County to use debt capacity to secure financing for broadband expansion

Taylor County is poised to commit $14 million in unused debt capacity to partner with Bug Tussel to complete the broadband expansion in the county.

Members of the county’s broadband committee on July 7 approved the agreement with it set to be reviewed by the full county board on July 15.

Taylor County’s work is just one part of the overall project which extends over several Wisconsin counties and includes grant funds from state and federal sources. As part of the project Taylor County received $777,000 from the Public Service Commission in the most recent grant cycle.

“This is the first successful application,” said committee chairman Mike Bub.

Under the plan, the county is using its borrowing capacity to back the financing for Bug Tussel to build towers and lay fiber optic cables to be able to provide high speed internet services to county residents as well as the potential for greatly improved cellular telephone coverage.

This project builds off of the middle mile network the county is currently working with WANrack to construct. The network serves as a backbone for companies to expand off of to serve residential and business customers in the future.

In other business, committee members approved running fiber optic lines to the fire and police departments in the county. “As long as you are there you should take care of it,” said committee member Chuck Zenner. This would add the Gilman Police Department, Gilman fire hall and Rib Lake fire hall to the project, the costs would be covered through supplemental ARPA funding the county authorized to be spent on broadband project. Bub said he felt the addition would be “project scope creep” because it would be expanding what they were originally going to do, but was not opposed to having the lines installed to those locations.