ARROWSIC
At a special Town Meeting Tuesday evening, residents approved $5,000 toward a broadband internet study in collaboration with Georgetown and Southport.
“We had a full house and it passed unanimously,” said Arrowsic Selectmen Sukey Heard. “Nobody voted against it.”
The Three Bridged Islands Broadband Task Force, a citizen-led group, has spearheaded efforts in the three communities to bring high speed internet service to the islands. The task force put out a Request for Information last week to bring in a service provider to conduct a broadband engineering study. That study will let the towns know what their options are as far as broadband, and how much those options will costs.
The task force is working with the Rockland-based Island Institute, which is fronting $15,000 of the estimated $30,000 needed to have the study done. The towns of Arrowsic, Georgetown and Southport each have to contribute $5,000 toward the effort. While the Georgetown Board of Selectmen opted to allocate $2,500 from its contingency fund and fundraise the rest, the Arrowsic Board of Selectmen believed a special Town Meeting was the appropriate path.
“We wanted to go to a special Town Meeting, unlike Georgetown, because we really wanted to get a sense of people’s concerns and wishes,” said Heard. “We had a lively discussion.”
The discussion largely revolved around the size of Arrowsic’s contribution to the effort.
“There was some discussion about why we were all doing $5,000 when Arrowsic is very small,” said Heard. “Georgetown’s at least twice as big as we are, both in area and in population.”
If the broadband efforts move forward after the study, the board of selectmen may want to revisit making Arrowsic’s contribution more proportional to its size, said Heard. In the meantime, however, they believed it important to have “a full voice at the table.”
In a press release issued last week, the Three Bridged Islands Broadband Task Force said that it intended to select a provider to conduct the survey by the end of the month, with the study to be completed by March.
nstrout@timesrecord.com
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
