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Finance Committee Discusses New
Funding for the Broadband Project
[March 24, 2025]
The Finance committee of the larger Logan County
Board met for a special meeting on Monday night in the Blue room of
the Logan County Safety Complex starting at 7:00 p.m. The first
portion of the meeting was about insurance. For a rundown on the
discussion over that topic, see LDN’s other article on the topic.
The insurance discussion lasted a while, so Chairman Kathy Schmidt
made the decision to take a short break before getting into the
funding for the broadband project.
At the regular board meeting last week, it was
decided to take the $2 million American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA)
funding from the broadband project and move it to the jail
expansion, which was short about $1.6 million. This was a
contentious vote, with it only passing with a vote of 7-3. It was
decided after that meeting that, in addition to discussing
insurance, the Finance committee would need to have a special
meeting to discuss where it was going to get the money to pay for
the broadband project.
The county does have a $6.8 million grant from the state for the
project, but Keenan Leesman stated later in this meeting that the
state gave that money upon the contingency that Logan County was
going to put forward $2 million of their own funding for the
project. Since the ARPA funding was moved elsewhere, the county was
now in danger of losing this grant that they had worked for
approximately two years to acquire.
Schmidt started by stating that Bellwether, a consulting company the
county hired to help them navigate funding this project, stated that
it was too late to use the ARPA money for the broadband project, and
that is why they voted to move it to the jail. Leesman stated that
this was their statement before they had all the information.
Leesman emailed his contact at Bellwether and informed them that
they had acquired the $6.8 million grant from the state, inquiring
if that was a contract, which would be needed for the ARPA money to
be spent on the project. Bellwether stated that this was enough to
constitute a contract, and that the ARPA money could be used for the
broadband project. This information was not known to the board when
they voted last week to move the ARPA funding to the jail expansion.
Michael DeRoss, who is not on the Finance committee
but was present for the meeting, stated that they can undo what they
did, moving the ARPA money back to the broadband project. DeRoss
then asked what the timeline for spending the ARPA money was before
it would be lost. Logan County Treasurer Penny Thomas stated that
the money would need to be spent by December 31st of 2026.
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Leesman then spoke on the benefit
of completing this project. Firstly, the county would be able to
charge a ten percent revenue share contract with any company
using their broadband system. It could also help bring more
businesses to the smaller communities of the county. Sometimes,
if a business realizes that it does not have access to reliable
and fast internet, that can be the deal breaker that causes them
to take their business elsewhere. He also stated that people who
work from home would have a more reliable internet connection,
making people who work in these types of jobs consider moving to
the county’s smaller communities.
A woman present asked about running fiber to homes
out in the country. Leesman stated that this was not affordable, but
that there were options for wireless hubs to be placed along the
fiber network. This could allow people who are farther away from the
communities that would be getting the largest amount of fiber to
still have access to faster internet.
Nelson asked when construction would begin on this
project, and Leesman stated that WANRack, the company that would be
completing the project, is ready to start now. They estimate that
the project would be completed by the end of next year.
Another potential funding source was then discussed, that being the
permit fees that the county has been getting from all of the solar
farms going up. There were $1.3 million in solar fees collected last
year, with an additional $900,000 in fees expected next year with
some of the new wind farm projects that are going to start going up.
DeRoss also mentioned that Sugar Creek will be having to pay some
permit fees for the solar farm they are planning on putting up.
At the end of the meeting, Leesman did take a moment to voice his
disapproval for the board’s decision to remove the funding for the
broadband project. According to Leesman, he spent “thousands of
hours” working on securing the $6.8 million state grant for the
project, and did not want to see all of that work “squandered” by
the board. He stated that the board designated the securing of the
grant to him, and deciding to so quickly pull the funding from the
project was unfair to him and his time. Leesman further stated that
he would not be working on anything grant related for the county
again from this point.
The committee decided to table the discussion until tomorrow’s
meeting. The county board is going to meet again for a special
regular meeting tomorrow, March 25th, starting at 6:00 p.m. This
meeting will be held in the third floor courtroom of the Logan
County Courthouse. Broadband will be discussed, as will insurance
for county employees.
[Matt Boutcher] |
