Meeting of May 5, 2022

thank you uh what i'm going to do first before we open our davis county fiscal court meeting is i'm going to call to order a public hearing for two items the local government economic assistance and county road aid as well as green belt extension so let's have a seat and we'll do that county treasurer uh hendricks do you want to kind of tell us what we're doing on this local government economic assistance the lgea and the county road aid yes sir as part of the budgeting process state requires us to hold a public hearing today's public hearing is for public comments regarding the use of the funds from the local government economic assistance fund and the county road aid fund i can tell you that the budget currently assumes that all those monies are used for the maintenance and construction of county roads and bridges okay so we have a few folks from the public out here is there anyone with the public that would like to comment on the use of those funds jenny let the record show that no one

stepped forward the next item is the green belt extension project and what what this is mark why don't you tell us or do you want to tell us so i can i can do it tell us what we're talking about i can't judge okay uh we're anticipating putting in an application for uh some rtp funds to extend the green belt where it left off going from the hospital towards daniels lane we ended at daniels lane our goal is to eventually connect that to yellow creek park so we're going to be uh putting in an application to go from daniels lane to at least reed road if not all the way to yellow creek park with this project okay and what we're doing tonight is we're holding a public hearing to see if there's any comment again by the public on on not so much the application but on the green belt extension itself we don't have a we know the beginning point it's the end of the existing green belt we do not have a route we don't have an ending point because it's all going to depend upon negotiation with landowners and depend upon how much money we get there will be

i'm assuming a portion that the county will have to provide either uh someone there we go either in uh and in kind or cash that is correct okay anyone in the public wish to comment on the green belt extension project and judge i know yes past you since colvin's hit we've live streamed and i think this meeting has been live streamed so are you going to hold these we are we are not going to the only comments we're going to take tonight on facebook live since we've opened the courthouse a courtroom up would be any comments regarding the first presentation that we have with connection and and broadband okay okay let the record show no one from the public stepped forward to comment so with that we're going to close the public meeting jenny note that it closed at whatever time it is and now we'll do this again i want to call the may 5th 2022 davis county fiscal court meaning to order uh commissioner castle will you lead us in

a prayer and pledge i will dear heavenly father we pause on this national day of prayer we thank you for the many blessings you bestowed on us as a nation as a community and as individuals we ask you to hear the prayers that were prayed across this nation today during the different events the the many many events that happen across this nation we ask your blessing upon our country we ask your blessing upon the work we do this evening and the citizens we serve we pray these things in the name of jesus our lord and savior god amen with liberty and justice for all thank you commissioner and once again i want to welcome everyone to our may 5th 2022 davis county fiscal court meeting we have this first presentation that jenny's going to announce here in amendment we will take questions from the public on facebook as well as anyone that's in the audience and this this is uh

regarding a contract and use of arpa funds for broadband through davis county so jenny go ahead item one consideration for presentation a connection broadband fiber project commissioners we have with us jonathan chambers from connection this evening in just a second i'm going to ask jonathan to come up to the mic and give us a brief explanation of how what when where and not so much why i'm going to ask our treasurer or jordan johnson to kind of recap what we are doing or the process that we went through in deciding to use some of our arpa funds to provide broadband to rural davis county certainly judge and and if jonathan stumble or uh if jordan stumbles a little bit i didn't ask him ahead of time so he's doing this on the fly as a as a full recap in october of 21 the rfp for fiber construction was released we asked for the required subsidy for a company to develop a plan for the construction of an expanded network to provide connections in all areas within the county in december of 21 the fiscal court

selected connection as our successful respondent in january of 22 morley and associates was selected as a consultant firm to prepare and negotiate a contract with connection negotiations spanned through february of 22 with the final agreement completed in march of 22 and signed by connection on april 1st of 22. in this contract the county will provide 10 million dollars of our funds for connection to make available fiber internet service to 100 of kennergy's electric membership that falls outside of the service area of omu in davis county kentucky the project will be completed within 18 months and paid out on a percentage of completion basis the project area encompasses 15 000 to 20 000 household and business locations brief description so in other words we're going to take 10 million dollars for our funds and we're going to provide it to our we're going to use that to provide broadband to customers that otherwise we're not in a dense enough population to entice the the private sector to come out with broadband that is correct okay

jonathan it's nice to see you again if you don't mind come up uh do just do a brief introduction about yourself and then kind of tell us the uh what the project's going to do a little bit about the timeline and where it's going to be i think you have a few slides that you're going to show and then jordan if jordan rowe if you get any questions over the facebook then let us know flash them up to me and i'll give them to jonathan jonathan the floor is yours thanks very much it's good to be back here it's always good to see you judge um i do have a short presentation and we'll take questions um i'll take questions anywhere along the presentation if you'd like but i'm going to try to cover the basics through this presentation and then i'll i'll stay as long as you'd like me to answer questions thank you um you get to the first the first slide not the not the cover slide i'm going to start with just describing a little bit about kinexon since i don't expect there are many people in davis county or in kentucky for that matter who know about connexan we're a company that was formed

about seven years ago by my business partner randy clint randy at the time was building a fiber optic network in rural missouri as an employee of an electric cooperative there a co-op called como electric randy had this idea about how to build in cert in areas of the country that were otherwise unserved by broadband his idea was also that since he grew up on a farm in missouri he spent his whole life living and working in rural missouri and and being frustrated by the lack of broadband randy is a software developer and had difficulty getting a couple of businesses off the ground because of the lack of internet access on the farm internet access in the areas where he was living while that internet access was available in towns and cities so randy had this on a mission to bring the same quality of high-speed internet access to rural areas as is available in urban and suburban areas and he found a couple of cooperatives