“Just so we understand, it screws five families”, said an animated Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission as he lambasted a move to slice $373,000 from a proposed Fresno County broadband project.
Ponderosa Telephone Company asked for a $1 million grant from the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) to build a fiber optic middle mile line to the mountain community of Cressman, use it to upgrade DSL service for 65 homes there, and then extend it two and a half miles to five more homes in Rush Creek. But adding those five homes costs $74,000 each, more than twenty times the CASF average.
The justification offered was that Ponderosa could later come back and build out to a U.S. Forest Service station in Blue Canyon and then continue on to complete a fiber loop for the area. That seemed like a fine idea to commissioner Michel Florio, who thought that the five homes should be trimmed from the proposal on the table, and added later when Ponderosa was ready to complete the whole project.
“Over a third of the cost of the project is for Rush Creek which only serves five households”, Florio said, pointing out that average household income in the area ran as high as $80,000 per year. “It seems unjustified to me”.
But Peevey insisted that the money would be spent one way or the other. “The only point is do you exclude these five homes or not. You’re going to have to complete it eventually”, he said.
It came down to the vote. Commissioner Carla Peterman sided with Florio, but Catherine Sandoval and Michael Picker went with Peevey. Once Florio’s proposed changes were rejected, the original proposal was put on the table and all five commissioners agreed to fund it as written.
Tellus Venture Associates assisted with several CASF proposals in the current round, so I’m not a disinterested commentator. Take it for what it’s worth.