City officials discuss broadband

Published 10:12 pm Saturday, April 17, 2021

In conjunction with the Baldwin County Board of Commissioners, city officials are making comprehensive plans to become a “Broadband Ready Community.”

City Manager Hank Griffeth told members of city council during a public hearing Tuesday night that part of the need to change the comprehensive plan brought about the need for the public discussion on the topic.

Griffeth said he had talked with Susan Landfried with the Middle Georgia Regional Commission in Macon about advertising the public hearing.

“We will do that in conjunction with a presentation from her so she let us all know what the changes in the comprehensive plan will encompass,” Griffeth said. “Basically, the purpose of the public hearing is to brief (city council members and residents) the process used to develop the amendments to the comprehensive plan and also to give everybody the opportunity for public participation and to obtain input on this Broadband Ready application.”

Landfried made her presentation during city council’s work session.

About two months ago, Lanford said county officials reached out to the Middle Georgia Regional Commission about wanting to proceed with an amendment to the county’s comprehensive plan so they could apply to become a Broadband Ready Community.

“The basic purpose of this is to really help place Baldwin County and the City of Milledgeville on the priority list when thinking about the future investments, particularly as more federal and state funding is made available for broadband expansion,” Landfried said. “As we all know, this need for broadband expansion was made more apparent in the past year as we all went home for school, work, etc.”

 Landfried said she wanted to gather a list of goals from city officials, as well as residents, when it comes to broadband.

She also explained the definition of broadband.

“It is the transmission of wideband with data for a high-speed internet connection,” Landfried said. “For the state of Georgia, they mean a download speed of 25 megabytes per second and upload speed of 3 megabytes per second.”

Residents would have better reliability for streaming on smartphones, computers, smart home systems, game videos and telehealth, Landfried said.

She said without it, download and upload speed capabilities are much more limited.

Landfried also talked a little about the future of broadband access.

She pointed out the need for greater broadband internet because technology is evolving.

“All developed areas need to be served by reliable internet service,” Landfried said. “And as I said, also preparing for upcoming funding for broadband expansion.”

One of the first things to be done is to define areas of need, she pointed out.

That includes unserved and underserved communities.

The county held its public hearing on the same topic about six weeks ago.

“We wanted to come to the city and make sure that you all wanted to join this joint amendment, if you’re interested, to share your thoughts as well,” Landfried said. “There have been a variety of conversations already held with various providers and other community members about some of those goals and action items.”

In the future, another final public hearing will be held.

At that time, each local governmental body will be required to meet and consider whether or not to adopt the amendment to the comprehensive plan.

The amendment has to be approved by government officials.

“The purpose of this ordinance is to streamline and standardize develop of broadband infrastructure so that you have something that’s already in place when service providers are ready to expand their services,” Landfried said.

She also a little about the importance of the city and county becoming Broadband Ready.

Landfried said it would help make the community more competitive for public funding opportunities, as well as state and federal funding opportunities.

“This is just an additional step that is going to make the city and county a little more competitive for some of those funding opportunities,” Landfried said.

City Alderman Walter Reynolds said the Central State Hospital Local Redevelopment Authority had for the past several years worked on and had submitted a grant to expand broadband access to the state hospital campus for economic development purposes, as well as to provide additional broadband access to the underserved community on the southside of the city where there is spotty, or at best, slow connectivity.

“I just want to put that on the table,” Reynolds said. “That is something that we have been working on, and I believe the county has been working in conjunction with the Redevelopment Authority on that grant.”

 He added that city officials also had been participated in some of the preliminary filings for the proposed grant.

“That is at least one part of the broadband plan here in the community,” Reynolds said.

Griffeth asked Reynolds to provide Lanford a copy of that EDA grant. 

Lanford asked if there were any other initiatives underway within the city concerning broadband expansion other than the one on the campus of Renaissance Park at Central State Hospital.

Reynolds recalled that there was some talk about a new fiber provider and that such conversation may have been looped in with talks concerning the EDA grant proposal.

The city alderman said the fiber provider had mentioned running a line from Milledgeville to Augusta along the Fall Line Freeway.

“That was supposed to be something that the city would be looking at tapping onto; the universities were going to be tapping onto, and the hospital was looking at adding onto that line as well,” Reynolds said.

Griffeth said that provider’s plan did not include going through Atlanta.

“The conversation initially started with the city based on the fact that we were brought in by Georgia College,” Griffeth said. “And that particular fiber line was actually going to originate in Augusta and come down through McDuffie, Warren, Hancock to Baldwin County, and then turn back up and go back toward Atlanta — most likely to Newton County to pick up some dark fiber that they had in Newton County, quite frankly, based on some of their economic development work they’ve done up there just off I-20.”

Griffeth said that particular provider later cooled down the conversation because of funding issues.

“I need to circle back around and see if those folks still have some interest in running the fiber,” the city manager said.

Reynolds said he believes a comprehensive plan that brings the greatest quality of service to the greatest number of people at the most reasonable cost should be the end goal.

Alderman Steve Chambers, meanwhile, asked what would happen if public help, along with state and federal funding was not available.

“I guess what I am asking is there are areas that are underserved, and I don’t know if that means they don’t have phone lines; they don’t have cable lines or that they don’t have the access to the internet or to broadband,” Chambers said.

Griffeth said he was aware of several EMCs looking into providing internet services.

“Tri-County EMC announced about six weeks ago that they are simply going to provide, ultimately, a system that provides broadband to all of their customers,” Griffeth said. “So, a large portion on the western side of our county will be covered by Tri-CoGo — the name of the subsidiary company that Tri-County EMC is putting together.”

Even so, though, it’s still going to leave a fairly large section on the east side of the county, as well as on the northeast side of the county with needs, as well as the southside that could be helped through the EDA grant, the city manager said.

Baldwin County Manager Carlos Tobar also attended the city’s public hearing and commented.

Tobar said the county’s GIS representative had researched some information because county officials wish to overlay what Tri-County EMC plans to do in Baldwin County.

“As city manager Griffeth said, the entire western portion of the county is going to be covered, so a lot has changed since the EDA grant application was submitted,” Tobar said.

The eastern side of the county, as previously mentioned by Griffeth, which is sparsely populated, would remain uncovered.

“One of the interesting things that our GIS analyst discovered was that Baldwin County has a very good broadband score in comparison to all of the other counties in the state of Georgia,” Tobar said.

The local area compares nicely with some of the Metro-Atlanta areas.

There are nine internet service providers in Baldwin County, and the city of Milledgeville has really good coverage, the county manager said.

“So, that was an eye-opener for all of us, myself and county commissioners,” Tobar said. “So, we are much better off than a lot of communities, and definitely much better off than several surrounding counties.”