to create a state broadband office you're going to have a broadband development program, you're going to have a broadband development account and state broadband plan you know I'm just truly thankful because this bill does keep topic of broadband alive, and at the forefront, you know, Texas was one of six states that did not a plan, and the world is continuing to be more and more digital. And, by the state passing this bill, it allows us all to recognize a fraud, and is a necessity, especially with continued work from home, options and 5g I but I also did want to thank Kelsey and the group for what they did to put together a digital Texas right so digital El Paso, did support households live through Texas 2036 And in case some of y'all aren't too familiar with it right in 2036, Texas turns 200 years old. So, This particular nonprofit organization looks at the effects or population growth will have, or what affects population growth will have our infrastructure, water supplies, schools, health care and economy. So, it was just a really great opportunity to find a funnel, to be able to, you know, continue to discuss this topic even at the state level. But yes, I think the topic won't live forever, but I'm happy that right now it still continues.
Thank you. I'm going to ask one final question and then invite everybody who's listening in. If you have questions, go ahead and type those to us and we will get to them we have about five minutes. And so with the last question I want to ask, Lonnie and Kassandra, can you talk about what lessons you've learned that you would share with others who are just starting this work.
I would say first of all, if you're not already planning get busy planning, it's amazing how you can sit and think well, we don't have the resources we'll never get the funding, once you actually get a plan together. In our case, doors started to open and there were opportunities this this one grant that we got and the other one that we came so close on if we had not already been well underway with our network design, we would not have been able to meet the time table to turn around an application for that grant. So don't wait until someone drops money in your lap, get busy planning. The other thing is you got to be sure it's strategically and well thought out well thought plan. There are going to be lots of current providers and one of the providers who all have an idea of what you need and what your community needs and what your region needs or what your state needs, You know, they all have their own, not always objective view of as to what the solution should be. And so you've got to be sure you cut through that, and be sure you get independent expert advice to help you develop your plan and pursue it. And of course, this goes without saying, but still needs to be said every time we turn around, keep politics out of it. If you are successful in what you're doing, it won't be built overnight, which means you will have to start somewhere, somebody is going to get service before somebody else. The worst thing that can derail your project is for people to think those are political decisions you're favoring one community or one neighborhood, or one county. So if you plan properly and execute your plan, all the choices and decisions will be made for you, you do what makes sense you do what the funding source allows you to do, and you go about it in a methodical process, keeping in mind that the end of the day, everybody has to be served. I use this as my example, this this little card represents our region, where we're headed right now with the current funding and lots of funding is coming into our region to other organizations, what's going to happen when they get through spending one company just got $91 million on their art off to build new service in our region, what's going to happen though when they get through this is our region. These circles are going to be the people who have servants, and if you're not inside one of those circles, you're still not going to have anything. We've got to get everybody on board with the idea that we have to have blanket coverage, and if you're going to take substantial amounts of federal or state tax dollars, you need to make a commitment that you're not just going to fill in the circles, but you're going to fill in the whole blank. I'll quit preaching now I'm
sorry. Juanita follow up on you, which again, very hard. I'm feeling the same things over you're in West Texas but I'm ultimately, ultimately for anybody who's wanting to go into this type of work you need to understand that this is a long, long, long term project right management of your respective coalition is going to be the hardest part about moving forward with this like when he said, opportunities will show themselves but you need to make sure that you are organized in a way to actually take advantage of those opportunities. One thing that we noticed is that we don't want our group to grow too too fast, right, of course you need particular partners in the community but you really need to establish that core group so that you can make decisions quickly because opportunities they come from one day to the next and so you all need to be able to move fast. You also need to make sure that your partners are engaged and they know how they're contributing to the effort, you know, they need to have that sense of that they've contributed to this, and this is especially true to the topic of broadband begins to fade right at some point it's not going to be in the spotlight, but the work still needs to be done. Another thing we've learned is let your partners run with the projects because of course you don't want to act as a gatekeeper when you don't need to, or delay projects because we're on a time crunch, you know, we just want to you want to make sure that you have that relationship with them so that they're doing. So what they're doing is shared with the centralized group, and you want to make sure that partners aren't duplicating efforts instead make them aware of what each other is doing so that what they're doing can have a benefit multiplier to the residents. The third thing that we've noticed is that you should really have a great relationship with your local utilities, and planning departments at the respective municipality right doing asset mapping is going to be extremely helpful when you're looking at setting up or requesting funding for certain projects, you know, the topic of dark, dark fiber which we haven't been able to really get into is is really important as well, when they're planning out streets, or even with text or our local, you know, Texas, Trent, Department of Transportation. When they are building roads, make sure that they take into consideration putting down this, the lines for it, but just lastly, you need to keep the resident in mind right it's just like marketing, who is your target market and what are their characteristics, really not every solution is that, that you come up with is going to make sense in every part of the community. This work is by no means something that you can, you know, just take a cookie cutter approach to fix. There are too many players in all this. So you need to divide the community into action areas and make use of the appropriate resource for their needs, you know, just like we did with the Prometheus program but it's a lot of work, it's very fulfilling and you can see the impact that you're making right because this will have a multiplier effect to us years to come.
Thank you, Kassandra, so I saw that there was a few questions we're at time, so we can answer those in the chat for you. I hope you have gotten a good perspective of the community in West Texas A community in East Texas, but how there's some really similar challenges. And a lot of work to be done but some great progress so thank you everybody for participating and we will sign off and we'll make sure to answer your questions in the chat before doing that.
Thank you so much Kelty, Lonnie and Kassandra for full discussion and Hello everyone thank you for joining, I'm Corian Zacker Policy Council for state and local initiatives at next century cities over the past few months we've been working on a case study that gives an overview of the digital divide in Ohio, and discusses strategies that local governments, community organizations, and the state have taken to correct long standing disparities in broadband access and adoption in Ohio, broadband access and adoption persist in both rural and urban areas in urban areas, some neighborhoods, some low income residents live only a few blocks from neighborhoods with heavy infrastructure that has not been developed on their street, some rural areas in home service but it's not fast enough to reliably work and learn from during the pandemic. These are only a few examples of the variety of challenges that Ohio communities face when it comes to digital access many local governments in the state are strangers to innovative approaches to expanding broadband service, and use a variety of models to fill infrastructure gaps in their community, including through fibre to the home public wireless and open access networks. The Ohio State Legislature and governor's office have been increasingly involved in broadband policy over the last few years, particularly as the pandemic revealed the importance of maintaining a home broadband connection, increased state involvement creates tremendous opportunity for new partnerships and support for local governments. The challenge has remained to ensuring that state efforts are supportive of the work taking place in communities. Today we're joined by leaders who have been outspoken about the vital role that communities play in connecting people with faster, more affordable and more reliable broadband, this morning for Intel i mentioned that when leaders in one city are fired up about broadband, that energy is contagious and all the communities they touch benefit our panelists today are wonderful examples of that engaging Energy, Ernie Staton, is the director of public service for the city of Fairlawn and his visionary ideas for improving broadband access have transformed not only his own community, but has also supported cities and other cities and counties in Ohio. Montgomery county commissioner Debbie Lieberman is currently in her fifth term, and serves on the National Association of Counties broadband Task Force and has been outspoken about the critical importance of digital access to social equity and economic opportunity for residents. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're delighted to have you and to hear your stories, Ernie, could you start us off by talking a little bit about your role and what first drew your attention to the need for improved broadband access and adoption in your community,
your green. Thank you for having me here today and I'm glad everyone's able to watch on this because it has been a huge topic here in the state of Ohio, all the things that the legislators were trying to accomplish, and obviously what we're trying to accomplish in our communities. So I'm the I'm the service director for the city of Fairlawn and really what that means at the end of the day is that I handle all the instruction for the city everything from Parks to roads to the buildings within the city. And in 2013, we realized that we were going to have to make some changes to compete with the rest of the world. And one of those changes was to bring the rubber band to the city and start the utility fair one gig. So that's a little bit of a about Fairlawn I'm Korean. Do you want me to go into during the pandemic or
we can touch on that a little bit later and if anyone has any questions, feel free to drop them in the chat and we'll make sure to get to them. Commissioner Lieberman, you've been a voice for those in montgomery county who have been disconnected throughout the pandemic, how did digital equity, get onto your radar and become an area of focus for you,
you're on mute, sir.
You know, you would think after all this time I would have been ready to go with mute off but thank you for having me. Good afternoon everybody, um, I, you know, I first became concerned about digital equity. Long before the pandemic. But, but the pandemic really really brought that, you know, concern to more of a, of a crisis, actually, you know, we had seen that developers and businesses that wanted to come here, you know what they expected and so we were, you know, making sure that we had broadband available, some of those new, you know, infrastructure areas that we were providing but you know the spring of 2020 with the onset of COVID. It just really highlighted the digital divide in our county. And it was in ways that we never seen before. You know, I guess if we would have really thought about it, we would have said, of course, but the quarantine. Just across the whole county so it wasn't just in the urban and rural areas, it was across the whole county you know schools, sent the students home to begin the virtual learning healthcare facilities ramped up with telehealth workplace shifted right I mean we all started in. In some people, you know, so you have your iPad and and your phone and your iPhone but that might not have been enough. So the other thing we really noticed was the social service agencies including our job and films or services. It all it all became virtual first few months, and so we knew immediately that we had to do something more for our community, then the cares dollars came. And, you know, when we, when I look back, it was, we got the cares dollars out as fast as we could. But one of the challenges we move forward and maybe we'll talk about this a little bit is how are we going to coordinate as we move forward. There was a lot of good work going on, but clearly it wasn't enough, I mean when I think about even arts and cultural trying to do everything on, you know, virtual you so it was across everything we do, basically. So, while we knew we had public availability at community centers, libraries, guess what, They were closed down to. So, we see Utley and I think I saw this. Somebody Kansas was doing what I do Nick though and paying attention and. And so we set up a hotspot under job and family services that people could go there and, you know, apply for their benefits, or for unemployment or any of the things that they weren't able to do from their own home. So now as the world went into total isolation. Home Access Technology and reliable Internet connections, really went from being a luxury necessity. And so, the work that has been done since then. I'm really proud of the course, it hasn't been fast enough. All the money in the world can't make it happen overnight, but we're working on it.
