Albany utilities officials ready to move on rural technology plan

ALBANY — Interim City Manager Tom Berry gave the Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission board an overview of a proposed agreement through which the Albany utility authority would take on operation and management of mobile and fixed wireless broadband services in rural Baker, Calhoun, Early, Miller and Mitchell counties.

Berry said at a special called meeting of the board Monday that he will present the $13.3 million South Georgia Regional Informational Technology Authority loan/grant proposal to the Albany City Commission today.

“It says throughout the draft agreement that we’re working with — which is by no means finished; we’re finding ‘surprises’ on the way they’ve operated this project every day — that no funding will come from the city of Albany,” Berry said after the meeting. “The biggest concern is that the SGRITA project has to be finished in nine months.

“You may remember the One Georgia program. They (officials with what would become SGRITA) got $2.7 million from that program in 1994, and they’ve been trying to do it ever since. It’s been poorly run, poorly engineered, poorly everything. If we’d been involved in this two years ago, it would be a piece of cake. Now, it is a doable but very difficult deadline. I’m confident — and that may be a poor choice of words — that if we focus our assets we can get it done.”

Under the SGRITA project, WG&L will make wireless broadband services — including telephone and computer broadband — available to 21,033 homes, 2,272 businesses and 246 anchor institutions in the five-county region. The utility will accomplish the goal by running 160 miles of fiber with wireless access spread through seven counties.

The primary issue, Berry noted, is financing.

“The project is being financed with a $6,633,515 Rural Utility Service loan and a grant for the same amount,” he said. “But none of that funding can be used for operations. The big question is how we cash-flow the project while the work is being completed. It will be probably three years before we’re able to realize the return that we expect to be significant for Albany.

“Before that, though, the authority has around 30-35 customers that it must continue to serve. We can go with the SGRITA board to a lending institution with our project plan and secure a line of credit to cash-flow the project, or the city of Albany could cash-flow it using our money and then collect 100 percent of the revenue generated. But I think that using city money is a down-the-road option.”

Asked by Albany Mayor Dorothy Hubbard about possible disadvantages with the project, Berry said the uncertainty surrounding work done on the project leaves a number of questions.

“I want to stress that SGRITA has a strong board, but a lot of things in this process were kept from them,” Berry said. “I guess you could say the biggest concern is not only uncovering these issues but fixing them, too.”

The board voted unanimously to “recommend in concept” approval of the agreement.

“I think this is a tremendous opportunity for the city of Albany to grow and expand,” board member Chad Warbington said.

Still, Berry admitted that the September 2015 deadline looms over the project.

“For us to make this happen, we have to move now,” he said. “We have to do a complete system in nine months. I don’t know if there is a possibility for an extension, but we have to approach it as if there isn’t. This is a great project, but for a lot of reasons, the people responsible have squandered time with it. The (Rural Utility Service agency) wants to see a plan on how the whole thing will be done.

“If we’d gotten involved in this sooner, we could have saved the federal government a lot of money.”