Kendall County’s Broadband Ambition - Episode 622 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Zach Bachmann (00:07):
But what we're aiming to do here is a complete infrastructure upgrade of Kendall County, where we're connecting our anchor, anchor institutions driving economic development, creating educational opportunities. You name it.

Christopher Mitchell (00:19):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota today, [00:00:30] and I'm talking with Christina Burns, who is the Kendall County administrator in Illinois. Welcome to the show, Christina.

Christina Burns (00:36):
Hi, thanks for having us.

Christopher Mitchell (00:38):
And we're also talking with Zach Bachmann, who is a Kendall County board member, as well as Chair of Connect, Kendall County Commission. Welcome.

Zach Bachmann (00:46):
Thank you Chris. Excited to be here.

Christopher Mitchell (00:48):
I am excited to have both of you on the show to talk about what Kendall County is doing. I'll just say personally, I've been long interested in counties getting involved in this. Counties vary so significantly from state [00:01:00] to state where in the northeast they barely exist and in other places they actually do important things. So I'm excited to get a better picture of what you all are working on and I'll just credit Karl Bode, who wrote a really great story about what you're doing on our CommunityNets website. That's opened my eyes to it. So although Christina, as you mentioned, we'd met before at the meeting in Illinois where, I don't know, I felt like I was a little bit unpopular in the room talking [00:01:30] about Cook County's needs. Let's start, Christina, just tell us a little bit about Kendall County please.

Christina Burns (01:37):
Kendall County is part of the Chicago region, but it is on sort of what we call the far southwest side of that region. It's kind of where the suburbs end and the farm fields begin. It's the fastest growing county in Illinois, has been for more than 10 years back in the housing boom. It was the fastest growing county in the nation. [00:02:00] We're still continuing to see lots of residential development, lots of businesses. It's a growing community but still has a lot of needs where it comes to connectivity. Mostly attributed to the rural nature of the southwest portion of the county.

Christopher Mitchell (02:15):
Excellent. And Zach, I'm curious, so you've been on the county commission for a few years and thanks for making time right before the election to come talk with us. What's anything you'd add to that description

Zach Bachmann (02:25):
To add? I mean, I grew up here, so I went to school here K through 12. I grew up in Oswego, [00:02:30] which is Kendall County's largest village and I'd say Christina described it aptly Ryan. This is a very fast growing county, but it still has a lot of rural elements. Ryan, I mean growing up I went to school with a lot of farm kids. That's part of my identity. Part of why I ran and ran on this issue of expanding connectivity because I knew how bad it was and what people were exposed to based on where they were living.

Christopher Mitchell (02:55):
And you have a fair amount of people, you range from cities to those areas as you push [00:03:00] south and west. I'm guessing where it's more rural, but would it be correct to say that there are areas where people have multiple choices, places where people have one choice and then places where people have nothing?

Zach Bachmann (03:12):
In general, yes. If you're in a more densely populated area, you probably have more than one option. Is it truly competitive? Open to interpretation I'd say. But yeah, there are some areas that definitely are served by the FCC's definition.

Christopher Mitchell (03:27):
Alright, so let's talk about what Kendall County is doing [00:03:30] and Christina, let me turn to you to ask for just a thumbnail sketch of the way the county is then responding to the varied need of different people in the county.

Christina Burns (03:41):
Just a little bit of background, I've only been with the county for about a year. Previously I worked for the Village of Las Vegas, so familiar with Kendall County, been in the area, the county started this project really out of C. Seeing those needs for connectivity, looking at how do we make this happen So the previous county administrator has strong IT [00:04:00] background. I think we just had the right mix of people to take the step forward to say, alright, let's look at the issue. What role can the county play in solving the connectivity issues in our rural areas, especially seeing all of the federal funds flowing into supporting these kinds of networks. Fast forward to today, where we're at today, we're in the process of building two mid mile rings that will then include all of the last mile connections to connect nearly every [00:04:30] house in the county.

