MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Commission was planning to conduct stakeholder meetings on the county’s comprehensive broadband plan in September.
A recent special meeting of Star City Council, during which it heard a pitch from Atlantic Broadband, helped change that calendar somewhat.
Now the commission intends to convene a meeting of the county’s municipalities to discuss the topic.
“Our study is inclusive, but we want to make sure the municipalities know where we’re at so that if decisions come to them regarding how they want to proceed with providing their citizens connectivity, they’ll weigh what we’re doing to further that into their decisions and not make decisions that might be premature,” Commission President Sean Sikora said.
Sikora said there has been far more local interest from Internet service providers (ISPs) since the commission announced its broadband intentions more than a year ago. That interest has only increased with the allocation of millions in American Rescue Plan money, for which broadband expansion is a priority use, along with water and sewer projects.
“They’re trying to get their piece of the pie before the pie is more controlled by the overall county plan,” Sikora said. “But it’s not our plan to be an ISP. We’re trying to bring infrastructure to the county so the ISP can provide service. We just want to comprehensively plan that infrastructure first.”
Commissioner Tom Bloom added that the commission has no intention of telling municipalities what to do, but instead what the county is doing that may expand the available options for everyone.
“They’re starting to show up in different cities. They may be legitimate or not, we don’t know, but they’re trying to get exclusive franchise agreements. So we’re like, ‘Wait a second. You may end up wanting them, but let’s at least wait and see all the alternatives.’ We just want to make sure all the cities are on the same page and know what we’re doing,” Bloom said.
In May, the commission hired Columbus, Ohio-based Ice Miller Whiteboard to put together a countywide strategic broadband plan at a cost of $250,657.
Representatives of the firm said the plan would likely take nine months to complete.
In other county news, Sheriff Perry Palmer said the tax office mailed out more than 97,000 red tax bills on Friday.
The tax office is working with a new credit card processing company, Certified Payments, lowering convenience fees from 2.5% to 2.25% and dropping the minimum fee from $2 to $1.50.
Additionally, Chief Tax Deputy Kelly Palmer said the new software allows taxpayers to print the actual tax receipt, complete with watermark, which will be accepted by agencies like the West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles.
“That was actually the biggest selling point with this new company, that their software was able to do that,” she said.
Lastly, the commission approved intergovernmental agreements with the various municipalities for dog warden services for the 2022 fiscal year.
The costs are: Morgantown ($23,896.62); Granville ($1,327.59); Westover ($737.55) and Star City ($147.51).
The contracts are based on a $147.51 cost per call, multiplied by the number of calls for each municipality the previous year.
TWEET @DominionPostWV
