St. Croix County Board update: PSC broadband grants not yet awarded
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
HUDSON — The latest round of broadband grants through the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin have yet been awarded.
Ken Witt, county administrator, gave an update on the broadband grants at the St. Croix County Board’s June 7 meeting at the request of Greg Tellijohn, county board supervisor from New Richmond.
The St. Croix County Board approved a resolution in January establishing a $3 million broadband grant program using $3 million of the county’s $18 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to supplement Internet Service Provider (ISP) grant applications to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin and to provide connectivity assistance to individual households in unserved or under-served areas of St. Croix County with no fiber options available.
The latest of the PSC grant applications were due March 17.
The St. Croix County Board also established a program to provide up to $500 to individual households through reimbursement to help them connect to 100mb service, which is a requirement of the ARPA funds.
The grants will be awarded as a reimbursement for up-front connection costs and is not intended to cover the cost of bringing fiber from the road to the house.
An example would be Starlink (satellite Internet service), which provides 114mb of service and has an up-front connection fee of $499.
So far in 2022, the PSC has received 194 applications for broadband expansion grants amounting to $496 million in requests, Witt said.
There is a cluster of grant applications in West Central Wisconsin, but until the PSC awards the grants, “we do not know what will be a go,” he said.
A total of $65 billion in federal money has recently been made available for broadband, and Wisconsin has joined in to request some of that money, Witt said, adding that a minimum of $100 million will be awarded per state.
Rick Ottino, county board supervisor from Hudson representing District 8, said that initially the estimate for broadband Internet access needed by 3,400 to 3,500 houses in St. Croix County was $7,500 per house and wondered if reaching more houses and more people would mean that the cost would go down.
The cost is still the same at thousands of dollars per household, Witt said.
Broadband access is available in cities but not in the rural areas. The intention is to cover the rural areas with broadband access, like rural electrification covered the rural areas, and like rural electrification, the farther apart the properties, the more expensive it becomes, he said.
The question, Witt said, is whether broadband is considered as important as electricity.
Carah Koch, county board supervisor from Hudson representing District 5, said the $100 million from the federal infrastructure bill would require the state of Wisconsin to be actively engaged in the broadband expansion process, so it will be important for St. Croix County to have a plan.
The administrative committee will be talking about it next week with the possibility of forming a committee for the planning process, she said.
St. Croix County has an opportunity to take advantage of federal dollars, Koch said.
“I’d like us to be prepared to have a conversation and to be a partner with the state,” she said.
During the last grant cycle when $100 million also was available, the PSC received $400 million in requests.
The PSC grants will help ISPs to install fiber optic Internet service, and St. Croix County will use the ARPA money to match 25 percent of the project costs.
The companies wrote the grant applications to receive 50 percent of the project costs through PSC grants.