I'm excited to dig in a little more later on about the specifics of those programs. Let's turn it back to Ernie for a second about how the pandemic impacted carillon gig residents. So even though you have municipal broadband, we know there was still a huge impact on the people living in Fairlawn, Are there any stories you would like to highlight,
and you're on mute. We're not doing so well here today. Um, yeah, so I have multiple stories but I figured I would pick one of a resident and one of business and in kind of an overall so we have a resident that lives on a small road. He's handicapped but he's, he's an engineer, so during the pandemic. The issue that he had was leaving this house, a struggle for him. He was at home because his business at the time had sent everyone home. So, as an engineer, he's got these large files that he's working on on a daily basis that there's no way other than a fiber optic network that he would have been able to work on these large files. So, I've heard from him throughout the entire pandemic, and now he is working from home on a regular basis, even after the business open back up. So you know it's just a great story to be able to say that we're, we're here, providing something that you would have only thought it was going to be in the business setting, um, it's in the residential setting here, then that we have a large customer here in Fairlawn SIG net which is, is the jeweler. He used to be a large jeweler here and in Fairlawn, and that that company sent everyone home, and they were struggling with what they needed to do, and they came up with this way to handle all this remote work, and they needed to be connected to AWS so during this, during the entire pandemic they were struggling and didn't really reach out to us until getting closer to the end and now. Now we've connected them to AWS in Chicago, AWS in Columbus, so they have diverse ways to Amazon, plus they're taking 100 Gig package from fare logging because of all this remote work they had to, they had to increase their bandwidth. So, you know, during this pandemic, where,
you know, most companies couldn't survive, all the things that they needed. Here we were able to give them anything that they wanted. And then in our area, we have, we're, we're a suburb of Akron, and the city of Akron has community centers all through the city they have 14 of them, and during the pandemic, obviously the remote work for children, was a struggle so Akron is has a lot of areas, not served by the current incumbents, so they needed a way for these kids to do their schoolwork. So everyone was going to the community centers, Akron reached out to us and now we've connected every one of the community centers for them, so kids can do the school work and and also you know there's more than just kids that are going to those community centers, there's anyone that needs any type of help whatsoever. I had heard, Commissioner Lieberman, about all these other needs, well some of those needs come right out of those community centers so it was great that we were able to connect them at all the community centers, keep schoolwork going. It really the pandemic showed a lot here in Fairlawn so we were lucky we were already connected, we were already doing the work that I think everyone wants to see happen throughout all these networks. But what we what we, what came out of it was that it just showed how important it was to have a really strong network and a fiber optic network, where the incumbents were not doing anything like that. So, and lastly, one thing that I would like to say is, with this COVID Cares Act money, some accounting came to us and ask us to put in a private network for their criminal justice system. So criminal justice system being everything from the jails to the judges to to southern counties internal working to the Orianna houses, and any, any type of system that has to deal with court usage, um, we, they came to us in August which was the Kazakh money had to be spent by December so they didn't have a lot of time but we built a 17 mile fiber optic network that connected all 23 buildings, gave them this private network so that they could start doing arraignments from jail where they weren't bringing someone in so they were trying to do these over zoom and they were having a hard time because it was two different systems, it was inferior service. So, we fixed all that and starting in January, they started having their virtual court system, right here in Sonoma County, with quite a few counties have already done some type of court system, but that is all done over generally done by by some incumbent provider system where we were able to put this in for them. And again it's 100% secure because it stays within that network. We're providing the Internet that they need. We always host the Zoom server for any zoom meetings that they may have. We also handled all of the Wi Fi within the courts. And by the way the court system here in Suffolk County, their old building so Wi Fi was not as easy to pull off as, as one might think. But we did it in four months we were able to put that together, saves the county roughly $750,000 a year just in transport fees just shuttling prisoners or anyone for court to court from the jails. So, you know, the pandemic did a lot that we didn't realize needed to happen. We, we have a great network but we didn't know that there were all these struggles and by the way there, there are many struggles we still haven't handled here and in the area but, you know, slowly moving towards getting all that accomplished.
That's great. And it's great to hear about all the amazing partnerships that have come out of this really difficult time, and I know that Commissioner Lieberman, that in montgomery county. There have also been really key to success there. Could you talk a little bit about how that, how partnerships have impacted the response to the pandemic.
Absolutely, so I'm kind of highlighted some of them before but our partnerships with our schools, and with our jurisdiction. And our courts. We were fortunate that we, what, what he was just describing we kind of already had so judges were able to do remote court with the attorneys but there were so many areas that we'd never even looked at or thought about but that's as the year and a half, two years has moved on, we, we now are in a partnership with some of our jurisdictions, we've had some great work already happening around access, high speed access by a nonprofit and so we're working in there, it's a council of governments and so we're working more with them. So they've connected because they're part of the county. And now they'd like to move up so one of our jurisdictions that doesn't really have the money we've committed to partner with them to do that. And, you know, it's what we did. Almost immediately, a study. Okay, and our digital divide study where, where are we, what, what do we have. And on paper, because it looks okay. Right, but we know that there are more partnerships to build of course we've never met with and, and other providers who have, you know, really come out to share with us and explain to us but we are, you know, continuing to work on partnerships, I know. You know you mentioned Summit County. I know that the county itself different in a lot of the expansion and and Internet work is, you know, the infrastructure, correct me if I'm wrong that infrastructure will is really been done by the by the county itself so that was something that we all kind of around the state budget and it all hustled and said oh wait a minute Senate don't take out all that money and, and don't allow jurisdictions to own their own utility, basically. And I think I know you might last this liquid. I mean, we truly have to look at it, it is a utility, right, I mean, it's an infrastructure so I think it's everybody's to that point now, and you get what's under all that and how do we deal with all of that.
And Commissioner Lieberman you touched on something that I know, Ernie has been very passionate about which is getting the state legislature on board with being more supportive of communities. So if that, if funding was available from the state and if they were more supportive of local efforts on what would be possible in Fairlawn and other counties and cities in the state.
Well, I think. I think what we're doing, you know, there's no limit to accomplishing here so I would tell you that if the state were to open up and realize what's going on in these communities and embrace that allow for funding with communities. We could be could change the entire outlook of the state of Ohio. So, when we started this, and things have changed a little bit but when we started this was 48 out of 50 states in the country, with broadband access. It's changed last Isola it's at about 26, and we hope that we've had something to do with that a little boy way, but still 26th. So when people are worried about, you know flyover state they, they, they're not helping with the flyer idea because we're 26th in the country so that by them opening this up and allowing for funding and it hasn't happened yet, but I do believe that it will change I believe the governor is very nice. So, even if all the legislators are not 100% behind it. I think what it will do is it will just make us compete with the rest of the world and compete. The rest of the country, we will look a little more like the East Coast and West Coast route. People don't look at Ohio, the same way. But one of the big reasons why we started it was the mayor would go overseas to trade shows. And at those trade shows, he would hear boy, the water is abundant there that the land is cheap looks like you have talent. You don't have any. What, you don't have fiber optics, so we were, we couldn't compete with anyone at that time. And now, at least we're in a discussion, but the state needs to understand that they need to embrace that and embracing is, is a full gamut. It can't just be embracing the incumbent, or embracing cities only, it, it needs to be everything. Um, so it's, I have no real issue with the incumbents, personally I, We had a good relationship, even if we, if we're competing against one another, but it can't just be all the money going to them, it has to go to the cities. And you see, I mean, I think I saw 32 communities that are truly doing something like what we're doing here in the state. You can see that there are people who want to make a difference, and they're being held back. I just had a discussion with some County about the idea of maybe saying some county should up our speeds to say 300 by 300 is a minimum. Okay. Well, the state, the state of Ohio is relying on the old idea of 25 and three, and the federal government has already come out and said, it needs to be at least 100 900
So, it's amazing that the state is falling a little bit in here and then keeping it behind, so I believe,
I don't have the answers but I can tell you that I believe that it's limitless. What do you mean, so if they open up the funding, the all those limitless ideas could come to fruition.
I totally agree. You know, we play on words here but it's so broad right I mean, we talk about equity we talk about rural and urban and economic development, and it all fits together speed fiber network. It is. It's so, so important. And I agree with you that the governor, and specifically the lieutenant governor who has taken broadband on as one of his pillar issues. They get it. And you're right and jobs Ohio gets it. We are being left behind. And so, call these dollars we have to figure out how do they work together, you know, the new dollars, the new infrastructure dollars any other ARPA dollars, how are we going to work it all together and so we've had good discussions with the governor and his team about, please let's have a plan. And so I did mention that we're actually leaving, and I will put this online we did our first digital equity study. And the next step is we're going to do a all encompassing strategy to have to have a real strategy, especially as this money, the money that we spent like the cares dollars were immediately right. So we want to take your time and we're doing the right thing so we're going out for an RFP. The other thing I want to share and I'll make sure that somehow gets either to everybody in the chat, didn't mentioned I was on the national association counts broadband taskforce in our report is now out. And it's not specific to Ohio but I think it really follow this. And, you know, it's not. We know it's not up. And we know we montgomery county. Just so just to let you know how much we have already invested. Through our cares dollars, and we did a $300,000 tract with a provider for our, our boys and girls club, and five of our affordable neighborhoods who had no, no drops, nothing. Oh we were able to give 1000 People that drops and Chromebooks. And then we also spent with Dayton public schools. We spent 1.4 million within public schools for hotspots and Chromebooks, they were going in at one point they had buses going into the neighborhoods was hotspots, because so many kids so that and that's urban right rural had same issues. Because we're County about a third of its rural of there are 540,000 people. We also through our educational service group we spent 1.1 million on hotspots and 2.1 million on Qumran set, and that was just, you know, a tiny drop in the county mean so this is great I, you know, I hope we all continue to have these conversations like this because it's so important. Thank you so much for sharing that. Um,
if you have the link to the report, we'd love to share it on social media. Yeah, we did get one question in the chat so, Ernie, I know you talked about connecting Akron and Summit County. Are there any other communities that have sort of been on your radar to work with. The question is, what have you been doing to connect up folks outside of the municipality and do other townships care.
Well, so what we're working on right at the moment is in the we were working on this. Debbie already kind of mentioned something about it. We've been working with Summit County and before all everything happened at the state. It was to take the ARPA money and use a large share of it somewhere around $30 million to build a ring around the entire county, connecting all 31 communities. So, this is the plan. It's not as much about broadband and it's going to be used for broadband but what the real intent behind it. We need some type of a safety system here in in Summit County. So this would connect all the communities, and then through a broadband, depending on what each community wants to do, then they could have their own utilities, they could be connected. If they want, just to be connected as government, at least they would have a spot at our data center to have offsite storage, and they could get Internet from fairly big they could they could kind of almost go off grid. So, the pandemic, obviously we didn't need to go off grid but right at the end of May, we had that major problem on the east coast, where the pipeline, there was a big problem there and the communities around there had an issue. So this would be a way that our thought was we need to be able to go off of the main grid, if, if something bad were to happen in the world, so it's going to be safety, they will be able to take advantage of broadband so hopefully what comes out of that is a lot of communities actually contract with spare to go around and get service to to their local community. One area that we are really working hard at is, is the whole idea of the underserved area so we have quite a few areas in Akron, that are underserved and we want to make sure that we get something there, as well that'd be part of what we're doing with this ring, and then that safety piece, so that's really what we're working more towards now I would tell you that on a daily basis I get three or four calls from communities around this date, wanting to know, you know, is there a way that we can get connected together or can you help us through trying to start our own utility. So, we're, we're always working on something, but right at the moment is really focused on getting this middle mile ring here in Summit County.
And I see there's a follow up question on that, about what the plan is for the last mile. Once the middle mile is built.
Yeah, so, you know, you know in this in this state, every municipality has the right to form their own utility. So, that's how we're approaching this we're saying, each community, you want to form a utility, we have no issue with managing that utility, but it, it would be a little strange for any city to go around and have a utility and kind of force it into community so we're trying to work with them that, do you want this now, if they, if it turns out that they don't want anything to do with the utility, and there are obviously areas that need help, then I think we're going to step in and help. I know some accounting is, you know, really wants to be involved in something like that. And, and every, every county has as a few struggles with, you know, return, addictions, so like we have a MH a the Akron housing that is in almost every community, so who's taking care of them or the school systems that go beyond the jurisdiction, how is that going to be taken care of so that's why the county really needs to be in charge of something like this jurisdiction handles all of those, those issues or the library systems like that. It goes outside of everyone's jurisdiction. So, the county really kind of own this middle mile and Fairlawn will manage it forum, and potentially manage utilities in, in all the local areas.