(04:31):
We received $15 million from the state of Illinois through their Connect round three grant funding and we are partnering with the company we selected through an RFP process Pivot-Tech to establish a not-for-profit corporation that will be called, it's called Fox Fiber. They will own and operate that network. They're going to have to issue revenue bonds, but that's the means for us to build this massive network to serve all of Kendall County. We have [00:05:00] the density in certain parts of the county that will still be able to get a fair number of subscribers. We believe that's going to support financially that really sparsely populated area of the county. So our catchphrase is density supports sparsity. So that's how we are making this work. And of course the grant funds and not being driven by a profit motive but more of a public service motive.

Christopher Mitchell (05:27):
I like that we're all in this together kind of spirit [00:05:30] in many ways. This actually reminds me of RS Fiber in Minnesota. I've written about it. They were also creative on the financing, which we'll come to in a little bit. And when I was reading a little bit of the background, I was curious about that. Once again, Zach, I'll ask if you want to add anything on to the solution of what the county's pursuing right now.

Zach Bachmann (05:50):
Yes. I don't know how deep into the weeds we want to get, but Illinois, we talked about it. You gave an example of a public-private partnership in another state by [00:06:00] state statute law Illinois. Technically counties can't have public-private partnerships. We don't have home rule, so it's complicated because of that. I'd also add that as Christina is saying, this is a public focused project where the government involvement specifically the county's involvement is meant to meet the needs of our community. It's obviously about serving the under and unserved members of our community. That is huge focal point. That's what guarantees the funding. But what we're aiming to do here is a complete infrastructure upgrade of [00:06:30] Kendall County where we're connecting our anchor institutions driving economic development, creating educational opportunities, you name it. Right. Again, complete infrastructure upgrade. And the other thing I would add is we're not mimicking it completely, but we are looking at the design, build, operate transfer model where the goal of this, obviously Fox Fiber is the non-for-profit that is doing this on behalf of the county. I believe that's the exact legal phrasing, but the goal is to eventually after these bond issues are paid [00:07:00] for this to be a public asset owned by the county and operated by it, whether we contract out the maintenance of that or incorporate or own is up to the discretion at that time. And that's 20, 30 years from now. But that's the kind of big picture of what we're trying to do here where we are piloting the ship on this and we get to control what we do with this thing.

Christopher Mitchell (07:20):
Fox Fiber is itself a 5 0 1 C3, is that right?

Christina Burns (07:24):
It is not. Technically. A 5 0 1 3 is a not-for-profit entity. It's established [00:07:30] under the IRS code 1630 and that's that on behalf of entity.

(07:38):
They may seek 5 0 1 C3 status, but they don't inherently have to have it. But it is a not-for-profit. So that's more of a technical detail

Christopher Mitchell (07:46):
And I think we've seen this before and a couple other places, and I'll be honest that this is not where my knowledge is very deep.

Zach Bachmann (07:53):
It's very new. That's something that I think has been really interesting is that the world of community owned broadband or community focused [00:08:00] broadband is really small. So these projects that you're mentioning, even the personnel that we're talking to, the attorneys, the financial institutions, there's only so many of them that have worked on a project like this. So it's a lot of the same personnel who are familiar with the inner workings because it's so new and so innovative.

Christopher Mitchell (08:18):
Now this model is one that I think of as focused on anchor institutions and Middle Mile with a third party operator. It's similar to [00:08:30] Brownsville Lit Communities pursued that. I think Lit Communities worked with you early on in the process to help shape it. And one of the things that I just really like about this is that it is very low risk. You're focused on having an asset that will be long used by the county, perhaps other public entities as well. And then ideally you will have a lot of private investment off of that. And I'm sure that you're very focused on making that work. In my [00:09:00] mind, the nice thing about the low risk is that if in the future you don't get all the investment that you'd like, you can always choose to expand it further. And so you're kind of creating options for yourself in the future. And I always salute that kind of approach.

