County to study digital divide in municipalities like Lansing

The Tompkins County Legislature unanimously voted to approve a partnership with Point Broadband, a telecom company with operations across the country, to study how to best connect around 1,216 addresses in the county that do not have access to high-speed internet service.

The $100,000 preliminary engineering study would help the county tap into state funding to develop broadband internet infrastructure in those underserved areas, which include Lansing.

The whole project could cost around $7.5 million. At the April 17 Lansing Town Board meeting, County Legislature Minority Leader Mike Sigler, R-Town of Lansing, said the goal is to connect all unserved households.  

“At the end of this, we should be able to say 100% of the county has access to broadband,” Sigler said. “From there, if people want to upgrade their systems, and companies want to come in and do that, that’s great, but we want to make sure everybody is served.”

Sigler noted that partnering with Point Broadband is a huge boon for the county as it aims to find funding for the entire $7.5 million project. 

“Now that we have this going out, we can apply for grant money. There is a lot of money for this at the state and federal levels,” Sigler said. “At the state alone, there are more than $100 million. With [$7.5] million, that is a workable number. We are hoping to get the whole thing paid for, which would be great.”

At one point, Sigler said, there were around 200 homes with no broadband connection in Lansing. 

“Some are too far away from the point of contact,” Sigler said. “I remember at my house the companies used to tell me I didn’t have the line ‘it would be $29,000 to hook up.’” 

His situation was eventually resolved and pared down to a reasonable fee for broadband internet, but Sigler said the study will help to find cases similar to his where households are too far from points of connection.

Sigler added that there were other solutions, such as satellite internet via Starlink, an internet company owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk. That route would have been significantly cheaper, he added, but Point Broadband company officials say the internet speeds would not be able to keep up. 

“The problem with that is that the speeds are not going to keep up with what we are going to be able to do if we hardwired everything,” Sigler. “That is where you can get businesses, home businesses. … If we can hardwire this now, we can outpace Starlink.”

The town board discussion can be found in its entirety here around the 38-minute mark:

At its April 17 meeting, the town board also approved a local law to amend the code of ethics.

“This is a revision of the town’s ethics code to kind of clean it up and modernize a couple things. It is more wording changes than substantive changes,” said town board member Joseph Wetmore.

The board and other committees worked on the law last fall. It would require elected officials, department heads, the deputy town clerk, the deputy highway superintendent, all code enforcement officers, all town planners, all members of boards and committees, and any counsel, attorney, engineer or architect employed by the town on a regular or

special basis to file annual disclosure statements on potential conflicts of interest.  

The law was approved unanimously.

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com. Contact Eddie Velazquez at edvel37@gmail.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @ezvelazquez.

In brief:

Ithaca Sabers May the Fourth celebration

The Lansing Community Library will celebrate May the Fourth, a popular Star Wars fandom holiday that takes place annually on May 4. This year, the library will bring in a martial arts program for children aged 5 and up that runs from 11 a.m. to noon on May 4 at the Lansing Town Hall. 

The program will be put on by Ithaca Sabers, a group providing a martial arts experience based on the popular movie franchise. Group members typically wield the glowing lightsabers seen in the films. Each registered child will receive their own kid’s saber, watch a live demonstration, learn basic moves and techniques and put their new skills into practice.

Interested parties may reserve a spot for a child using the online registration form below:

https://lansinglibrary.org/2024/04/17/may-the-fourth-be-with-you/.