And I think that's a great idea, it's not something we're pursuing yet because I talked earlier about that nonprofit cog that's doing that. But one of the things that that in the budget bill that just passed the Senate wanted to take that out. And it just shows how strong some of our providers can be lobbying and so we just have to stay at jurisdictions, we have to be just as strong and say that's gonna work. Because we have a lot of providers who all want a piece of the future, right, like but, you know, we have to, again, I talked about the plan. Earlier I mean that's going to be so important for jurisdictions counties regions in the whole state. So, we want to do this right now we don't, it's that saying you know dig once, I mean we really have to do, right, and so I appreciate the work that, that you're already doing there. And we're going to, we're gonna continue on this path because we, it's critical, again, it's, it's a utility it's its infrastructure. So, this is thanks for giving us this opportunity.
Thank you,
and this is our last question because we only have two minutes left but if in one minute. Could you talk about the role that broadband plays in agriculture and promoting security in the future. I can start with that because I recently was at a farm bureau meeting, as I said, about a third of our counties so rural, you know, those businesses, those farm businesses need just as much access as, as other folks. So in the in our meeting where some of the Future Farmers of America students, and I had you guys do this we can no access. You know, so we, there were kids, that in in our inner city, and know that the jurisdiction some townships and that we lost, but so rural kids, that, that, you know, they didn't have the opportunity to go on it you know maybe they had a cell phone, but it's really hard to you know do your cell phone so we saw that it really hurt. As far as the food. Yeah, you're initially getting the word out, how do you get the word out, how do you interact with people. You know we have a whole food security, stress, strategy and task force that works around that. Yeah I mean it's, it's everywhere. It's not just rural it's not just, urban, all of us. I don't have the room
here but I, I actually live in a rural area, kind of funny, I have a farm, but one thing that I would say is I've seen over the last probably 10 years that rural has really, that's where the money has been going is rural, and what we see just because the background, we see, there's a lot of urban, that needs to be taken care of so that really, it needs to become more of a balancing act. And again, that's probably worth the sense that, just allow cities to partake in the funding so that you can take care of both areas.
That's great, thanks so much for being here today. I see that we're out of time but I wish I could talk to you all day because these are such great stories. And I hope that those in the audience will check out because when we release it in the next couple of weeks. Thank you so much,
and I'll send those links in the chat. Okay, thank you thank you thank you. Okay, now we can do it.
[inaudible] Clasic has always been about more than just golf. It's been about our ability to impact the city of Detroit. Currently. Detroit sits as one of the least connected cities in America, you have a lot of residents here who don't have Internet access, or high speed Internet access all of that. So my role as a director of digital inclusion for the city of Detroit, really building on how do we bridge the digital divide. And so we place an emphasis on Internet access, tech support for residents who need it. We're really proud of the progress we've made change the course, we've already been able to launch Connect for one three, an organization focused on during the digital divide, and through connect through on three we've been able to distribute over 1000 tablets to seniors across our community to long sides of healthcare resources data plans that will support connectivity. So over the next few years. Thanks for taking the course, our focus on the digital divide is going to change drastically right now while we might be talking about getting residents Internet access today, that's not gonna be our fight tomorrow. And so I think the future is really articulating that longer vision and bolder vision of what a connection.
Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us today, Josh. Each city, town and county has it share that contribute to the digital divide President among its residents leaders and advocates in addressing the digital divide, will require commitment from both the public and private sectors. Joshua Edmonds, director of digital inclusion for the city of Detroit joins us to discuss how stakeholders are cultivating public private partnerships to tackle the city's divide head on. In his role Edmonds is responsible for creating a sustainable digital strategy to help bridge Detroit to their very best digital divide. Work intersects with public policy, telecommunications, and community engagement. Thanks again for joining us today. And what we saw in that video was an example of partnerships between both public and private entities. Could you tell us a little bit more about that partnership with Rocket Mortgage.
Absolutely, and definitely strong thanks to next century cities, especially France Hello cello. Anytime engaged here is an honor. But, and that video. Yeah, exemplifies our facet of our partnership so the Rocket Mortgage classic. The PGA Golf Tour, every single golf tournament, hint hint brawl, you can get every single golf tournament actually the proceeds do go to nonprofits, and so just keep that in mind, that that's what we're doing with one aspect of our part of it. That has been birthed out of what we refer to as changing the course so the course of the digital divide in Detroit has been birthed out of this this this larger ethic, and so connect through and three of the founding members are Microsoft Southeast Michigan, the rocket Community Fund, as well as the city of Detroit. Golf Tournament again is an aspect of this larger shared understanding of this digital divide and honoring work that others have done while also looking for any opportunity to partner where there are resources.
Thank you for that information. I know you mentioned connect 313 And I'll, I'll touch on that in a few minutes, but I do have a question, what advice do you have for other municipalities that are seeking to forge partnerships with public and private entities to help address the digital divide present among their residents.
So, you know, I, I have a lot and do my best to be like segmented in it, but I think oftentimes when I'm seeing communities, look at Detroit, and they'll say well we don't have X entity here well we don't have our private sector is not as strong as ours. Okay, I'll let you all know that prior to 2019 You didn't really see the private sector leaning in on digital divide, you had been the Knight Foundation, no philanthropically. But again, you didn't really see this larger moat movement around, lifting up this work, But, we've been able to accomplish comes from us being very bold, and the way that we've been operating and being laser focused on objectives while at the same time, the way that people work, you know, this was a conversation Ryan I told you this before. If you have a $50 million problem then you have a $50 million problem and that's what you tell these folks don't call it golf they're you know trying to be scarcity and full disclosure I realize a lot of our communities. We, we are scarcity minded, that's what you're working here. And so this is something where I think the initial advice is to be bold, but same time to be very knowledgeable about your partnership structure. If you have certain entities and private groups who are only going to find one side of this, they're only going to do this or that, knowing that, and honoring that General Motors is another entity that has been a huge supporter of our work, General Motors is a huge supporter of our work because they have an emphasis on your vehicles. So therefore, and when we're engaging with them, we're aware of that we're reading their annual reports we know where they are, we know where they're going. We know that Chase Bank has a real strong emphasis on lifting up black and brown communities that's a national commitment that they've made. Therefore, us being aware of their annual reports and knowing their words, knowing the direction of the leadership, and being able to carve out how digital equity make sense. That's different than what I see which is the general hey this is what we're doing we could really use help fundraising. These people on the ground are trying to accomplish their national objectives so therefore no no national objectives, sometimes better than them, that protects us and it protects them to get the Community Investment confidence they need to be able to work at the local level and a more efficient city. So those are the two, I believe there's another one but I'll just stop talking. I know there's other questions.
I know that's completely fine if it comes to mind, just let us know. Okay. That's really good advice for leaders and communities of all sizes that are seeking to forge these partnerships and Detroiters like yourself are committed to closing the city's digital divide by 2020, we saw the development of connect 313 Could you tell us a little more about how that came to fruition, the goals of connector one three. The partnerships, and how it continues to work to meet Detroit's needs digitally.
So it was definitely a very interesting year. And I'll tell you what happened. March, I believe was March, 8, whatever the first Friday for Friday, a week was in March, that's when we had a I mean, obviously, in retrospect to realize that COVID was a thing in March but it wasn't, you know until like the second week of March when it really took off. The reason I'm highlighting that was during that March meeting, we had about 45 Different organizations in the room, again this is making me shudder because it COVID But we have many folks in the room, and we had about this digital divide in a way of saying like, look, this is a citywide issue. Yes neighborhoods any be at the forefront yes community groups need to be at the forefront. But at the end of the day this is a citywide issue so at that table was every Internet provider in Detroit, a commercial and private. In addition to our inner riders we had a litany of community groups for different populations in the city, as well as big tech, everybody at that table, he kind of said, it behooves us not to figure this out, we need to do this before for Detroiters for our future for whatever we're working on away there won't be as effective if we don't versus digital divide, it touches all of us, literally, by accents, the next week, the city shut down. And I think that that's something where we're planning that to happen, you're trying to be dramatic there, but that then us shutting down our to that that allows us to say, we weren't doing our things in response to the pandemic. In response to this is the right thing to do. And so as we began moving forward throughout the year. We continue meeting, obviously virtually and strategizing on how do we coordinate our ecosystem, you can look across this country. I'm not going to name the cities because then it's like I'm doing an indictment on them, but there are a number of cities who have visual inclusion, lots of. And that's, that's cool. I'm glad that people have a heart, and I'm going to convene around a topic that's fine, but what is the structure, what is the coordination that's gonna allow us to bridge this digital divide. And that's not just stopping at our anchor institutions and community it's not just stopping at our library or public housing entities, it's going beyond that. So what we said is like hey, how do we coordinate this in a way that can convey further confidence from the federal government, from private stakeholders across the board. So that's How's that, what's that connect through and do we find, which the Rocket Mortgage classic being, you know, connect through and through being beneficiary of that, that helps, but in addition, what didn't get mentioned, no later on in December. We also did connecting seniors, which was about $4 million dollars $4 million, we got from the seat to do telehealth for seniors. Those are things like building and breeding and coordinating allows us to look at every single federal and restrictive and state grant that comes up, we now have a body that is able to essentially collect that funding, And then distributed accordingly, within our larger ecosystem so that way we don't have to be thinking that there's any way we're thinking and operationalize way, that is built towards action.
And you touched on this that you all had community park community groups that you work with, to reach the community could you talk a little bit more about how you all go back making sure that community perspective is at the center of what you do.
So, you know this is a it's a lot. There's so many different ways to look at it but it all starts with our values, so I'm not gonna, you know, go through all our values I'm gonna say two of them. Two of them that we say, and quite frankly that community says back to us any perception of deviation from those values. So, we say locally led Excellent. We're not going to be paying experts to give opinions for what we already know to be true here. I'm not going all the way around the country to have someone tell me something that I already know to be true because my neighbors telling me this stuff, we're, we are to align and empower local leadership, while at the same time seeking expert counsel. In addition to that we progress at the Speed of Trust. Oh he say that he all the time. And I think that that's that's the missing ingredient whenever anyone's trying to do this, this community work. There are people who are to this day skeptical of what we do, and I welcome that skepticism, I think they should be skeptical I think you should be skeptical of anything that the government's done. And so I, we're not shying away from that. And I think that by us being transparent in that. I think that's been able to allow us to bridge some of those trust gaps, because I think that, oftentimes, whenever we do need to reach or knock on those doors. I mean, we built a community ambassador structure to be able to do door knocking we built that and we're also looking at empowering folks who are already knocking on doors that we're not to duplicate efforts because I've had six different people knock on doors and I'm like why isn't it just one person giving me six pieces of information. And so like we're positives in of that but again, us building out this larger structure around trust, it's first building the trust with these organizations. And then when that gap is built, then trust with those organizations, to the community. And so we're not necessarily shying away from what we just realized the manifestation of the digital divide, isn't just a subsidy thing, it's just an Internet access thing. It is a profound lack of trust that has been exacerbated by people who are left on the wrong side of the digital divide for for far too long. And so I think that I've just been very proud of that and showcasing to our community partners that we're aware of that, and who they are. I think that that has allowed us to be able to bridge those gaps, we're not perfect. We have blind spots. A lot of our work has been formulated through the pandemic, so our work needs to transform much more, but at the end of the day our structure that we're building. We're doing an additive way, and we're advancing, we're evolving as we go.
And how do I learn from other municipalities helped inform your partnership development strategies.