Zach Bachmann (09:13):
Yeah, I think when we're talking about doing this project, Christina and I will agree it's about sustainability. We don't want to build this project, especially with these more public focused projects. That's the stigma that's held about them is they aren't as profitable or immediately successful as an incumbent [00:09:30] ISP building something like this. And obviously an incumbent is peak is kind of almost too big to fail in some ways. So that's why they had that advantage. But when we're planning this project, our main goal is for it to be sustainable from the jump to leverage those partnerships with municipalities, townships, our existing partners in the area to make sure this thing is successful at launch. And as you're saying, we are working to have diversifying paths forward whether we have this initial build, which we're kind of maybe labeling phase one, where we're going [00:10:00] to eventually expand into other areas, at least hypothetically. But as you're saying, maybe that funding dries up and we don't get that. I think we still believe fully that this project will be successful as it is

Christopher Mitchell (10:11):
Now you're using both wireless and fiber to the home technologies with, if I understand correctly, you're starting earlier with wireless, but the expectation is most of the homes in the county will ultimately connected with fiber. Is that right? So Christina, how's that working out? Explain to us how that'll work.

Christina Burns (10:27):
There's some existing infrastructure that, so this [00:10:30] is really in the wheelhouse of our partner Pivot-Tech. They do all the technical side of it, but I can give you a high level summary. Our partners at Pivot-Tech have built relationships with a number of the tower companies that are in the area. And so they're looking to upgrade their tower capacity and then improve, really use the latest technology to provide wireless access in those rural areas so we can really start delivering better quality Internet from the beginning. But the intent is ultimately to be able to serve nearly every home by fiber. [00:11:00] There are going to be some locations that wireless is just going to be the most feasible option, but as we build the network and as we continue to see successes, we do want to continue to move into just a full fiber network to the extent possible.

Christopher Mitchell (11:16):
And I like that approach. Also, this is also very similar to RS Fiber, this one in Minnesota in that it's a recognition that you can get wireless out soon to people who desperately need it and then backfill over time [00:11:30] with fiber as the business case allows for it and that sort of approach. So I think that's really helpful.

Christina Burns (11:36):
Another focus of this project is the ability for us to improve our emergency response capacity. So that has always been a target of the project. The county is served by a unified dispatch can come and they work off of a series of towers to cover the entire county and all of the emergency response organizations throughout the county feed through [00:12:00] ken com. We have been in communication with them and basically they'll be able to use the upgrades that we provide on the towers to improve their capacity. So as we look at really all of the mandates where it comes to receiving video or live feeds as it relates to emergency dispatch, we'll be in a position to better serve those without that massive cost where you're paying more of a retail rate on your Internet services versus [00:12:30] what we can provide through Fox Fiber as a public service.

Christopher Mitchell (12:33):
And lemme turn to you, Zach, to ask you about Pivot-Tech. I saw one of the things I saw, again, one of the things that we've been saying communities should think about is working with a strong partner and then ideally in the future having more ISPs to choose from. That's the plan that you've laid out. Now, is Pivot-Tech actually the ISP or are they working with who will be your anchor? ISP?

Zach Bachmann (12:55):
Yeah, Pivot-Tech. The ideal model, what we have called this in a framework [00:13:00] where we eventually are moving towards is a community owned open access model where we pick, ideally we have multiple service providers on the network and we pick and choose who is on it so that we have guaranteed assurances from them, a guaranteed service level, locked affordability rates. And so residentially Pivot-Tech will not be the provider and we're working with a anchor provider right now. And again, we plan to have multiple providers eventually, but we want to have an anchor ISP at launch [00:13:30] then business-wise privately to our county buildings and to private businesses, Pivot-Tech is going to be their provider.

Christopher Mitchell (13:38):
I didn't mention this, but you mentioned you're been rapidly growing for a while. There will ultimately be many tens of thousands of premises past, I'm assuming, and so that would support multiple providers. Unlike some counties if they have 6,000 people, it's hard to envision a future of multiple providers.

Zach Bachmann (13:54):
Yeah, absolutely. I think we have room to have multiple providers and that's why I like [00:14:00] this approach is almost engineered competition. We have this anchor ISP at launch and then when there's room or we find this thing is up and running and we have another ISP that we can get on, it's not going to pollute itself. We're not going to have maybe 10 ISPs in our area. That would be too much. Right? But two or three seems to us completely reasonable. And again, insurers competition, insurers reliability, and that's important to us.

Christopher Mitchell (14:26):
Now if we turn to the financing, Christina, I've seen the [00:14:30] number of trusts around that expected cost of the network is 67 million. That's for your kind of backbone, middle mile, multiple rings and the wireless I expect. Is that right?

