By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
Buchanan County has been allocated $16.9 million from the American Rescue Plan - a $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus approved by Congress earlier this year.
The county received its first allotment of that money, over $8 million, about a month or so ago. The rest will come next year, and the county has until the end of the year 2024 to allocate all of this funding.
Buchanan County presiding commissioner Lee Sawyer says the county is carefully reviewing how to best spend this money. One need at the forefront of he and his constituent's minds is improving rural broadband.
"Areas that are underserved," Sawyer said on KFEQ's The Hotline. "They've got some specific data that says, 'If you're less than 25 megabyte (per second) download or three megabyte per-second upload speed, then those areas could qualify for some additional funding."
Sawyer has said that he'd like the American Rescue Plan money to be put toward ideas and projects that will have long-term benefits for the county's population.
"What I'd love to see is that we have some bigger projects that could really have long-term effect," said Sawyer, "and really enhance people's lives in Buchanan County in some way."
The U.S. Department of Economic Development estimates that more than 400,000 Missourians do not have reliable internet access.
"We hear from people from time-to-time who just don't have any good options," Sawyer said. "And you think, that's difficult in today's world. It just is."
Rural broadband access has been a key topic for many Midwestern and Plains states for years. New and innovative tactics are being used to improve broadband access in northwest Missouri.
Just this year, regional provider United Fiber received a $7.5 million grant from the Federal Communications Commission to upgrade existing infrastructure to support fiber internet.
In Clinton County, a research team called Project Overcome is focusing on an area around Turney. The project is being made possible by a one-year, $300,000 grant, and the goal is to get faster internet speeds to rural patrons via fiber infrastructure.
Christel Gollnick, a Navigation Team Member for Maximize Northwest Missouri and President of JUPER Communications in Clinton County, says that project can be a helpful tool in finding some long-term solutions for the entire region.
"Our hope at this point is to just simply found out, is it replicable?" she said. "Does it work, does it solve the problem and can we do it at a price point that really makes this a very reasonable and realistic way to solve a problem that's here right now?"
Sawyer says he has seen Pittsburg, Kansas take a similar approach to give their rural patrons better internet access.
About 40% of people in east central Kansas have a device that can connect to broadband, but lack the access. Meanwhile, about 25 percent have access to broadband, but don’t have a device to make the connection.
"There are some neat things going on out there, and we're going to take a look at best practices and what would be some potential options for (Buchanan County)," Sawyer said.
The COVID-19 pandemic made rural broadband inequities more dire, as people were forced to learn and work from home for months at a time.
In addition, recent U.S. Census Bureau data estimates Buchanan County saw a 10 percent drop in population from 2010-2020.
Sawyer says solving the rural broadband issue is vital if the county hopes to be an attractive and innovative place for young people to live and work.
"If you're going to really be a modern state in a modern county and be able to give people options with employment and healthcare and all of those things, it's just one of those things that's just going to have to come along."
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