Well, I would say that a lot of this learning has been internal. I'm not saying that we're not learning from apologies. I think we see things I think we're aware of what other municipalities are doing, but I think that a lot of our answers already here in Detroit. We already have residents, saying, we don't trust this provider, or this providers on this or that, or, you know, you all don't engage or we never see you in the community. A lot of those things and that every, I would say, namely most large cities are going to have those concerns from residents expressing that. And so I don't really think that whenever I'm looking at other communities, communities to learn from them. I'm looking at communities to say let's band together for standardization. Let's band together for standardization and data collection so that way we can pull that as a policy lever that's been together for shared lessons and shared learning and collecting anecdotal feedback that it gave me as a policy lever, so I mean I could be a bit flawed in this but whenever I'm letting other communities across this country. I'm very rarely looking at them from a best practice standpoint, I'm more looking at them from a standpoint of, if we link arms, we could do some damage, which kind of cosines, you know, eccentricities in a way so you know soft plug there. But again, look, I believe most of us communities are very profoundly aware of what needs to happen and how it needs to happen. I think a lot of this historically has came to lack of funding that's made it, you know a little bit more difficult, but since we have a little bit more, little bit more bass in my voice because we have that funding. A lot of our efforts now. Again, very rooted in the hyperlocal fashion of what is our community saying to us, that whatever they're saying in Houston. Now whatever they're saying, Los Angeles, I'm sure the same thing. In fact I know they're saying the same thing, but at the end of the day, we are very laser focused on being responsive to our community and glean the lessons learned that have already been articulated through various studies and various feedback sessions.
And I know you've obviously not just Detroit but everyone COVID Definitely, heavily impacted what the digital landscape looked like for us worldwide. Taking into consideration and been able to do over the past year, and looking ahead, what is the future of, I guess, digital connectivity look like for Detroit. Well, all y'all have.
I would say, you know, there are some things that are frustrating and I I don't pull punches on these whatsoever. I will say that since my tenure in the city. We're going on about a year now. The state has to step up way more. So as I'm looking at other communities I mean Ohio is doing a heck of a job when it comes to benefit enrollment you all can see that, you know, Illinois is leaning in huge, you just announced what 700 million for broadband Maryland's been doing a great job communicating I mean Carolina's broadband office is great, I'm saying all these things because locally. We have figured it out, enough. We're not perfect, again we're gonna be bobbing, we're gonna keep finding our blind spots, but I'm really looking at the state, our state just didn't just create a broadband office, our state created the Office of high speed Internet, very intentional with that name, and they want to they want to empower every single local committee that. And so what does that mean for for for Detroit. Well that means that we're going to change with the creasing of that because I'm expecting expert coordinated and additional resource allocation that then complements our approach already. Now, I had said in that earlier video that I don't believe our digital divide is going to look the same as its looked these past couple of years, I think we're connected by a very high rate, I you know we're leveraging emergency broadband benefit. Very creative. We recently received $45 million for ARPA funding alone. a lot of other committees are only doing five to 10, we're doing 45 And so, that level of matching with our private sector investments that we know are also matching that with our state. I think a lot of our are now going to be shifting to digital empowerment. So digital inclusion is, I think. Step one, getting people just connected and connected to the why it's getting connected or access going some basic digital literacy training, digital empowerment is where we're looking, people are connected. Now what, and I can't stand and I pray that we're never in that area. Someone has to say now what to us. I think we need to clearly define and say, These next couple of years, we're changing the tides. I know we were saying over here, and we did that, and now we're over here, and as we're over here that is now where we're attending Detroit or some meeting content consumers and content producers, changing people from being underemployed, and I don't believe there's such thing as over employed so whatever, whatever the safe word is we're not. I really think that we're going to get into longitudinal out of digital inclusion, which in our mind reads as digital empowerment.
And I know you mentioned earlier, developing trust among residents is a huge thing, and I want to know, so a lot of times I find it residents could be skeptical as doing like working with larger partners. How do you work to foster that trust would help them know that those. These partnerships are for their good.
So recently we facilitate actions and recently I mean whatever recent is subjective, but last summer we facilitated a community election or connect to room three. And we are to vote, you had to be a member of connector and three. To be a member of our community college, you have to live in Detroit. We have to work in Detroit, we have to learn in Detroit, and so therefore you voting, then allowed to raise your hand and say, hey, you know five committees devices and connectivity, is there a scaling policy advocacy and ecosystem, special projects and shared resources and structure and obviously within those five committees, we're paying those committees, so we're paying the actual meeting leaders to legitimately make recommendations to expand our thinking. But I think that when you're looking at how do you get residents involved. I think it's treating residents with the dignity that they deserve. I think so many times we have these conversations around the digital divide and we have this deficient viewpoint. And I think that we're oftentimes looking at their scenario and where they happen to be in life, whether it's economic or whatever, no negative event. Let's do it and say, because you're this, you don't have the ability to think outside the box or you couldn't possibly expand our thinking and that's not the case. And so I think that what we've been able to get straight into how we've been able to foster that trust by being very transparent and say, you have answers that we don't have, you all have lived experiences that we don't have so therefore the way to go. Craft interventions are better than what we're gonna crack. I have a devices and connectivity committee right now and I'm talking about creating a Detroit Internet standard, what is the standard for Internet service, high speed standard for Internet service for Detroit. I don't care that 25 Three is what the FCC, saying what's in Detroit, I'm not coming up with that recommendation. Residents are so then what am I doing, supporting my community, so if anyone asked who came up with that, the community did, and I am supportive. And so I think that that level of respect and transparency and trust that it's an iterative and evolving process that we are sticking to, and we believe that our community has the answers that we need to bring
you we have some people agreeing with you treating resident residents with dignity and respect definitely should be at the forefront of all the work that you do. And as we close out this conversation I want to thank you again for your time. But what do you want people to know about your work that maybe you haven't mean, just everything as relates to continuing your work going
forward. Oh, I think that I would like people to know that at this point, we're looking at sharing as much lessons learned as possible. We are in the process of communicating to a larger body that I'm not going to be around working together with municipal decision makers, I think that there are a lot of people who are doing this work, especially with ARPA money that's coming in nicely with the emphasis and need for data, there needs to be a standardized conversation across the board for anyone on this call on this call for all the cities who are working together, we have to get standardized data is going to be our best policy lever to pool, we need longitudinally minded, we cannot stop at the American Community Survey, I know you all know that we cannot stop there. We cannot stop at definitions are no clues in a methodology that that existed before the pandemic if our thinking has transformed because of the pandemic, I think we're doing our jobs wrong. And so one thing that I would like to let everyone know is that in Detroit, and I'm talking to some of these other cities. We need to be collaboratively minded and we need to standardize what we're doing that is going to be the lever for us to be able to sustain this work moving forward, and we're not going to look at this sum of money now, and get seduced by complacency, we cannot do that I am urging unity, can we please work together and pull these policy levers, in a way that is standardized and as one to empower, not only Congress to free up funding, but as what's the local communities to get this work done in a more sustainable way.
Thank you so much. It's good to have you here with MCC and we appreciate your support and we're always supportive. We want to encourage you all to make sure you learn more about connect through and through and what's happening to you, right, we will share information via our social channels. Up next we have a session specifically looking at COVID What we must do to inform universal broadband users.
Hi everyone, um, one second. I'm the one clicking all the buttons and trying to set myself out. Um, thank you all so much for joining us today. My name is Lucas Pietrzak like every morning I have the honor and pleasure of serving as the program director for partnerships and games for next century cities, um, as I said earlier, I have been with the organization for two years now, it'll be two years in August. And over those two years I have had a real honor of getting to hear from local leaders like the two you're going to hear from today, who bring us real estate happening in their community. Specifically, over the last 18 months have been paying attention, municipal leaders from communities of all sizes from coast to coast have rapidly had to adjust sort of this new system of life from home schools public meetings and government services switch to a completely remote position for these leaders, one goal remains Paramount continuity of services for everyone, regardless of connectivity status. However, with millions of American Americans still disconnected as we've been discussing all day. This was not an easy task. The two leaders joining us today serve as the chief executives of their communities in the face this challenge head on. Luckily, we are seeing a transition back to open for the vast majority of the country. But even as Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19 and his life returns to normal for work will continue the digital, digital divide existed long before COVID And we know that sadly it will persist for many more years to come. Today we'll spend some time discussing how the lessons learned from the pandemic must inform our work going forward. I've seen an unprecedented amount of attention on broadband connectivity during the last year, cannot let that passion and momentum vanish. Our first panelist joining us St. Mary is Mayor, Mary Cassia solace of Chula Vista, California. Shortly into the Chula Vista City Council in 1996 and re elected in 2000 in 2004 she served as the first Latina Sweetwater authority director in 2016. She was elected to the California State Assembly, and served in that body until 2010. She returned to the city council in 2012 and in 2014 She made history as the first elected Latina mayor in the county of San Diego. She has also led a two sentence, measure, measure P in 2016 that rebuilt aging infrastructure and May, 2018, that allowed her government to hire more police and fire personnel panelists is Gary lero He's the County Administrator of Botetourt County Virginia he pronounced that correctly I practice Gary and I'm a Virginia and so I'm a little disappointed if I go wrong. But to talk about a Tod audit. By the end of the panel, Rob. Lera, has been the County Administrator for five years. His work with community partners revitalized economic opportunities during the COVID 19 pandemic his leadership and it'll enabled broadband partnerships and the county was able to leverage Cares Act funding and state support for further deployment for further reach their goal of 100% county wide connectivity. He also previously worked for Carroll County, where he served as County Administrator since 2005 Thank you so much, both for joining us today during this important conversation. Um, I want to start the conversation with first getting to learn a little bit more about your communities, we obviously have 220 across the country and each one is very special and unique so Mayor stylists if you'd like. Administrator lero You can follow her.
Sure. Well, I'm, I'm always proud to talk about the City of Chula Vista since I was born here, many, many years ago and my grandparents actually moved to Chula Vista in one. Excuse me 1919 from Mexico. So I've really watched this community grow and expand. When I was born. We had a population of about 15,000. And now we're nearing nearly 300,000 people and residents and a lot of that growth occurred during the 25 years that I've been involved with the city. It's a very diverse population. We are over 50% Latino that wasn't always the fact but demographic change within our community. Now we're a majority of the Latino community, but we're so diverse. We have a great Filipino population, as well as some African American So, and, and, you know, just a mixture of all kinds of cultures in our beautiful city. We're seven miles north of the Tijuana border. And so that presents a lot of challenges, but it also presents a lot of opportunity for a cross border economy. I'm really proud to be, you know, involved in the city because you know we're a city that actually adopted our first Climate Action Plan, and the year 2000 So we were first in San Diego County to be thinking about sustainability. And that's how we built out our neighborhoods. It's a new city, it's an old city. And so the Old City the west of the five presented challenges relative to infrastructure, the newer cities you know were really great in installing fiber optics and having Greenfield develop that we could plan for a modern city so those are the challenges that we have. It's a tale of two cities. I don't know what else you want to know about it other than it's a place that we've got a Bayfront. That's going to be doing. It's 500 acres of land on the coast and the largest development on the West Coast, and we are Jennifer rounds on a convention center and and a hotel there that will change the economics of the area.