Christina Burns (14:41):
And it's last mile too,

Christopher Mitchell (14:43):
But not all of the last mile I'm expecting. I think that's the complete cost. That would be remarkable. I mean

Christina Burns (14:50):
I think that it does not all of the last mile in the rural areas to deliver fiber to those last miles, but it is quite a bit of last mile even in [00:15:00] the more rural sparsely populated areas.

Christopher Mitchell (15:04):
And to get there, you've done what some would call a blended capital stack. And this is a part that I really like. Not only that, the fact that some of it is subordinate to others because I get to use that word and I feel like this is a totally underutilized tool for local governments trying to figure out how to bring in private investment with seed capital that is provided by the local government. So first of all, the easy thing [00:15:30] to explain is you have a grant from the state and hopefully perhaps more on the way, but can you tell us a little bit about the grant?

Christina Burns (15:36):
Yeah, that's a really exciting opportunity that we have. I think because Kendall County was really ahead of the curve and we were in communication with the Illinois broadband office. We really got in that round three funding, which is pre BEAD formula. So it's kind of a different way that they could look at the projects.

Christopher Mitchell (15:55):
Illinois voted to put a ton of money into physical infrastructure [00:16:00] via referendum, and then it also got rescue plan dollars. Do you know if this money for the round three came out of the rescue plan dollars or out of the money that Illinois itself was raising?

Zach Bachmann (16:10):
My understanding is both.

Christopher Mitchell (16:11):
Okay.

Zach Bachmann (16:12):
My understanding is that a certain amount was contributed from ARPA as you're saying, because I think a certain amount of ARPA or each state was earmarked specifically for broadband. This is my understanding, so it could be totally wrong. And then when I researched it is Illinois matched a certain amount of that. So [00:16:30] that was round three.

Christopher Mitchell (16:32):
Okay, thanks Christina. Sorry, I really want to put in there, I love it when states sort of anti up. They put in their own resources as well as using federal. So I wanted to salute Illinois for that.

Christina Burns (16:43):
And the Illinois Office of Broadband, I mean they are just a busy, really highly competent professional group providing a lot of input on projects like this.

Christopher Mitchell (16:54):
Now look, this is my show and I'm not going to allow Match Schmitt to be praised so heavily. That's not something I want to hear. [00:17:00] Matt and I have a history, he's wonderful.

Christina Burns (17:05):
Matt was a good partner on this and we're working with Devin Bronstein now they just have a great team.

Christopher Mitchell (17:11):
Yes, no, Devin's done a wonderful job taking over. I don't want to throw her to the aside either, so I'll stop interrupting you now maybe.

Christina Burns (17:19):
Okay. So like I said, we were able to get our application in under the round three group of funding. We originally had envisioned a five [00:17:30] ring network. Our initial application was 39 million. I mean why not shoot for the Sky a PP? They came back and said, how about 15 million? And so we've gone through a lot of iterations to say, okay, how can we make the network work with 15 million? And we got to two rings, and I'll say this a million times, I think at the end of the day we've come up with a better project. We're more efficiently using funds. We do need the two rings to be able to serve and have those redundancies [00:18:00] throughout the county. So we've got the 15 million, we're still working with a broadband office on a lot of their due diligence, just the things that they need to have into place to finalize the grant award.

(18:12):
So just to be very accurate, we have been allocated the funds, but we don't actually have the grant agreement in place because we're still working through a lot of the details. And the big part of that, those details is the additional funding we need to get to that 39 million. So one of the important things [00:18:30] in this project is that we're protecting the county's financial status. We're a very financially conservative county. We have a very low, very low amount of debt relative to our overall operations. And some of these projects really have gone south. We have a lot of faith and believe that this is going to be a good project. We also want to protect the county. So the county did allocate. At the end of the day it'll be about 2 million of our ARPA funds [00:19:00] to do a lot of the work and support some of this, the pre-process to get to where we are today.

