[By Chris Butler, watchdog.org] — The Peachtree City Council could vote [this] week on the $3.2 million bond issue that will pay for building the municipal broadband system to which the council gave a green light in September.
City Financial Services Director Paul Salvatore told Watchdog.org that a final vote will take place either Dec. 3 or no later than the end of [December].
But the city hasn’t been standing around while working out the financial details.
“We were still moving forward with the project while the lawyers and underwriters were working on pulling together all the documents needed to effect the financing,” Salvatore said.
Peachtree City officials have a few worries about the viability of their municipal broadband, according to city emails.
Unlike other cities and municipalities that have sold government-owned networks to residential customers, Peachtree City’s broadband will serve only government offices and industrial park business owners.
If fully funded, 17 city government entities will subscribe to the city-owned system.
Another dozen business owners are needed to subscribe to pay off the $3.2 million bond within 12 years, said Allen Davis, owner of the Savannah-based Community Broadband, who wrote the project’s feasibility study.
At a city council meeting in September, Davis said 76 local business owners told him they were unhappy with the private-sector Internet service providers they had.
Council members voted unanimously to approve municipal broadband based on his statements.
Emails obtained through an open records request showed Davis contacted only 25 business owners in April and May.
Three of those business owners said they were “very interested” in municipal broadband, five were “interested” and four said their interest was “dependent on price.” The remaining 13 did not respond.
Those same emails show Davis and Salvatore worried over potential subscribers taking their business back to AT&T and Comcast at some point.
Davis has refused to say which business owners he talked to.
The project is scheduled to go operational within 10 months, Salvatore said.
The most expensive subscription package, 10 gigabytes, will cost $20,000 a month, he added.
[Contact the author of this article, Christopher Butler, at chris@tennesseewatchdog.org.]
