Newcastle Board of Selectmen voted not to appropriate $60,640 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to pursue a grant for broadband expansion in Newcastle, at a meeting on March 7.
The board held the special meeting a week after a regular meeting on Feb. 28 during which the board decided to table discussion of applying for a grant from the ConnectMaine Authority with Tidewater Telecom/LCI Fiber Optic Network.
The ConnectMaine Authority is a semi-governmental agency responsible for facilitating the universal availability of broadband to all Maine households and businesses.
At the Feb. 28 meeting, selectmen had only received the information and offer regarding the grant and accompanying deal with LCI on the day of the meeting, and did not feel ready to make an informed decision.
Under the proposed expansion agreement with LCI, the town and company would have pursued a grant with ConnectMaine to cover 50% of the costs associated with the expansion, with the remainder of the cost split between the town, covering 18%, and Tidewater, covering 32%.
The appropriation would have dedicated 32.49% of the total $186,623.12 in ARPA funds that the town is set to receive.
The deadline for the ConnectMaine grant applications is March 20. With the next meeting of the board scheduled on March 14, it needed to make a decision at the March 7 meeting.
According to a presentation by Alan Hinsey, marketing director for LCI, at a meeting with Damariscotta and Newcastle officials and the Damariscotta-Newcastle Joint Broadband Committee on Feb. 8, it would cost $336,888 to bring broadband to 99 unserved addresses in Newcastle.
The ConnectMaine Authority defines “unserved” as those homes that do not have access to at least 50 megabits per second download and 10 Mbps upload speeds.
With the deal, the 99 Newcastle addresses in question would have had access to up to 100 mbps upload and download speeds, depending on the deal they signed up for with LCI.
Selectman Rob Nelson said he believes that $60,000 is more than the town should have to spend for the expansion.
“The way I see this is that we’re subsidizing … private infrastructure, so … the subsidy that the town provides should be only what it takes to … get it to make sense as a private investment, and I think that $60,000 dramatically exceeds that,” Nelson said.
Selectman Tor Glendinning said he felt pressured by the proposal and the limited amount of time the board was provided to consider it. He also questioned whether the town should spend funds on broadband if more infrastructure money may soon be coming from the federal government.
“I feel like we’re under the gun here to make a decision to spend ARPA funds. I feel that the $60,000 that exhausts all of the ARPA funds left in the pot here is not being prudent,” he said.
Selectman David Levesque, a member of the broadband committee, said he could not trust that another opportunity of equal value would avail itself to the town in the future and added that there will only be more competition for broadband funding from other towns as they go forward.
“It’s not intentionally ramming it down anybody’s throat or not, it’s just the timing that it presented itself, but the committee has done its due diligence for sure,” Levesque said.
Glendinning also appeared to call the motivations of the broadband committee into question.
“I have a hard time distinguishing between whether the broadband committee is working for our town as an information source or for the vendor,” he said.
Both Levesque and Carol Bartlett Miller, a broadband committee member in attendance, took exception to what they both called an “accusation” by Glendinning.
“(The broadband committee) was charged by the select board for a vision, it has proposed how to start to achieve that vision and I think accusations that we’re teaming up with a private business to sway the board is inappropriate,” Levesque said.
Since the proposal in front of the selectmen was different from the proposal that the board initially received on Feb. 8, Chair Joel Lind asked Levesque who had been negotiating the offer with LCI.
Levesque said the broadband committee negotiated the offer with LCI. The vendor initially offered to pursue a 40% grant with the remainder of the costs split evenly between the two parties, but after receiving pushback from the broadband committee it presented the aforementioned offer.
Multiple board members expressed concerns with the broadband committee negotiating a deal with a vendor, an explicit responsibility of the town manager.
“Well, the town manager wasn’t doing it,” Levesque said.
Lind said Levesque never brought the initial proposal to the board for discussion of its feasibility at a public meeting.
“We can’t negotiate as an individual, David,” Lind said.
Town Manager Sarah Macy said the broadband committee was tasked with determining how to expand broadband access to all Newcastle residents and bringing that information to the board. She added that she was never asked to participate in contract negotiations.
Levesque said since the previous town manager had been a member of the broadband committee, he “assumed” that the new town manager would actively participate as a member of the committee, as well.
Nelson emphasized that the board and town residents appreciate all of the time that the broadband committee put into bringing the broadband expansion proposal to the selectmen. However, he added that the decision may be too abrupt and the price too high for the town.
“The committee is looking at their task, their one thing. We’re responsible for the whole town and balancing all these interests,” Nelson said. “While we get a recommendation … we have to balance it with everything else.”
Levesque made a motion to approve the appropriation of the ARPA funds for the ConnectMaine grant application. The motion failed, receiving no second.
In other news, the board began to discuss its spending plan for its ARPA funds.
According to the spending proposal, which has not been approved by the board, the town would appropriate an estimated $7,000 in bonuses for municipal employees who worked through the height of the pandemic, $60,000 for town hall renovations, $25,000 for community room air quality improvements, $7,000 for the Damariscotta Region Chamber of Commerce, $2,000 for personal protective equipment, $15,000 for town hall air quality improvements, and $9,983 for community room parking improvements.
The plan also included $60,640 for broadband expansion before Levesque’s motion failed.
The board has only officially appropriated $25,000 from the ARPA funds for an air filtration system for the community room in the Clayton V. Huntley Jr. Fire Station. While the town has already embarked, to some degree, on the improvements to the town hall and community room, the plan is subject to change.
Newcastle Board of Selectmen will next meet at 7 p.m. Monday, March 14, at the Clayton V. Huntley Jr. Fire Station. A livestream and recordings of past meetings are available at the Town of Newcastle YouTube page.