(19:07):
But the remainder of the project will come from revenue bonds. So that's that IRS 1630, they'll issue revenue bonds. We're working with municipal capital markets. They have done similar deals like this in the past, but we originally explored private equity, but the cost was just huge. And private equity doesn't really like things that are only 30 or 40 million. They want hundreds [00:19:30] of millions of dollars. So the revenue bonds, we're working through that process. We're hoping to issue those in early 2025 so that we're ready to begin construction really as soon as we can after winters. We're done with the brunt of winter

Christopher Mitchell (19:43):
And we've seen investors gobble these up in Yellowstone in Montana with the Yellowstone County Fiber Project. So that's something that we do have some history on. Now the 2 million that the county put in, that's the pre-funding [00:20:00] now that gets converted to a loan and is subordinate. I just want to keep saying that over and over again. So it's sort of like you get paid back last of is that money that then is going into this nonprofit and it's their obligation to pay it back.

Christina Burns (20:16):
All of this is under the structure of Fox fiber. So the county will have a contract with Fox Fiber to build and operate the network and then Fox Fiber will have a contract with Pivot-Tech to be the sort of technical arm because Fox [00:20:30] Fiber will really, it's only staff if you will, is going to be a five member board that includes community members and a representative from Pivot-Tech. Pivot-Tech will be doing the day-to-Day work under the guidance of Fox Fiber, the $2 million that the county put in our pre-development agreement. We do have a provision that it's like one and a half million of that could be paid back in the future. So if this network goes wild and is just generating a lot of revenue, [00:21:00] first they have to pay back the bonds. That's the first thing. But the county does have the opportunity to get that money back. It is ARPA funds, so we'll have to evaluate whether it makes sense at that point to have it paid back or to use it in a different way.

Christopher Mitchell (21:14):
And I think it's interesting and it's a way to, again, make sure that you get as much public benefit as possible out of this investment, which will massively benefit the public. Zach, anything that you wanted to add on regarding the financing?

Zach Bachmann (21:30):
[00:21:30] I think as Christina described originally when we came into this, it was going to be a bigger project. I also think a really fun aspect that Christina didn't hit on is she was onboarding mid grant application process. So we are knee deep in the weeds with our grant writers and Pivot-Tech and Christina is onboarding. We have to submit end or mid December. And that process was really intense. I mean we're meeting with these grant writers, Pivot-Tech 2, 3, 4 [00:22:00] times a week getting really into it, creating narratives, all these numbers, you're creating the entire project, at least proposal for a project. And we were meeting with the Illinois broadband office. I mean I would argue that they were the ones that were advocating for us to go larger with the project at start. And I also want to talk about something that wasn't necessarily hit on was the amount of money that the Illinois broadband office had to leverage out and the total amount of requests they received. I think that is big picture how popular this type [00:22:30] of project is right now. So I believe that in round three Connect Illinois, the Illinois broadband office had 350 million to give out and that's kind of why we were getting the total request. Oh yeah, you could reasonably ask for 50, that's a huge percentage of that, but hey, why not? The total requests that they received were over 1.3 billion

(22:53):
For projects in Illinois. So the fact that we got a $15 million grant reward on top of that through that process I think is [00:23:00] telling that they really do believe in this project. As Christina said, when we were initially planning this out, we did fully plan to have private equity be the other source of capital for this, but in that we really couldn't figure out how to make this reasonable. I think especially when looking at the projections for launch in the first few years with private equity, the issues with it are a lot one way more expensive than bond issuing, especially tax exempt bonds. And you're borrowing all that money [00:23:30] at once, you're taking it all out and you're paying interest on all of it. Even if you aren't using it for years. With Bond dishing, you take out what you need at a time and you're only paying interest on what you take out. So it's just incredibly more affordable and as Christina said through this process, found better funding and come out with a much better project.

Christopher Mitchell (23:49):
I do want to also note that it took me years to learn public finance, so I have a lot of appreciation for what you've done. Christina [00:24:00] there and similarly Zach, haven't been a county commissioner for that long and to know what all this stuff is with confidence, it's a milestone

Zach Bachmann (24:11):
To be direct. We secured the funding in less than a year since I created the commission. So within my first term it was really awesome. I think, and it's not just me, I think we have incredible staff and personnel for this, but it would truly, I can't describe how awesome this project is and how successful [00:24:30] we've been.

