North East broadband survey goes live on town website

NORTH EAST — The town of North East was motivated to create its own broadband task force about two months ago, after Pine Plains town Supervisor Darrah Cloud reached out to North East and surrounding communities on behalf of her town’s own broadband committee, asking them to collaborate. (For more on the Pine Plains committee, read this week’s front page and the editorial on Page B4.) 

Cloud and her committee worked for more than nine months on a broadband plan, which they just completed last week and intend to submit to the county executive in the immediate future in hopes of garnering millions in stimulus funding to improve broadband service in northeastern Dutchess County. The regional approach made sense to Cloud, and to North East resident and tech expert Rich Stalzer, who was made chair of the North East Broadband Access Advisory Committee (BAAC).

Stalzer attended numerous Pine Plains Broadband Committee meetings and worked with Pine Plains on its survey, which is in a state of limbo due to the pandemic. He announced in an interview on Friday, March 26, that North East just went live with its own broadband survey that day; it can be found on the town’s official website, www.townofnortheastny.gov.

It should take roughly five minutes to respond to the Internet Access Survey, which will help the BAAC “determine where internet access is satisfactory, unsatisfactory, unavailable, too slow or too costly for our residents and businesses,” according to the website.

“We’re hoping to get a pretty good picture of the community, and if people respond, we will be ecstatic,” said Stalzer. “Then we can start figuring out which roads people can’t get the internet on.”

“The survey, which is just literally being released right now, is available in a paper version and there’s also an electronic e-version that people can access via the town’s website,” added town Supervisor Chris Kennan.

He explained that according to the Comprehensive Plan update that passed two years ago, “one of the goals was to increase the availability of broadband to people in the town.” 

He hopes the survey will help; it’s available in English and Spanish. 

Kennan added that the need for high-speed internet became increasingly apparent after the pandemic hit.

“We had a lot of families with kids who needed to attend schools virtually that became a glaring and really challenging problem for many families,” he said. “So that was when we started to see that broadband accessibility is not a luxury, but really is a necessity in today’s world.”

The supervisor asked why “we have companies like Optimum that string wire, but don’t string it everywhere? Why they’re not legally required to go down everywhere is not easy to understand.”

Kennan added that seeing towns like Ancram in Columbia County and neighboring Pine Plains work so hard on the broadband issue inspired him to form North East’s broadband committee. He is an ex-officio member; in addition to him and Stalzer there are four others in the group.

Kennan said the bottom line is that providing broadband is expensive in rural areas, and prohibits a lot of cable and internet companies from investing in doing so.

“Other companies that are internet service providers could come in here but are disincentivized to come in and lay new wire; it’s a pretty high cost,” he said.

Stalzer agreed, adding “it’s us versus somebody else: Who can they make the most money off of?”

“We suffer from low population density in many ways,” added Kennan. “It’s one of reasons why we don’t have a food market.”

Stalzer said Ancram has also done a broadband survey, and that the Webutuck school district likewise conducted a survey, sending it to students’ homes. One of the questions asked about internet service. About 5% of students said they don’t have internet at home, but Stalzer said that is “under-reported because families don’t always pay their bills.”

He added that “both the school district and the NorthEast-Millerton Library have been handing out mobile hot spots during the pandemic similar to cellular devices, but some roads don’t work well so that’s not a solution either. There are all sorts of ways to bridge the gap, but the real way to do so in 2021 is to make sure people have reliable broadband service.”

Once the survey results are collected and tabulated in about two month’s time, Stalzer plans to compose a report like Pine Plains did. 

“We’ll see where the data takes us,” he said. 

The broadband committee will submit the report to the North East Town Board and “share it with whatever higher governmental layers are interested,” said Stalzer, adding that will include State Assemblymember Didi Barrett (D-106) and U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado (NY-D-19). 

Kennan added as a final note that the town is aiming to have the committee’s report in hand by the end of the year, which he hopes will ultimately lead to funds that can help it improve its broadband infrastructure. There’s even a chance of possibly getting some stimulus funding, according to the Pine Plains committee. For more on that, turn to the front page.