Congratulations. Thank you for that and I'm sure a lot more about Chula Vista throughout the conversation, Administrator lero
Lucas, it's a pleasure to be here with you and always with an elected official, I want to give credence to you, Mayor and thank you very much for your being involved and also I've been to your area and it's absolutely beautiful. So thank you for our all your leadership there. One of the things Luke has just as a outset also was that it's bought a top County. What County, Virginia, and it's actually scary Uluru it's, it's spelled like low but it's pronounced like La Rue so branch but I got mixed up I guess it Ellis Island maybe somewhere along the way so anyway. One of the things about Bartow County, it's interesting, is about a county was one of the largest counties in the nation at one time, actually stretched from where we are now, all the way to the Mississippi covered most of West Virginia, most of, most of Indiana, part of Michigan, Illinois, and all of Kentucky and all of Tennessee so what ends up happening is that many people that are probably on the, on the conference today and actually originated in BodyTalk County. We're celebrating our 250 anniversary last year was supposed to get 20 So it's 251 years old. So, It's, it's, it's an interesting dynamic community his role in nature, of course, we're very small now compared to what we were at one time. We have about 34,000 residents. And we are in the broad metropolitan statistical area so we're just adjacent to run up Virginia run up city run out County. And so we're right there on Interstate 81 just north of that community. One of the things that has happened. This is my 16th year as a county administrator in the Commonwealth of Virginia prior to that I worked with Jim tech as a faculty member, and using those talents I guess if you if they were God given talents and experiences, we've been able to actually leverage a lot of that toward economic development in bodytite County. Over the past five years, how long I've been here six years, and things that we did was that we've created a lot of new jobs, then that ended up needing the creation of new housing, and then that in combination, employment, we needed to focus on fiber to the home or to broadband expand. So we were focusing on this back in 2017, much like the mayor, focusing on things that are really cool now. You were doing things earlier. And we were doing earlier as well we were focused on broadband expansion back a long time ago. So, it's one of the things that sort of a point in time that we are, we we're perfectly positioned right now for what was taking place.
Yeah, thank you for that and I will say I'm from Virginia Beach, Virginia, so I know the Roanoke area well. I've lived there my entire life except for now living in DC, but thank you both for those descriptions and sort of get letting us get to know your communities a little better and you both have brought up really good point and, obviously, the bulk of this conversation we're going to talk about sort of the lessons you have learned from COVID and things that have happened as a result of COVID going forward. But I want to start with both of you sort of in this right before COVID time I know both of your communities were very active, and I want to start making Maristella because you all passed sort of a groundbreaking digital inclusion plan that I know Chula Vista was very proud of. So, would you mind walking us through sort of your visual up to that and what that looked like. And you're muted, Mayor Sallis.
Yes, so we worked on developing a digital equity plan, and we had all kinds of stakeholders around the table to assist, to assist us with, and we adopted the plan in May of 2020. So the time was right, you know, and it was our commitment to not only build out a collaboration between our stakeholders, locally here but regionally, because we've all got to be inter connected. And so, we understood that, you know, In order to make sure that that we implement and and construct the best broadband system ever that you have to have a plan for going forward. And so we wanted to make sure that each and every one of our residents would have equal access to the very best and the very fastest that they could have. And so, we were so lucky to King about that just before the pandemics struck because, you know, when it struck, we understood, you know the value of that connection to our community and having done the research on our, our challenges we're in our opportunities where we knew where to direct our efforts with, with more intention, and other places right. And so we knew that there were areas within our city that had very poor Internet connectivity, we knew that there were a lot of families that economically, they couldn't afford access to the Internet so we worked really really hard closely with the elementary and high school district to identify those families that really needed those connections in order to be able to be successful in school to even get that, that knowledge that they needed. And so, The city used our own resources to purchase over 2000 Wi Fi hotspots. And then we turn to over those hotspots to the school district in order for them to display the very neediest of their families in order to get them going. You know the switch from from having in person meetings, not only of the city council, but of our 22 boards and commissions that are very important to this city, or advisory board boards to us. And not only that helps us, you know, developing civic engagement and developing future leaders. City of Chula Vista, those, those Commission's went through for the longest time, because we were figuring out how does the city counseling business virtually, and getting connected and we really had a lot of challenges. That is, we all know, you know, moving to the zoom into the teams and all that, is that we had a lot of occasions of dropping off right, poor connections where, you know, suddenly you're you're voting, and the screen goes blank. And so, we met those challenges, we figured out a way for public participation remotely through economic and all of that. But we learned so many lessons through that. And we learned that, you know, the services that we had to offer to our community. After libraries and parks closed, And how that there was in our community that we deployed our staff in very innovative way to provide those services to our community. And so the up part of it, you know, the, the, the positive part of that closure, was that people became more aware of the importance of their local government in providing a quality of life to them. And so that actually expanded civic engagement, civic participation, and this plus, because as we know, that kind of sticky agement because of social media or other things like a, you know, homeowners associations or those kinds of things. People were becoming more and more constructed from their government. So that was a plus part. I don't know if that answers your question, I'm kind of like all over the board so if I got off track and they're more specific that you want to know. Please let me know.
That was fantastic, then I'm ready to talk even more about some of the switches and programs that both of you, oversaw it was March April May months when I think a lot of us didn't really know what was going on, but I'm administrator Lou I'm curious. I know that your county had invested close to a million dollars through partnership with the Virginia telecommunications initiative, and a few other programs, prior to COVID What, what was that work looking like leading up to March of one.
So, Lucas, it was a it was a blessing for us to be marching toward this broadband expansion. Well before we had to, of course so March the 16th the world went crazy. That was the day that we shut our offices down and ended up sending folks on. And so we were working virtually in a lot of that and then of course we had modifications along the way. However, prior to that we had invested money with the bad RAM, which is the Virginia program for the throughout the state of the governor's initiatives for broadband expansion and so we were one of the recipients of that. And so it happened to be that we were able to finish up I thought that we were working on with a electric operative that serves part of our community. And that project ended up, propelling us into the future, because we were able to finish that one up. That would have ended up bringing on 671 in an area that is the most challenged part of our community because it's autography and also the distance between homes. So that was fibre to the home of 671 plus about 50 businesses in that area. And that was just absolutely amazing. That was the Craig bodytite electric car, and they just did an amazing job of getting that project up and going. So that ended up helping a tremendous amount at the same time, we ended up helping with some cares funding that came in, the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors happens to be the chair of the, the broadband commission, and his passion, if he is two or more people are there together they're speaking about broadband expansion in BodyTalk county so that's his question, and Dr. Scott horn. He ended up pushing us and telling us that we were going to end up spending a tremendous amount of the cares funding associated with coming on, it happened to be that. On March, the 16th also ever we sent folks home. I was quoted as saying is that if there is anything good that comes out of the COVID, and we didn't know how it was going to end up being, but if there was anything good that came out of there, it was going to be the attention, placed on broadband expansion. And so we were ahead of the game a little bit. Even though, we'll have a sinking ship as you might think of is that we were, we're still thinking positively about broadband expansion. So, we did end up spending quite a bit of that money. We ended up having about $6.4 million into the county and we spent about $3 million of that on broadband expansion. So, about 50% of the effort was, was going in that direction, we built out in one one project we built out 11 miles but backbone fiber that that is turned over to River Valley broadband authority for them to actually can't contract out smile providers. So that ended up taking place we ended up building out fibre to two locations for. Excuse me. Look for wireless Internet access through s radio systems, or high bandwidth deployment, That is still going on right now, and all 500 will be deployed here very soon as what the intent is for that. We all do end up finishing up bought about 500 Chromebooks, that, that ended up fishing all kids in grades five through 12 as a one show with Chromebooks that created more of a demand for broadband, of course, but it was something that needed to happen to be able to utilize systems that we were putting in. So then, later on and then working with one of the local providers who pushed for a cam build out so they added in about 450 fiber to the home connections in our community. And then we had some. It was called Fast Start money from the governor's office, if you had projects that, that could be funded. He would end up funding those and so we we leveraged that again and ended up with about $1.4 million for broadband expansion so we we built out another eight miles
of fiber, or a interconnect. And then that also picked up several people along the way. And, and that was a very expensive bill because we had to go underground way in to try to get contractors in during the COVID time trying to get materials in your supply chain issues. It was almost an impossible feat, but we were always that that provided redundant circuit for the mattock program so it leveraged that against itself. When that building out about eight miles of other fibers a backbone that will eventually right now. Matter of fact, it's, it's in the engineering fight bailed out to another 600 homes that we could end up handling. So all of that was taking place and at the same time we had another electric cooperative on the northern end of the county that was working with Dominion energy, and about the potential of building out 350 homes with Arbor to the home. And that project is moving ahead now. We also prefer second data during that same period, I was at state funding, and we ended up getting that award. So, on July one just the other day that project has started that's going to build in 548 homes, fibre to the home so we're getting closer and closer every day toward universal service. And then, this Friday our governor, pushed out a concept or proposal. He's bringing the general assembly back together on August the second to his proposal is to spend $700 million of federal ARPA money toward broadband expansion. We are in a lux of energy right now, actually be unable to move forward with developing that program and universal service across the county with fiber to the homeless while we're really showing.
Awesome, thank you for sharing that. Um, I find it interesting both of you. But the point that you know Josh brought up in the last session and something that we talked a lot about it next thing is and it's how important these partnerships are internally and with sort of community stakeholders and I know it's something that, when we look back at a lot of these conversations may have been strictly housed in a brand new apartment, or in an IT department or somewhere very niche, with people who've never done. And I'm curious, starting with you, Administrator LaRue and then also you may or solace. You both touched on it but how integral have those portions, outside of the broadband office or the IT office become whether it's been some more people with mentioned or sort of other community partners you've engaged, I know we have members who a lot of times will ask, where do I start, who do I talk to, how do I get a whole of government approach as opposed to one or two people at a meeting. How important is that and sort of how were you able to accomplish that,
during COVID. That was the, you've got to have the partnerships. There's just no way around it, and, and also you can't just come in and just create the partnership and then just leave course your long term partner so we had already been a member of the Roanoke Valley broadband authority are there so we utilize their assets. And as far as a broadband department we do one you're looking at the broadband department as far as that goes. So, this was, you know, Gary if this doesn't get done. Then Gary You're the reason it didn't get done, because I'm the one who's doing it so that was sort of the situation so straighter is directing this personally, because that's the, you know, you've got to look at who has interest, it has some history with, with this kind of work and things of that sort. So anyway we pushed forward directly out of mouth, and working directly with the superintendent of schools, that was a nice, easy call because the county funds the schools at $56 million. So I call up the superintendent and I say Hey, can we do this. He says, Yeah, let's, let's let's do this because it's it's a wonderful Connect. Because what we were doing was spending Keres funding for a system which he said was rare to have actually had that kind of occupation. but what I was doing was yes, we were helping the kids, but we were also in the community by building the need for the broadband system. And so it was hand in glove kind of operation. Same thing with private providers and he was operatives. Now, What we're doing is negotiating BB tubes and the private providers so that universal service can be achieved. Open access networks. So, the private providers will be ringing, Ross, potentially, this is what we're trying to get done, private providers, running across the cooperative fiber as well as the cooperative across the private networks for open access. That way they don't have to do open bills, and still have the cooperation and the competition of delivering services, so that is that next year, being power of someone in the middle, has really proven to be exceptionally valuable, I guess is my endurance and flexibility and creativity and how you act, and operate. Those are the key words of today, to be honest.
Marisol asunder, what that looked like in Chula Vista I know you talked about your partnership with the school board but, you know, any tips or thoughts or anything to some of our other members that might be looking at wanting to start those partnerships.
Yes, for it's really critical that not only that you start those, those conversations but that you continue them. And so, again, we were very, very fortunate that we had started our digital equity plan process. A year before where we, and a lot of those partners in order to help us identify the needs of the challenges and the opportunities. And so, you know, we, we work with the community because that was paramount. Because just like, individuals, or our businesses that have more opportunity, resources, then others, our business community is made up of 80% of our businesses or businesses 10 employees or less. And so, with the Economic Development Council, the chamber, working with the school districts, of course, even the Wonder drinks are regional SANDAG, you know our cog was really really paramount and we continue to do that because I think that we're not as far as advanced as in Gary's area. And we understand that, you know that broadband that broadband if you don't have done as far as economic development is you're really behind the curve. And so, those are critical to us and they continue to be an very important part of the discussions that are having, having, and then the actual implementation of the plan. You can't do on your own, you really need those partnerships to not only help you identify where you need to be, but to make sure that you're being the most efficient way possible.
