On Oct. 3, the cities of Atascadero and Paso Robles announced a new collaborative project to bring better internet access to North County businesses and residents.
The North County Broadband Strategic Plan Project is the result of a partnership between Paso Mayor Steve Martin and Atascadero Mayor Heather Moreno.
“One of the things that we’ve discovered over the years and our experience is that the broader the base of interest in a project, the more likely it is to receive attention [for] funding,” Martin said. “So considering our geographic closeness to each other, and our historical connection, we thought that joining forces would be the most effective way to pursue a broadband access strategy for our constituents.”
The two cities signed a memorandum of understanding in May, which got the ball rolling to select a contractor. By September, the city of Atascadero signed a $200,000 contract with a consulting company, TeleWorx, to develop the broadband strategic plan.
“Teleworx will come back to us with options for how to proceed and how to fill those gaps because there are a lot of different ways to go about doing that,” Moreno said. “So we’re really looking forward to their expertise and helping us to hone in on some different options that are viable for us.”
The strategic plan should be completed by March 2023, which will then provide a basis for the cities to figure out what needs to be done and what kinds of grants to apply for. Loreli Cappel, Atascadero’s Deputy Director of Economic and Community Development, said that the two cities recently submitted a joint application to the Local Area Technical Assistance Program through the California Public Utilities Commission.
“So if we’re successful, we’ll be reimbursing ourselves for this process, even though we’ve already allocated funding, then we can use this funding to further some of our other projects, or get to a higher level of design detail, or use it for implementation and getting fiber in the ground, whatever that looks like,” Cappel said.
While the strategic plan is still in the works, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t projects currently underway. Prior to the partnership, Martin said that Paso Robles had already applied and received a $3 million grant to extend broadband services on the west side of the city.
“With our economic development efforts at the Paso Robles airport, we’ve redone a major roadway up there and drawn a conduit for future fiber optics to be installed, we already have some fiber optic installed in that area,” Martin said. “And then with the large residential construction projects for the east side of the city, we will be installing or developers will be installing conduit so that the homes can be made fiber optic ready when those services come online.”
While the partnership is only between Atascadero and Paso Robles for now, both mayors said they’re open to partnering with neighboring cities in the future.
“We’re really starting to see ourselves more as a region than as individual cities, and we’re stronger together than we are separately,” Martin said. “So we’re actively looking for ways that we can cooperate and provide greater benefits to the people who live in both of our communities and, indeed, in the unincorporated areas of North County.”
This article appears in Oct 6-16, 2022.