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YMC commissioners to hear broadband feasibility study report

GRANITE FALLS — Broadband feasibility consultants Mark Mrla and Doug Dawson will be presenting their broadband feasibility study results to the Yellow Medicine County Board meeting Tuesday.

“This particular presentation will be a bit different than normal since the county already reached a tentative agreement with a local telephone company to bring fiber to roughly half of the unserved areas in the county,” Dawson said. “That project is tentative because it relies on getting some grant money from the state to help pay for the new fiber network.”

Dawson represents CCG Consulting. Mrla comes from Finley Engineering.

“The county hired my firm, CCG Consulting and Finley Engineering together to do a fiber feasibility study for the county,” Dawson said. “The study focuses on those parts of the county that don’t have broadband today. We looked the cost of using both fiber and wireless technologies to bring broadband.”

 There are a number of adjoining counties also undertaking this studies, he said. The goal for all of them is to use these studies to understand the financial aspects of bringing broadband with the goal of finding a partner or partners to help bring broadband.

“The presentation will cover what we found,” Dawson said. “I’ll talk about how much it costs for the various options.

“The county is not done yet and still needs to find a solution for the other half of the unserved areas in the county,” he said.

The consultants have generated a written report describing the details of their analysis and Dawson expects that soon after their presentation, the county will release this report to the public.

A conditional use permit for David Eid to construct a solar garden in Stony Run Township will be taken off the table at the meeting. The recommendation by the Land and Resource Management Office had been to deny the conditional use permit because it would be too close to the neighbor and “injurious” to the land in that area.

Discussion revealed that there is a conditional use permit in effect for a solar garden about 450 feet away from the new site. Since it was also being considered for progress, YMC Attorney Keith Helgeson had recommended tabling the topic to see if the company would simply drop the conditional use permit before the board and go back to the other one.

Also on the agenda will be:

• A review of the MOA (memorandum of agreement) for Yellow Medicine One Watershed/One Plan Partnership.

• Reappointing Carol Podratz as a commissioner to the HRA of YMC/Chippewa.

The board also plans to discuss a market study conducted for Labor Management.

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