Police Jury divvies up broadband funds

Back in October the Acadia Parish Police Jury voted to contribute $3 million of its American Rescue Plan Act funding toward the expansion of broadband Internet.
At its December meeting jurors decided how to use that allocation.
The jury considered three proposals from area Internet providers, each asking that the parish provide their match for the state GUMBO grant program.
GUMBO — Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities — is a grant program with $177 million to be spent on increasing broadband to unserved communities in Louisiana. The program defines unserved as those with download speeds lower than 25 mbps and upload speeds lower than 3 mbps.
Private broadband service providers must apply for the grant in partnership with the communities that need it. These applications will be scored in a number of ways, including the number of people unserved. The applications with the highest number of points win the grants.
Brett Bayard, engineer with Mader Engineering, explained that four proposals had been submitted for consideration by the jury, but one did not meet specifications and was disqualified.
The remaining three were from Reach4, LUS and Cajun Broadband.
The Reach4 proposal would provide broadband to the areas of Mire, Morse, Maxie and Egan.
Total cost of the project is estimated at $6.7 million with the company asking that the parish pay the 20% match of $1.3 million.
The LUS proposal would:
• bring broadband down Louisiana Highway 97 from the Basile area to the Evangeline area; and
• run fiber optics from Duson, through Rayne and along U.S. Highway 90 to Capital Drive.
Cost of that project is about $8.2 million with the match coming in at $1.6 million.
Bayard noted that the proposal from Cajun Broadband appeared to overlap much of the Reach4 plan, including areas already served by the Crowley company.
“I just want to make suer that we’re not covering areas already covered by fiber — not wireless — or by anyone else,” said Chance Henry, jury president. “I want to see this benefiting the people that would probably never get broadband.”
Jurors voted to deny Cajun Broadband its request and to fund — up to designated limits — the Reach4 and LUS proposals.
The total expenditure for both of those proposals is $2.9 million.