02-04-2025
Tulare County joins valley effort to fund new broadband projects
Tulare County is part of a five-county effort to secure federal funds to provide Internet service to underserved valley communities.
At its March 25 meeting, Tulare County Board of Supervisors approved a memorandum of understanding with Fresno, Madera, Merced and Kings counties to submit a regional grant application to the Broadband Equity and Access Deployment (BEAD) Program and Digital Equity Program.
This grant opportunity follows last year's Last Mile Funding Grants, which were also awarded through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
Tulare County received two Last Mile grants.
'We hope to secure some more rural broadband projects for our underserved communities,' said Denise England, Tulare County grants and resources manager, who is coordinating the county's participation in the effort.
'The county is involved to make sure that we touch the places that didn't get the Last Mile funding so we can spread the projects out to more of our communities,' she said.
In August, the California Public Utilities Commission approved Last Mile Federal Funding Account Grants for Tulare County and four other counties. One grant is funding the Terra Bella project, which will provide an estimated population of 5,226 in and around Terra Bella with an internet connection from Varcomm for 10 years at a cost of $10,055,847.
The second county grant is funding the Tulare Agriculture County project, which will provide 10 years of internet access from Comcast to an estimated population of 35,255 in all or parts of Alpaugh, Cutler, Dinuba, Earlimart, Kingsburg, Pixley, Sultana, Traver, Tulare, Visalia, and Tipton, at a cost of $26,577,050.
Since there are still communities in Tulare County without available broadband service, the county will apply for BEAD Program funding through the utilities commission.
'The way it's getting rolled out is a little different,' England said, comparing it to Last Mile grants. 'The CPUC isn't carving out for any jurisdiction. They're kind of making it a statewide free-for-all.
'Recognizing that rural broadband projects tend to be a lot more expensive than, say, a project in (Los Angeles) or the Bay Area where you have this underserved community that's really dense and adjacent to infrastructure, we had to up the ante on making our projects attractive and competitive, so we joined forces with four other Central Valley counties,' she said.
'Our hope is to put together a suite of projects from each county that gets the attention of the CPUC and ultimately gets funding to our area,' England said. 'Because we don't have a dedicated pot, we're at risk of getting zero, so we want to make sure that we put together enough projects that the CPUC has to pay attention.
'If an individual ISP provider put forward a project for say, Yettem and Seville, I think that gets lost in the statewide competition,' she added. 'But if it's part of a giant regional proposal, I think the CPUC has to do something with it. That's what we're banking on.'
Another difference is that the BEAD program specifies locations for counties to focus on.
'The BEAD program put together maps that they dictate meet the underserved criteria,' England said. 'In Tulare County, the ones that are kind of top of mind are the Yettem-Seville area in the north county, Springville in the south county, some mountain areas, some of our disadvantaged communities on the valley floor, Allensworth, Alpaugh."
All five counties are all expected to sign agreements by April 1. Grant applications need to be submitted to the CPUC in late April.
Fresno County will be heading the five-county grant application effort.
'They're the bigger player in the room and they have more staff and more capacity,' England explained. 'If they get awarded, they frankly have a bigger budget to funnel the money through so Fresno County is taking the point on the application and the RFP. The other four counties are contributing and weighing in and helping guide that effort.'
Tulare County is currently issuing a request for proposals to include in the application.
'We are asking internet service providers to respond to a request for a proposal,' England said. 'Then we will choose, based on their proposals, projects to include in a regional application for BEAD funding, and then that will go to the CPUC to make a decision.'
It is unclear how any grant money would be divided among the five valley counties.
"There's a number of ways we could divvy it up," England said. "We could divvy it up based on percentage of unserved population each county has. We could divvy it up based kind of on similar ratios as the Last Mile funding was divvied up.
'We haven't landed on that yet,' she continued. 'We've talked a little bit about what the sweet spot might be for the overall application, and I think we're looking at maybe $200 million or something around there, but that hasn't been hammered out either.'
Tulare County also has about $8.5 million in remaining Last Mile Grant funds. That is the amount left over from last year's allocation for projects in the county, but the status of the money is unclear.
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'We have asked, but CPUC has not told us,' England said. 'We know there's been talk about doing a next round of Last Mile, but it seems inefficient to do a whole process for Last Mile again, and there's already other applications out there that potentially could be funded.
'We also wonder if they're keeping it as contingency for the projects they awarded,' she added. 'We know the Varcomm project might need more funding because the poles that they were going to attach to actually weren't viable and they're having to do a bit of a redesign. Maybe that's what they're doing.'
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: Tulare County joins valley effort to fund new broadband projects
