Canceled fiber-optic project leaves St. Germain with surplus of ARPA cash

During a town board meeting in late 2023, St. Germain supervisors learned the town has a surplus of $138,000 to spend as the result of redundant grants proffered by the state and federal governments.

In November of 2020, the town board voted to enter into a private/public partnership with ChoiceTel of Eagle River to begin construction on a broadband fiber-optic network to serve the entire town.

An early step of the process was to try to defray the cost of the infrastructure project through the Public Service Corporation (PSC) Broadband Grant Program, a Wisconsin state grant to install broadband internet in rural communities.

During a November 2020 meeting, town board chairman Tom Christensen said ChoiceTel “is projecting it’s going to be at $1,197,850. And the grant pays 50 percent of that. So our responsibility for that would be $598,925.” 

Initially, the town anticipated the need to take out a loan for the roughly $600,000 to cover its half of the project. 

In June 2021, however, it was announced the town would receive roughly $225,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to be applied to the broadband installation.

As it ultimately turned out, the town could have skipped making any investment in a fiber-optic network at all.

In early 2022, town officials were notified that Spectrum, a division of Charter Communications, would also be constructing a broadband network in St. Germain without any financial commitment from the town.

In August 2022, Christensen told The Lakeland Times “before we started with ChoiceTel — several years before that — we asked Spectrum ‘Hey, are you going to do something in our area?’  ‘Absolutely not,’ they said. ‘You don’t have enough people over there to warrant the investment to do it.’ But now, the government throws a big hunk of money at them, and well, OK, now it’s a little easier to do it.”

“How are you going to predict that as a town board?” Christensen asked. “We’re going to get this bad flu thing that’s going to screw everything up; everybody’s going to stay at home and do everything on the internet. That’s just what happened. Who was ever going to predict that in order to plan for it?”

Rather than lament the board’s decision to invest in ChoiceTel’s infrastructure, Christensen preferred to look on the bright side of the situation.

“We went from absolutely poor DSL … to having two offerings at potentially every home or business in the town, and fiber directly to each building. It’s unbelievable,” he said. “We’re lucky.”

He did, however, level criticism at the state and federal governments. 

“It’s bothersome to me that our government doesn’t better organize their resources to first be sure that everybody has coverage,” he said. “In my opinion, if I was the big nut at the federal level, I would work with each state and figure out how to get everybody covered with the money that we had available. But the state government is doing their thing, and the federal government is doing their thing, so we’re going to have two — basically identical — systems in the town of St. Germain.”

“However,” Christensen said, “If the government’s goal is to get broadband service to every resident in the town of St. Germain, they’re wasting money doing it.”

“I don’t want to feel greedy,” he said at the time, “But we’ve got way more than what we need. And I know there’s people out there who don’t have fiber, and that’s the name of the game. And it’s just a bit disappointing to me.”

Later in the year, Christensen spoke again to The Times regarding the status of both companies’ installations.

“The Spectrum people really pulled out all of the stops, so to speak, and just went nuts in installing the internet service in our town,” he said. “In ‘22, they started, and this year, they finished the entire town.”

“The infrastructure to supply the internet service to homes was finished at the end of October or the beginning of November,” Christensen said.  “They (Charter) still have houses and businesses that they’re setting up on a regular basis. They’re hooking up the last of them from the road to the house.”

“But after the first year, and with the progress that we saw, and with their commitment to do the entire town — back in 2022, we weren’t sure they were doing the entire town — it just didn’t make sense to let ChoiceTel continue to install internet when it was already all over the town.”

Christensen said the decision to cease ChoiceTel’s work came long before Charter completed its fiber installation.

“We weren’t even that far along with the Charter/Spectrum people,” he said. “They were probably only halfway done with the town when it was very obvious they were going to have the entire town done way before ChoiceTel, so we actually stopped ChoiceTel this spring.”

Christensen said both companies have active networks in the town. Almost everyone in town can choose service from Charter, and some can pick between the two companies.

“My business — St. Germain Sport Marine — is hooked up to ChoiceTel, and it’s working just fine, but my house is hooked up to Spectrum. There are quite a few houses that are hooked up to ChoiceTel also. It just depended on whether or not you were in the areas that he got his infrastructure into. If you were on those roads, you probably got the opportunity to sign up with ChoiceTel right away.”

He said while some geographic pockets are still waiting for road-to-structure hook-ups, the vast majority of homes and businesses in St. Germain now have broadband access.

During a late November town board meeting, treasurer Jeanna Vogel told supervisors the clock is now ticking for the town to spend the $138.000 which was not paid to ChoiceTel.

“There is a concern that the clerk, treasurer, and deputy clerk/treasurer have in that the ARPA funds, in particular, need to be incurred by the end of next year and paid by December 2026,” she said.

“We’ve done some research on this to figure out what we can do,” Vogel said. “I’m not looking for a decision tonight on how we’re going to spend the funds, but I think the key message here is: we need to get on this; we need to make some decisions; and we can’t afford to wait until June and then say we’re going to do something. We really need a plan of action for what we’re doing.”

Supervisor Brian Cooper asked “The ARPA funds were originally allocated towards the fiber-optic project? And we’re not locked into using it for that specifically?”

Vogel replied “Correct.”

“So we have other options?” Cooper asked.

“Originally, we obviously spent $86,000 of it so far of what we originally collected, and that has been reported to the government that it’s spent,” Vogel answered. “We had told them our intent was to spend it on fiber-optic, but obviously, it sounds like that’s going to change. There are specific categories; it’s not like you can spend it on anything. But I’ve also received conflicting information on that.”

Vogel said, “The most likely categories I think that we could probably spend it on would be like fixing the fire department doors and working on the community center, which I think would qualify as a recreational facility.”

At that point, supervisors speculated on whether the money could be spent on a number of needed improvements throughout the town, including pavilion repairs, road-maintenance projects, and replacing the long-defunct high-capacity well at the St. Germain Fire Department.Vogel said while the ARPA qualifications were complicated and “hard to read,” she was fairly certain road projects were not a permitted use of the funds.

“I don’t think we’re looking for a decision tonight,” Vogel said. “Basically, we’re saying ‘We need this to stay on the agenda. We need to stay focused so that we don’t lose the opportunity to keep this money.’”

“By the end of April is when we need to submit the form to say what we have spent and what we plan to spend it on,” she said.

Town clerk June Vogel said “I’d like to have a deadline prior to April, like in February...If we have to get bids and stuff, the longer we have to do it.”

“The longer we wait, the riskier it becomes,” the treasurer added.

In speaking with The Times the following day, Christensen said “We were talking in very general terms last night. I’ve got some more ideas now. I haven’t looked at it (the list of ARPA restrictions), but my little mind is spinning right now, trying to figure out what is going to be the best choice so I can work with Jeanna and June and come up with a plan for the board. Hopefully by our next meeting, we’ll have some choices and a plan. We’ll put that out for board approval as to which way to go.”