Thank you, I appreciate the right at the end and I think it's something I want to emphasize again that without these partnerships you don't know what you need to be and I like that you said that because I, I know it's something I said this morning during my introduction but, you know, we talked about being in DC and not understanding maybe what's happening at the local level, but I know we hear time and time again from mayors and administrators that you're so right Mayor solace that, please talk to those people, you know, you may think you have an understanding of the problem, but they may have a different perspective that you had missed so I appreciate you adding that point and obviously the people matter, that people are the most important part, but you've hit on the lung, this can't happen without the proper funding. And I know that she is my dog is now up and playing with her toys because she knows that my mic is unmuted. Um, I know that communities were fortunate in sort of an unexpected way this last year with carers Act funding, and the American rescue plan Act funding, and some other opportunities that the FCC brought forward, but sort of looking at where we are currently in forward, you know, I think we all have seen how critical this funding has been to your plans but I think we think about a lot on the next century cities team is how can we keep these funding streams over permanently, how can we make sure that there's money there for these communities to do what they want so Merrick tell us I'm curious sort of with your digital equity, or your digital inclusion that you all passed right before COVID And sort of the funding you've seen during COVID What do you hope that looks like going forward sort of what are your dreams and aspirations for the fund going forward.
Well certainly, that was a major challenge for us because you can have all the plants that you want but if you don't have the money to actually get it done, then it's very difficult for that to happen. So, we have a great deal of infusion of money for our, you know, through the, the, the American Recovery Act. And so, we have plans to use that judiciously to help us with the build out of our state. And so, you know, that will be one of the challenges going forward because it's a finite amount of money. So, again, to your point, when you were talking about the local perspective is that it's, I think that Congress opened their eyes to the need for all people to be connected, rural communities as well as urban communities in which they want a strong and healthy and vibrant, vibrant and fair economy that lifts all people. And so I'm hoping that that wokeness of Congress realizing that will really encourage them to look at what our communities doing to make sure that their, their citizens have the access to something that will strengthen them and, in turn, strengthen our country and our economy. So it's about using the money wisely, being able to be accountable for the money that you spent, and be able to demonstrate the good that it's done and the benefits that brought. And so, the job is not complete just because you've got the money and can do it. It's about how you continue to receive those fundings that you need to, you know build out not only this system but systems of the future. You know, it's just really critical to a city like Chula Vista, That doesn't have a large tax base to utilize our money is with as we can. And what we know is technology makes that happen. And one of the great examples of that, is that how we utilize technology within our police department, that we are the first police department in the United States to deploy drones, first responders and get that information back to our police officers so that they know before they arrive on the scene that that of the call for service. And they're better to handle that situation. And so a lot of your 911 calls turned out not to be 911 calls and not need a priority or another one can identify whether or not a person hat is armed or you know, those kinds of things so the proper kind of resources can be deployed. so systems have helped us improve our response times, and provide better services and that is dependent on on all things it right. And so I think go forward. All cities will have to work on efficiencies, and that will have to be driven technology
fluidly and I'm curious if you have any thoughts,
yeah, just very quickly, I'm not sure that, you know, we're getting these one shot infusions, that could turn, which has turned into the second shot of infusion, which may end up turning into an infrastructure bill that could potentially be a third infusion we're not really sure what will take place with that. But anyway, what it, what it really comes down to is how the locality places as his own broadband versus some of the ongoing effects. An example with our business community, we ended up having business grants for some of our local businesses, but one of the things that we've focused on was how does that help them past, not just for perishable goods that, that, that they had to replace. How did they increase their productivity, how did they add a website, an active site for online ordering for a restaurant, or how did they end up getting point of sale computers put in, how do they get something done, they didn't end up allow them to be part of the new thing. So that was one thing. Another thing, just a lot of people have not really paid much attention to I think is the value, the value of the home will add three to 5% to the value of that home. And so, whenever we get fully built out, which will not be far into the future is what we're hoping for here, then there would end up being a reoccurring revenue stream. If it gets captured in the reassessments produce which it will because the value of those properties are going up on a regular basis. So, then you end up having a reoccurring revenue stream or technology advancements and one of the things that we would see is, is fixed wireless for fire EMAS, we already have monitors and police cars and things of that sort, but we would love to see your systems that found the doctor to be in the ambulance with the patient, as the patient's been transported to the hospital, and that they are in remote locations. They have bandwidth of be able to carry that digital signal, so that more practical applications could end up taking place so certain that one way to do that is by the increase of those homes that are associated.
Thank you I appreciate. I appreciate really the breadth of things that you all have covered whether it's been student outcomes, public safety, economic development, these are things that we see in almost every community in every state and territory in Washington DC. And I'm curious sort of in the last 10 minutes we have, If I can take. Think Big for a moment and think way past the COVID pandemic. Hopefully you all sort of are able to carry out his plans that you've started that you've designed able to sort of get your universal access out and are able to sort of keep this momentum going when you have high adoption in your community is thinking big. What would that universal access and high adoption transform about your community in five or 10 years, or, ideally what would you hope to see as the great outcome of universal access goals, and I can now say this about my community. If either of you want to chime in.
I would love to see a healthier community. Because of telehealth, that they end up having, you think about modern his use of technology so that people could actually monitor their health from their homes from everyday life, that might end up being very, very positive. So the same thing for education education never really stops. And so, education, remote education could be something really be pushed in a community and about developing the workforce with specific attributes for specific needs. Another thing to see us really pushing for is the remote worker. There are so many folks throughout the nation that can work anywhere. Especially now they figured out that they can end up working anywhere. So I've just being us being a haven of that because of our outdoor amenities and the, the culture that we end up having in our community so that that will be a huge attraction point for us I think in the future when ever I'm on one aisle of the grocery store, and I hear someone speaking, Raul about how wonderful this community is because they have been access would be the epitome of revelations that I can hear just just over hearing someone talking about it, and understanding the availability of whether it is might be church services online or it might be education online education, the health care, online, emergency services protecting the officers, protecting fire EMFs helping them anyway. All of that put together is what we're looking at for
the end Gary I think that that will happen. I think it's inevitable that it will happen. That's our future. And as far as, you know, expanding on that dream is that wherever any river community goes, they'll have full Internet access, they don't have to have some sort of Starbucks, to you know do their homework or any that it will be free Internet access and open it up for everyone. So I think that we're on our way. I think that the pandemic shed the light on that I know that I'm getting some of my medical education and services online now. I know that we will continue to have some of our meetings transpire online because it really isn't. Actually, it creates more work for me because I can pack in more than before. So I think that, that we will continue to see as this expands and, and that, you know, everyone can be connected, and we'll see the benefits of being connected. I think it's a stronger stronger community in the future.
Well thank you for that I, I will cross my fingers and I know that everyone on this call listening to being I'm sure going to join you both in that fight to hopefully get to that dream that we painted on a sort of these last couple of minutes, want to thank you both for joining us and thank you both for your Legion communities over the last 18 months, and to all of the elected appointed officials volunteer officials. Everyone who sort of serves in any district, their community. I know the last 18 months have been difficult but you know, Mayor Sallows the middle room. I think you both have both outlined a very optimistic vision. Next, a conversation I know we have a lot on the next century cities team is momentum, keeping up the interest, making sure that Congress and the Virginia Justice League and the California Assembly and all of the state houses and state governors are investing because we have seen at the local level in your communities and elsewhere, What money and interest can do, and it can drive some amazing innovation and partnerships. So I really thank you both for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. We look forward to continuing to highlight your work in Virginia and California, and we really look forward to hearing from you all again in the near future, hopefully in five or 10 years. We can circle back on this conversation and say look we did it. We have a health, you're more connected community. So thank you both so so much for joining us, and I'm very excited to introduce another panel as we sort of continue to COVID conversation with you all will join me in welcoming, and sorry again I'm the person, but I have to get it correct. Um, and then a wonderful team from Boston, they are going to be discussing building sustainable solutions for digital inclusion and equity. Post the COVID 19 pandemic, so I'm going to go ahead and welcome them to the table. If I can do all of this correctly, we're living in the age of zoom. Yes, and I am off screen and you can take it away.
Okay, Lucas. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone, I am rhondella Hawkins with the city boss and the telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs Officer, and I first of all, eccentricities for providing hometown and I the opportunity to share with you our partnership with leadership Austin and you'll hear more about this. By hotel. But before we introduce our presenter I did want to share a bit of background about Austin, and are primarily an urban suburban community. We are now approaching a million bucks, in which I've lived here for 30 years, I cannot believe the growth. I'm continuing to grow, and our city covered up 250 square miles and there's, there's a lot of different terrain here so I'm looking at networks, sometimes we hear from providers is a bit challenging but the city, we have been supporting and providing digital inclusion programs for over 20 years and I have been very fortunate to have worked in this space for that time. And, you know, we include public, public and computer labs for Internet access you have digital literacy training and some of our city and committed community facilities, libraries, and in our homeless shelters, and cities that are working towards digital inclusion strategic planning we adopted our plan in 2014, and we've been busy implementing missing on broadband access to devices and, you know, broadband data literacy, but that obviously we are updating that plans for this project. And we have Austin, it's a matching fun program that nonprofits can apply for $100,000 annually from our general fund, and it's called the grant for Technology Opportunities Program, and we are celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. We do conduct a residential technology assessment about every three years, I just to get a, you know better sense of, of need and so we can allocate resources but of course the, the mapping of infrastructure and data broadband services and availability is, is always back, and we're hoping that we'll get some, you know, some improvements from the state and from the, from the FCC. And finally, more recently, we created a city you know we have city computers that are required. Through our Refresh program, and we also get donations from nonprofit that collects them but will we refurbish them and distribute those gifts to to a nonprofit, who then provides to their clients, or their nonprofits can use them themselves. And finally, have a cross base coalition is committee wide of stakeholders that I think it was called like that alliance that Josh referred to, but it really helps for the connection and staying abreast of what you know nonprofit or what's going on, just to help identify potential partnerships and solutions. So there's a lot you know we do have a lot of activity, like, like everyone a speaker today and all of our communities. And you know, you know, the, the COVID-19 highlighted our digital divide and while we are very, we, we are very thankful that, you know, Austin our residents that have a home Internet connection is is above the national average. And definitely, you know, Texas is a large state, and to my eyes and, you know, El Paso and East Texas, and many Arizona state there is significant need. And, you know, still we have four providers, we actually have four broadband providers but they, they don't, there's not overlap, and there's only one company that really serves the entire city that can provide this same level principle of service but that's to be determined. And that really I think is a consequence of what our state legislature, they passed state legislature back in 2005, that their cable providers but they all brought broadband but back then it's like they don't have any built out requirements to serve in Boston. Prior to that, we were able to, we were able to at least require reasonable build out requirements but, uh, so with that said, I am. I'm delighted to introduce the TAM Harmon she is our 2021 leadership Austin Digital Inclusion Fellow at the city of Boston, and this program is leadership Austin's a great example of a public worship that is expanding digital opportunities while building community engagement. And she is working on a multi sector tactical Dziedzic effort to build an equitable and long term approach to solving the connectivity as well as the devices of literacy and digital literacy training to help, you know, meet our needs and to help our community and address the bug. And the goal of the is to ensure reliable, affordable broadband for all. And besides this, she is also the founder and CEO of Leadership Alliance, LLC, which is a consulting practice for social entrepreneurship and community solutions. So we're going to talk about provides you some insights about the project but town is going to give you insights from a former nonprofit executive, and now my, you know our Leadership Fellow. She's using her expertise to develop broadband adoption strategies to historically hard to reach populations.
