From the Institute for Local Self Reliance…
July 7th, 2026 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM EST
The latest installment in a joint webinar series from the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) and the Community Broadband Networks initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) will showcase a new financing and governance model being put into real-world action that allows for communities to control their digital futures.
The free, one-hour live webinar — “Control + Shift + ALTernative: Building Community-Owned Fiber” — will go behind the scenes of two real-world community fiber projects to tease out the practical lessons that other communities can learn from.
The webinar will feature four practitioners who have been in the trenches of community broadband development: Jim Cannon, CEO of Pivot-Tech; Scott Corbitt, General Manager of the Port of Lewiston; Christina Burns, Kendall County Administrator; and Chris Perlitz, Managing Director at Municipal Capital Markets Group, Inc.
The conversation will be grounded in two case studies — Kendall County and Lewiston — that together illustrate what it actually takes to move a community fiber project from idea to operating network, using a creative “63-20” tax-exempt bond model championed by Pivot-Tech Development, which specializes in public-private partnerships for community-owned broadband networks.