Christopher Mitchell (24:31):
Well that's the last thing I wanted to make sure that we touched on, which was the Connect Kendall County Commission. So how was that, what was happening at the time where you decided that we should have a county commission versus just some other way of moving a project forward?

Zach Bachmann (24:49):
This is kind of the background, I got to go back in time a little bit, right to the 2022 election cycle. As Christina mentioned, as you've mentioned, LIT Communities was involved in this project. The board before I was on [00:25:00] it was doing a needs assessment with lit communities to kind of quantify in specific terms with data how significant our need was and what are some potential proposals for solving it. Right? While I was on the campaign trail, I went to town halls that Lit Community was doing, I was engaged. This is something that I was running on, something that I thought was a significant issue, if not the biggest issue that we could easily address. Not easily, but we have the public support to do it. I met with board members before getting elected. I was pretty confident I was going to win. And when I got on sworn [00:25:30] in, this was obviously one of the first things I talked about doing. Hey, I have a technical background. This is something I ran on. I know a lot about how do you feel about me leading this? And I don't remember verbatim the exact conversation, but the county chairman, I remember sitting down with him, Matt Kellogg and him saying, Hey, have at it. Essentially from

Christopher Mitchell (25:48):
There, what Im saying elsewhere is people being like, I do not want to do it. If you want to do it, good luck

Zach Bachmann (25:54):
Will say. That was kind of the attitude, this is not my wheelhouse. If you want to do this, do it.

Christopher Mitchell (26:00):
[00:26:00] As they say on letter Kenny, not my pig, not my farm.

Zach Bachmann (26:02):
Yeah. Literally not my circus, not my monkeys. Have at Zach, go for it. Sure. So at that point, I mean my perspective was, okay, I'm off the leash, I can go berserk. So I worked with our then administrator, Scott Keppel, who as Christina mentioned was an IT background. So him and I kind of merged on that and our idea of how this project was going to go, right, let's see what we can get. But I think we were at least in our vision for it early on, Hey, let's make this a publicly [00:26:30] owned project if we can, let's be as involved as we can. We have the public support, we have the political support, let's do as much as we can. So from there we were thinking, okay, we need an authority of the county board to advise this project to select partners and have technical experts. I mean this is a more rural county. I'm not going to surprise you when I say that it's a more conservative farm board. These guys, they know their [00:27:00] stuff, but technology isn't necessarily their wheelhouse. So they want background.

Christopher Mitchell (27:04):
Lemme interrupt you for a second because I just had to look up quick. So I've talked with a number of tech type folks from McHenry County. I'm guessing you even know who they are and they would

Zach Bachmann (27:13):
Eventually

Christopher Mitchell (27:13):
Be desperate for their county to have embraced this kind of a thing. And so I certainly know other places where there's some people who have this vision and they haven't been able to advance it in the way that you have. I thought that was worth throwing in.

Zach Bachmann (27:28):
It is. I'd say there are some [00:27:30] counties that we can touch on Christina's and touch with them. I would say as well, I think, not to stop the storytelling, but the perspective is it's kind of scary. Especially I think this is a unique personnel setup where again, I have a tech background that doesn't make me an expert, but I'm also really passionate about solving this problem. And I put a lot of time and effort into making everyone comfortable. And again, we have the personnel like Christina and other administrators and other staff like Megan who are really knowledgeable and involved in this [00:28:00] project. And that isn't the scenario where everyone is invested in it. And that's unique for us. So I think for these other counties and municipalities that are thinking about doing this, they want our model to succeed before they would've develop it.

(28:13):
And that's exciting for us is we're not inventing the wheel by any means. Right? But I would say an early adopter, and if this works, then we are the wheel that other communities can pick up. But going back to the Connect Kendall County Commission, something that Scott and I felt was [00:28:30] a success of the communities needs assessment was the community engagement. We had gotten a lot of IT specialists and engineers who were interested in this project saying, Hey, this is a problem that I'd be involved in spending some time doing. So we reached out to a lot of those. I interviewed and selected them and we created the commission. And again, they don't have any voting authority per se, but they, they advise, they bring stuff to county board saying, Hey, we advise you support Pivot-Tech in their application, for example. And we [00:29:00] were awarding them the bid.

