Local officials are looking for feedback regarding the need for high-speed internet in certain parts of Union County.
Bill Narducci, the county administrator, told the commissioners Wednesday that a group of local officials is looking into ways to reach out to residents, including a survey that would eventually be sent to the community.
“One of the ideas that they had is putting together a community survey to get out to, primarily, the western part of the county and the northern part of the county to get some feedback from property owners on their experience with high-speed internet. Or the lack of experience, the lack of service,” Narducci said. “It’s just to kind of help us get together a more comprehensive idea of what the community has or doesn’t have and help us along the way.”
The group was formed as part of the Community Accelerator Program, created by the state’s BroadbandOhio, which was tasked with expanding those services across the state, particularly in rural areas.
Grant money for expanding broadband comes from a law singed by Gov. Mike DeWine in 2021, which created the Ohio Residential Broadband Expansion Grant (ORBEG) program.
Work done that year allowed for more than $200 million in grants to go to 11 internet service providers to offer service to residents, according to BroadbandOhio’s website.
Once that funding was in place, the Community Accelerator Program was created to start focusing in on those local areas of need.
“(The program) helps local communities basically form a group and kind of guide them along the process of determining need in their communities and then putting together grant applications for potential opportunities to leverage as funding,” Narducci said. “It’s a chance for different communities to get together and share ideas, share experiences.”
Union County’s group consists of representatives – many of them in various IT departments – from the Marysville school district, Memorial Hospital, the CIC, the county and City of Marysville offices.
Narducci said that process is in the early planning stages currently and residents may soon see that survey go out.
He said part of the process is also seeing what other groups might need to come to the table to offer information about the areas of need.
“My idea was to get the townships involved, get the LUC (Logan-Union-Champaign Regional Planning Commission) involved because they have a lot of outreach with the community but we’re at the very infancy of putting the survey together and then along with that were questions we wanted to ask and get answered,” Narducci said. “This is kind of a first step in that process. Really, it’s been more information gathering. Now, it’s more our community forging its own path forward and getting some feedback from this Ohio group.”
According to the state’s website, rounds of funding are in swing including the second round of the ORBEG program, which was approved by the Broadband Expansion Grant Authority.
While funding is not a total package, grants are “designed to help with the infrastructure costs of the project and help build the networks in areas (that lack) high-speed internet,” according to BroadbandOhio. The grants are really intended to cover a “broadband funding gap.”
“ORBEG is a competitive grant program designed to fund last-mile broadband infrastructure projects in rural areas currently lacking access to reliable, high-speed internet,” according to the state’s website. “Capital Projects Funds (CPF) will be used to expand the current state-funded program to serve additional locations.”
According to the state, the second round of the ORBEG program is “designed to provide Ohio households with Internet service at speeds of 100/100 Mbps upon project completion.”
Those Internet service providers using CPF money will be required to participate in the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which the state said is a $30 per month subsidy for low-income families.
“In total, BroadbandOhio estimates around 230,000 residents will have improved broadband availability thanks to the 104 expansion projects made possible by ORBEG funding,” according to the website.
Local officials met Wednesday to discuss next steps but said it will still be a while before actually applying for funding.