So I run hello everyone my goodness what amazing presentations, I was sitting here, and learning from every panel and every presentation I feel so honored to be here and what a joy it is to work with random met the city and to be able to serve our fellow Austinites in, reliable and affordable broadband for all. We have a few slides if you don't mind, and share my slides, let's see. And here we are. This is our very short session. I am part of the fourth cohort, Austin, fellows. This is a group of seasoned bulls and executives, I think that may mean old, I'm not sure that leadership Austin is recruiting in order to be of service to the community to help solve some of the challenging issues in the community leadership was created as part of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce in 1979 and in 22,002 became a standalone 501 C three. It has three flagship programs the essential which is fab leaders emerge for young leaders in the pipeline and engage breakfast that happens every month. That brings leaders from across this together to talk about various issues in the community. As you can see there are 11 Folks, you'll see local photos, these are the fellows, the cohort for, there were supposed to be 10. And the joke is that I am like the fifth Beatle because the officers of various organizations got together and they realized very quickly that they wanted to solve some of the issues that were coming out during COVID. And so what they did is San Davis Foundation which hospital in the region are of course part of Sunday this foundation their health foundation, they decided to actually in the 11th Fellow, and they had me tied to the city of Windsor. I'm super excited to be with this group. So Rhonda, what are some of the benefits of having a fellow, this is your first one right, and be able to Boston in the telecommunication and Regulatory Affairs. Yes.
So the benefits so you know we our city, or city organization, staff, while we work, you know, cross community engaging in different, you know, organizations to get different perspectives, but I think bringing in a fellow, as it's external to the city and a fresh perspective not on city staff. They, you know, working and having a background in this community as well as the community is definitely. And just having the, the experience of professional executive expertise, I think, you know, can really help with building the boat. Looking at the. Looking at the framework, the strategy, what are we missing get kind of caught up in this, you know, this is a process for strategic planning. And so we needed to look, you know, we have a different lens, and also bringing in different networks expanding the networks that we've established at the city. This, you know, accomplishing what we want to accomplish, and like many of you, we know that it brought networks of what the typical folks that you go to, and engage with. And the, there's not any control, power, you know, within the structure, he is very free freely, has some influence you know to advising and connecting and yeah so it's just really nice to have that, that perspective and someone wants to build relationships.
So the selection process is a matchmaking process. So the project there takes 10 fellows, and they try to match mix and match us with what happened was that leadership awesome they manage the process they said to me, which projects are you interested in, I read the information about shows them and then I rank order them and then rhondella looked at all of our resume, and then rank order, which to me she was interested. Hopefully that we will match tunity to talk, and we say match made in heaven because it's just been amazing, fun to work together, and we work really hard and well together for one year of service with option to renew and there's a small stipend offered by leadership Austin there's there are multiple many different programs like this throughout the United States I know fuse, does this. See they work, specially with municipalities as well Chambers of Commerce can offer this for anyone who wants to consider it from Microsoft. It's a one year high impact community focused project. I've had this festival onboarding from the city of Boston and was assigned time and resources, which is amazing I just became embedded very very quickly. And due to the magnitude of the project simply realize that 10 to 12 hours is not sufficient for the project and committed more to sources, and there's been incredible interdepartmental support for the fellowship. And there are the staff has been there to support the meeting, but just the scheduling of stakeholder meetings that have taken all my time there to support and assist, and it's been really wonderful to have that process. And so, the skills that you were looking for rental love when you were looking for a job, think you're muted. I am that would not unmute. Now,
so, so, with this affordable and, you know, and reliable brand, knowing that this was a very broad and very large project, I'm just looking for the capacity of some leadership roles, you know problem solver, definitely someone that was, that we as art as, you know, our team at the city, collaborate and someone's very collaborative. Just having you know more advanced communication, listening skills, looking at the big firm. Also, you know, often we want to like race to this, to what is the solution are we short or we shortchange ourselves for time on how you know how long something should take to build and and just really,
you know, making us understand what is the what is do the change management in our community, this is, this is kind of,
you know, broadband access broadband it's very evolving it can be a big USP public broadband is in the community. They just know they want an Internet connection. That's a portable and reliable and just we have a very, you know, ever changing environment so somebody can adapt or someone who is really open to change, and I don't it doesn't not bring a solution to us, right, we need to build, working with stakeholders in the community. And just being able to take all this information that we're gathering. You know the hundreds of different, you know, this is like a, you know a lot of tentacles on this project so just really bringing it together, working with the team and helping to bring some clarity and amplify because often you know, we've Miss worked in this area for, you know, you know, whether it be one year or two years. You know this is, we know what this world is we know the terminals, you know, so it's good to have an outside perspective and outside eyes just to bring clarity and. And some more by the coherence and again, being able to build out those collaboration partners that we've not identified before.
Thank you. So we are now is that we're moving from implementation of existing programs to much broader strategy so everything's around amplifying broadly, raising awareness reaching larger networks of finding the capacity to function at a level that will allow more private public partnerships to the city holding the vision for what's possible, because that's one of the things that to really have someone or group, or being connected to a process will help everyone raise their heads because everyone is so engaged and siloed in their work, how do we then have a unified vision that will be part of that process the departments that have collaborated and supported that just the past six months are the telecommunication regulatory affairs. Development Department. Communication and Technology Department center for excellence, innovation, Community Engagement Division in the communications and public information office also public health, Austin Public Library, Parks and Rec and many many more we didn't have space to include in this slide, but it's a growing partnership. So how we got here was this thankfully I didn't walk into a vacuum, there has been so much great work being done, and there was insights gained from a lived experience of a special meeting called by the Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission in October of 2020 There was a lot of great wisdom around that there is a host of the their work plan as well. and then also experienced supported projects, and the inclusion strategic plan, of course, all of the learning that came from COVID. And so how are all of this that was the biggest question, the deliverables, we had to have some deliverables so that the project would move forward. So one was community assets for, let's say its simplest way, in a business term. Every person in Austin, do they get $1 worth of Internet for $1. So that's a consumer protection view of it, as well as what services are being, What are the existing data, does this include us. What would that look like, how do we map it out feasibility plan so many of us on the call, I've had a chance to learn from and trying to see what is happening in the states that we could learn from an Austin, of course, very quickly I realized that this is a whole other country, with its own very interesting one. So, how do we adapt that to the needs of Texas specially for audit, in particular. So, what is the problem and where does it expand when we're looking at maps in the 2018 residential survey, learned that 99% of Austinites have cell phones and 97 smart cell phones, so what's the problem where is it, what's happening, and even though 95% of Austinites use Internet at home. This is the disparities between communities on levels of access, so they need a smartphone but they don't have the right kind of data plan because of affordability too. In order to be able to utilize their devices in the way needed. They have devices that is not appropriate for the work that they want to do. So the data the communities that tend to face the highest barriers, no surprise, with confirmation of our friends who are in the communities of color, low income individuals and families or older adults and seniors, limited English proficiency, and people with disabilities, And of course, as I said, smartphone usage is very widespread in Austin, but device gaps exist for education, employment and health uses affordability and skill gaps are, have become very barriers, at least up to this point in the data that we've gathered for people who do not use the Internet. So some questions that we're exploiting are how do broadband availability quality and speed and cost across Austin. Does everyone get $1 worth of Internet or everyday, spend, how are existing services working or not working for resume what community needs are not addressed by existing services, what types of children is residents have experienced from COVID Are they bandwidth limitations bias issues, what changes have they done incredibly resilient, resourceful, the community has been amazing. And then, very interesting too is that are these challenges short term or are they going to be long term,
when we look at the feasibility. Are we doing something very short term, are we looking in different VISTAs or horizon. Is this a COVID resolved issue, are we going to be done with it after giving or not, but the driving central question that we learned very quickly from trying to solve the community's problems to turn into the community was that we actually need to understand how to identify reach and engage Austinites, who are most isolated resources and services of the city. There is a constantly usual suspects that are around the city and they know how to work the system with the system and they know how to work with the community, and then they're doing wonderful work but we Ising is that there is a segment of the population and we're actually creating these friends in the community that we cannot identify nor reach to ask them to become engaged in some way, so that we can begin to co create the solutions not to create solutions. Now, one of the biggest temptations has been, gosh, we have these resources to do this this to solve these problems. But how do we go deeper, to get into that place where we shift into leading from the front of them, leading from the back of the room and allowing the community to drive this. And there's so many other presentations today especially Detroit I was so excited to hear that and I can't wait to learn more about how this could actually be completely community driven.
So in that end we are realizing that we have to have a triple cross sector solution, we actually started with three we thought it was a triangle, but you know we're from Texas, we love the Lone Star. Everything blossoms start for us at some point. So how do we make sure that there are checks and balances from thing. Do we understand the issues how what questions in how are we approaching the problem. Do we understand the realities in the community. Are there solutions, how can we support, how can we create the space for the work to be done. At first we were really working with only government business service sector or the nonprofit sector. Very quickly we realized we need a counterbalance to the business voice coming in to critical to the sustainable solutions, but they were trying to ideate, and very quickly and we were thinking Wait, we need some data to be able to understand is the right solution. So, academic and technical institutions, in terms of partnership were brought into the model. They're a data driven process. They stick about products and process. It's not that we're have these products or solutions around it, it's what does the community really need, and of course the government's the resource, and the stewardship of the community. And so what was the most surprising so far for our community. They were hearing from the housing authority that some of the rest of the reporting back through focus groups that they actually trust the government, more than they trust the business community, so that for us was a little bit surprised. I had not heard that before, But I heard that in the presentations today. And so that means that the stewardship at the government level is even that library. So how do we hold the trust build the trust amplified trust for the community with business and how do we help solve the issues for businesses, which we know is all around adoption, they want more adoption, help you with that, but you have to make sure there's affordability so people can actually buy houses and stay. So how do we build the market so that they can live up with a and there was a my friends from East Texas with mental health, to have certain populations, maybe in concert with others or in conjunction with other populations, we're going to look at. So, this is the cross sector solutions map in terms of this, the stakeholders are community tech until the communications potential orange dots sit squarely between our government and our community but are appointed by the council to ensure that the needs and the priorities of the countries are maintained, they have looked at our presentations they have given their someone working with them very closely to ensure that we're moving correctly forward to aligning all solutions with the progress of the council, and so they are around homelessness early childcare education, workforce development and food and housing insecurity. So we want to ensure and as we're talking to the county in and resides with just Travis County with began to build out a petition with the county to see if these priorities match the priorities of the country, so that we can work in concert to serve more folks in unity around the solutions, we are looking at multi generational household solutions, mainly that will bring as many of these solutions possible. So for example we need, we know we have some rural parts, or it's in Austin that have very similar challenges, like our rural areas like counties that surround us. And when it comes to early childhood centers in Austin, they are run as businesses and needs but then in more rural areas where our friends are more homeschooled and possibly a solution around home base, childhood care businesses as entrepreneurship may be a solution, not exactly same thing but in the same spectrum, they both need mentorship as small businesses. In order to be able to function and go to the next level and become economic resilient. We know that a shared services model which is the back of this model of any of the businesses would be of some use to all of our entrepreneurs within the child care space that means taking all this stuff like it, human resources, marketing, finance, out of their hands and giving it to power we can do that, which are the business community, so they can be purposefully engaged in the process, how do we build that partnership ensure the needs are true. So we're looking at various solutions so that childcare, can lead to families be able to get back to work events so whether they start their own business and or get back to work, to ensure the resiliency of the economy, the five pillars of the solution. We know that even before affordability is sure is extremely important so it could be five possibly six. This is a very growing model, but we know that infrastructure, super important affordability has to be competition in the market for pricing and affordability, even things like purchase Internet connectivity, reliable, high quality Internet speed and strength devices are their appropriate devices everything from wearable phones to tablets to laptops to desktop whole gamut was appropriate for use. Age culture, language training course training and skill development on the devices. And then there's this whole other element of support that we are learning around, of what happens after people get training, and we're hearing a lot about digital navigation digital structure community navigation community stewardship that run the whole gamut is kind of what you know just dress it down as IT support with three city solutions that were conduct live and who's going to pay for it. We're actually exploring of them that right now. So I'm sorry I'm sort of running through this so how we're going to do all this stuff
is a lot going on so technical friends in the business. You're saying alright let's divide this up, this two three horizon view of doing short term one to three years, address immediate needs, there's funding coming down Canalys and challow channel the funding into the price of resources currently to ensure that we can serve everyone, how do we bridge the gap. Now until these are less sequential this sort of happens all together from now to five years most challenging thing is around a force operation ensuring that stakeholders all take one step in towards one another, towards each other so that we can have a multi sector solution to some people are going to be comfortable stepping in a different times, that's okay. Hold the space and embrace everyone to be part of the solution in a very diverse and dynamic ecosystem and Austin, and then long term economic policy change culture change anything around digital citizenship, that has to be big idea will take anywhere from five to seven years to patient with that process, and begin to plant the seeds now to be able to harvest fruit in about five to seven years so that is it, my goodness, say I read through it all, so there it is. Let's see how I did, we have a minute 50 to go. So let me stop there and see if there are any questions. Thank you so much. I am so grateful that we could talk about this, I think you are.
