The Morgan County Commissioners issued a letter of support to the Morgan County Planning Office last Monday to seek out a broadband connectivity project for under-served portions of the county.
Morgan County Planner Dusty Douglas discussed the project with the commissioners earlier in the month of August about getting portions of the county that are currently unable get broadband Internet access through I3 in the City of Jacksonville, CassComm in the Village of South Jacksonville, and beyond.
Douglas says the letter of support is simply a step in the application process for grants to get the project started: “In working with the folks at Frontier Communications, they had some recent success in Knox County. We got a preliminary approval to accept our application in the forthcoming grant round, so we’ve kind of cleared another hurdle. We have pretty good coverage between the city and the village projects that everyone is familiar with but there is still a large part of the county this is unserved. I’m hopeful in talking about it today…it doesn’t have to be anything formal, but any kind of little note to me or to the county board that we can include [would be helpful]. A lot of times when you do that in grants, it’s just lip service but in this instance, it’s very important. I think they have done a good identifying those places that are under-served. Anything will help. We are giving it a shot. If we are unsuccessful, we’ll keep trying through the next few rounds of funding.”
The county will not be providing any financial support for the project or the grant application. Frontier Communications is taking the lead on the project. Douglas says he doesn’t have a formal date on when the grant will be issued, but hopes it will be by the end of the year.