I want to thank Mark Erickson for sending an update on Sibley County’s plans for broadband. It sounds like things are going well…

We had a great turn out and response at the 12 public presentations of the feasibility study the week of November 15th. I want to thank everyone who showed and listened and asked questions.

We’re talking with Doug Dawson and our legal and financial counsel regarding different options for moving forward. The plan is to have most of our questions answered by January 13, 2011 when we plan to present a road map to the city councils and county commissioner at the annual county wide meeting.

In the meantime I’ve attached a “Benefits of Broadband” document to this email. It was created by Doug Dawson of CCG on behalf of Sibley County.

I do have one item to bring up. Apparently the Arlington newspaper said in their story on the presentations that farmers would be charged an additional $1,000 to hook up to the system. That is not true. We are not planning on any additional cost to farmers.

We presented the option of charging farmers more (because of the added expense of building out the rural areas) to let everyone know our thinking as we wrestled with the challenge of financing the project. As it stands everyone will be charged the same with the exception of an additional cost to farmers if they had an extra-long driveway for the initial fiber drop. But even that question hasn’t been decided. That will be decided by the joint powers board if it is formed and also with input from the operator we hire.

And all of this presupposes the project moves forward. Personally I hope it does but there is a lot of work to get done before we get to that decision point.