(29:01):
So that's the function that they've had. And from there we had a few meetings and we kind of had a good idea and we talked with the communities as well about what we want to do with this project. And at that point we did feel a community owned public-private partnership project was what we wanted to do. If it was accessible, if we could do it, let's shoot for the stars, kind like what Christina is saying, let's do as much as we can. We released that request for proposal and from there, I mean we chose Pivot-Tech and it's been great since.

Christopher Mitchell (29:29):
Christina, anything [00:29:30] you want to add on before we pull the show to a close?

Christina Burns (29:33):
I thought on the Connect Kendall County Commission, they really did a lot of the heavy lifting. It's just a great of people with a lot of technical knowledge in this area that, as Zach said, could serve as advisors. The fact that the county was willing to go out and explore the opportunity here and just keep moving as we had success is really what got us to where we are today and we're excited about [00:30:00] what the next few years and then the next 30, 40, 50 years you're going to bring for the community where we can take this model, help it be successful, and then turn it into an asset that really benefits the community in all aspects. So it's really an exciting project.

Christopher Mitchell (30:19):
Something that I learned from Mayor Durrell down in Lafayette, Louisiana, one of the most conservative cities in the United States, that he stuck with me. I did a series of interviews with him and he had talked about the [00:30:30] importance of not prejudging, things like this kind of collecting facts, learning more about it and not just saying, oh, I generally support these things or I generally oppose these things so I'm not even going to give it a further consideration, but making up your mind after you've done some of the due diligence. And the way he always put it was, if we run into a door we can't open, then fine, we'll leave it there, but we're not going to abandon it before then. I think it's worth noting [00:31:00] that this is not something that comes from the Democratic Socialists of America. This is something we see from all range of political persuasions across the United States.

Christina Burns (31:09):
That's a great analogy.

Zach Bachmann (31:10):
I would agree. I mean context on this, not to get into the politics, but I think it's kind of relevant. It's a Republican super majority board seven to three, and I'm one of the few Dems and we work together to do this project. Every vote that we have brought to the board has been unanimous complete support, and that's because we've been transparent. That's because we've worked together [00:31:30] and it's because we have a collective goal. We want this to be successful. We want to help our community solve this problem.

Christopher Mitchell (31:36):
Any other last thoughts before we wrap her up?

Zach Bachmann (31:39):
I just want to add, you mentioned the article that got coverage not that long ago, and I want to talk a little bit about a section of mine that I saw in there from something I had said at Mountain Connect way back in August.

(31:53):
Part of this process before we released our RFP was interacting with an incumbent service provider who [00:32:00] was looking to build in our area. And I want to mention that we were potentially at that time, I mean this is before Christina was on, but we were open to working with them, whether they were a provider on our network or they were the one building it, right? If they were willing to do the things that we want to give us, guaranteed concessions as the public guaranteed locked rates of affordability, connecting our anchor institutions, spearheading our economic development. These are things that we saw as the future of this project. And when we sat down with them, none of those things were on their mind [00:32:30] and they had existing grant applications that we outmaneuvered essentially to secure the money for this project,

(32:37):
And we had the public support to do that. We had the Illinois Broadband Office support to do that. And I think that's so important, right? Sometimes private interest doesn't exactly align with what the community needs. That's just the way it is. We had a direct conversation about how viable their project was versus ours, and we were just completely not aligned on what we wanted to do with this project and what we wanted to use this funding to accomplish. [00:33:00] That's something I just think is so important to note. These community focused projects where you're meeting the community where its needs at with public funding is the future of broadband networks in the United States.

Christopher Mitchell (33:10):
Yeah, I think particularly to make sure the needs of all stakeholders are met.

Zach Bachmann (33:15):
Absolutely.

Christopher Mitchell (33:15):
There are some business models that have provided wonderful amounts of staggering amounts of private investment, but the question is to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Sometimes we need a different model. Alright, thank you. Thank you both for all your time today. [00:33:30] I really appreciate you coming on the show. Of course,

Ry Marcattilio (33:33):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at community networks. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter. The handle is at muni networks. Subscribe to this at other podcasts from ILSR, including building Local Power, local energy rules, and the Composting [00:34:00] for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle. Licensed through creative comments.