We just read it, it was a good okay thank you for the comments and chat. We're grateful. Love to connect. Thank you. I'll put my email in chat, so please feel free to reach out, I would love to learn from you all and see if we're even doing this right, what ideas you might have for us so thanks.
We'll put the President in the chat to thank you all very much. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you. All right, good afternoon everyone, and welcome to our discussion on funding opportunities for communities on the wrong side of the digital divide. My name again is Ryan Johnston, the federal politics here at NCC. And one of the big threads that a lot of speakers today, we have talked on is how funding is one of the largest barriers, if you're taking a new broadband. We've also heard a lot about how many communities are unsure of where funding exists, where they can go to access that and how state and federal programs are often lacking the necessary reach and support, which makes applying for and receiving these funds easier for liberty. As more federal funding is becoming available and pupil grams are being bundled Washington, community level knowledge about how to access opportunities is absolutely essential. Today we're going to discuss a little bit how local officials can more easily find new sources of federal funding and how they can work together more with the broadband leaders in their states. That might be able to help them start in the in the past to connecting their communities. Thankfully, I don't have to explain any of this, and I am joined today by a gifted expert federal funding Gilbert Resendez the broadband program specialist with the National telecom Information Administration, specifically, Mr Resendez works with broadband USA, a program established by NTIA to work with state, local, and tribal governments in detail, nonprofits, that really promotes planning and funding efforts through solution neutral government sources, specifically Mr Resendez works on the broadband infrastructure team, coordinating partnerships and outreach with state and local governments on programs and policies. So for the purposes of today's discussion take questions throughout the session, so please don't hesitate to drop anything into the chat and we'll also have a few minutes at the end to address questions as well. So with that, Gilbert, it's absolutely wonderful that you're here today. Thank you for discussing this incredibly complex topic with us and I'll turn it over to you.
Thank you very much, Ryan, I appreciate the invitation from you in next video, please. Before we get started I'm dropping in the chat, our federal funding guide, I have a slide about. I'm only talking about five federal programs at a pretty high level, but there are a number of different federal programs across the government that I find broadband or broadband isn't eligible expenses I wanted to make sure that folks that as a resource. So with that, I'll go ahead and get started with. Like Ryan said, Gilbert Resendiz I've been with MTA, two years tomorrow, and I work with our state and local governments, I'm here to talk to you about funding. So first of all, given a kind of a brief overview of what NTA is in our mission with the Federal Government Department of Commerce, like Brian gave a pretty good overview. We sit inside of the Department of Commerce and Tia. Communications and Information Administration. We are a Telecommunications and Information Policy Bureau of the Commerce Department, and specifically we for the IT administration and it's in the White House on its broadband and telecommunications policy goals, to ensure that broadband infrastructure is delivering the greatest need to do that by supporting state initiatives, our sister federal agencies is coordinating efforts across the government. Specifically, We but the same program focus on community outcomes. And we think that we do this through partnerships technical assistance, and then products and events that we produce. So we facilitate with color state broadband business networking digital network, We clarify and communicate policy towards learners work with tribal governments work to improve coordination across all levels of support native communities, as they're evaluating business models or technology can use deliver broadband or digital inclusion programs in their communities. And then like Ryan mentioned we probably publish solution neutral types produced monthly webinars about lately with money that we've been out the door, and then a little bit more frequent than monthly about weekly or twice weekly. And then we convene stakeholders and various forums and and come to the community to speak at Century cities or many of our other partners that we work with and I'm sure you've heard of. So first I want to talk about our NIH grants that we have with us. So these resources, authorized by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2001. That act but three new grant programs. Those are trying to speak to them, the broad structure deployment program. The connecting minority communities pilot program, our tribal connectivity grant program. That was our $200 program $268 million program, and 900 program respectively. In this slide I've linked to the net gain opportunities, I believe next century cities can distribute them, and the CMC pilot program I've linked to the final note so for that as a little bit further. Like I said, for program I wanted to talk a little bit about was our Bing infrastructure program that's $188 million program. The purpose of that is to cover broadband projects, it goes to covered partnerships, and we accept applications now through August 17 So, if anyone your community is interested in that funding. Please apply by August 17. Work with your states, and we'll talk a little bit more about that, to see what programs they may also work on to say no and steps on toes. There's a few dentists to point out, but I mentioned. The first is, what is a covered partnership. The act this Consolidated Appropriations Act defines that as between a state, or political subdivision of a state or one or more close to the state, and a provider of fixed broadband service, common question that I've gotten is, is, say a municipal provider in a covered partnership. And the way that we've interpret that is because it's pretty quickly the intent of the statute but as our partnership would have two entities. So it's conceivable what are the other depending on what the state laws are, and how it, how it's what a political subdivision is Excuse me but we need to add a condition.
Nexus, what is qualifying brands. And that is a broadband service at fixed broadband service that speed of medical at 25 megabits per second in the downstream, not less than 23rd Excuse me three megabits per second in the direction also to find we'd see in our FAQs and I put in here, which you cannot access glasses were served, and that would be a household or business lacking access to broadband service, which we defined in the last slide, and that no provider has been provided, or just to provide service or otherwise receiving federal or state funding subject to enforceable build out, and that's subject to enforce the bill pieces are very very important piece of that legislation, and are notice any opportunities to keep it in the back of your minds as you're working on these applications. A little bit on the web. This program before a transition, like I said this is from cover parks that are covered broadband project applications you describe both a cover project, what is the cover project you're seeking funding for as well as who's in that partnership, excuse me, as well as describing that service area, and any other state or federal support that's being received. Each covered partnership can only submit one grant application, a covered partnership can have one or more fixed broadband provider, and fixed broadband might be a part of multiple cover partnerships. Next, I want to teach, connecting minority communities pilot program. Like I said at the top here in $68, million program. It is eligible to program our historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and minor or minority serving institutions. There are many different minority serving institutions we have some resources on our website as the US education so I would refer there are many different types. I can have an excellent. We also allow consortiums that is one of those types of institutions of higher education. Two o'clock, with a minority business enterprise for tax exempt a 501 C three exam. These funds can be used to purchase broadband Internet service, or for any eligible equipment, or to hire a trained and attend, information technology personnel in order to promote learning or instruction to students, to operate or any business enterprise or to operate that texts up to five points. Like I said we have published a final rule for that program and on our website, we have not published the Notice of Funding Opportunity yet. We anticipate posting that around August it's currently working its way through clearance process. But once that's posted, that'll open up the application period for that. Two things I want to make sure their takeaway from this slide on program requirements is that this grant has a two year period of performance, as well as no match for the CMC pilot program. That's really important to keep in mind. Additionally, the legislation, the Consolidated Appropriations Act calls a 40% earmark that funds will be made to see us as well that 20% of all grant funds from this pot of money will be used to award eligible recipients to provide broadband access to students in need in order to help them get something out of this legislation has a lot of different things for eligibility. We created a community anchor dashboard so you can state and filter by type of minorities, whether it's an HBCU, a tribal college and universities spanic serving institutions are one of the many other different types of minority serving institutions and see what eligible institutions may be in your communities, as well as the Census Blocks for service event anchor institution to provide service or work in those areas. And then the last and Graham, I would like to briefly discuss is our tribal Broadband Program. This is our largest of the three it's $980 million. This is for tribal governments tribal colleges and universities, the Department of Hawaiian note native Hawaiian communities, Native Hawaiian, native Alaska preparations as well as other various types of tribal entities. This is to be used for the claimant or add up, broadband service can tribal lands and project projects all promote broadband access and adoption in order to address remote learning to work needs in response to the COVID 19 pandemic deadline for submission on this application is September 1 And is there a deadline that we can't move. I know we find a lot of questions if there is some wiggle room.
And then again, entities to iterate, are those tribal organizations of a tribal organizations in your communities, please, please, end with them around your communities, it's a really great opportunity, all tribal organizations to have an option to take advantage of last ha fame before I'll take a brief class, we have a call from our viewers. We're seeking individuals with peace and broadband digital inclusion programs infrastructure deployment program specific to minority serving institutions as American viewers for all three. So if you're interested in applying, I'd really encourage you to apply order to apply, you just need to send an email to grant reviewer@mti.gov With the information on this screen in your resume, someone will get back to you with what the next steps will be, as well as but one time. We'll be in touch. Also the email you can send questions to regarding being a mirror we were, we have worked with our conflicts attorneys, communicate any conflicts of interest so if you're, if you're a city leader and you're saying, hey, I'm interested in applying for a program but I also think this is a cool opportunity. We have worked out ways for you can do both. So just, if you have any questions about what that looks like, please email grant from New York ntia.gov, there's a pause and check with Brian to see if there any questions before I keep you.
The only question that we've had so far, is whether or not we'll be reviewed these slides. So, yeah, I think we'll be able to easily distributable. Perfect. Other than that, no questions yet.
Awesome. So the next step, I have two other funds I wanted to talk about before talking about some of the resources we have an MTA, as you plan, broadband or digital inclusion projects. And those funds come from the US Department of the Treasury. So these are appropriate or authorized under the American rescue plan 2021 They are the state and local fiscal Recovery Fund, and the capital projects. So together, state and local funds totals about $350 million. And one of the many out there is broadband, and I'm sure as many people have heard the capital project site as a $2 billion fund for territories and tribal governments capital projects that directly enable remote work station health monitoring. In response to the COVID 19 pandemic, I spend a little bit of time on some of this on the state and local fiscal Recovery Fund. Since, when it specifically has a local collapse to there are a few different places where it shows that broadband or digital inclusion isn't just make sure folks are, have that on their radar. So the first interest is specifically called out in the American rescue plan at state and local governments to make necessary investment in broadband infrastructure. There's a lot of other information. If you have questions on, you know, at speeds that need to be met for technology. I would encourage you to visit Treasury Department's website because there's more information on that there. The other section is in this assistance to household section of the American rescue plan under the state and local fiscal recovery funds. It does state assistance to households. Facing negative economic due to COVID-19 can include Internet access virtual literacy assistance systems want to make sure that folks are aware that.