Title
Contract for General Services, Agreement No. AGR24-46a with Bonfire Engineering & Construction LLC in the Amount of $35,000,000, plus Applicable Gross Receipts Tax, for the Purpose of Designing and Building a County-Owned Fiber-to-the-Premise Open Access Network
Recommended Action
I move that Council approve Contract for General Services, Agreement No. AGR24-46a with Bonfire Engineering & Construction LLC in the Amount of $35,000,000, plus Applicable Gross Receipts Tax, for the Purpose of designing and building a county-owned fiber-to-the-premise open access network. I further move that Council approve Budget Revision 2025-22 and include Attachment E as part of the minutes of this meeting.
County Manager's Recommendation
The County Manager recommends that Council approve this Contract for General Services as requested.
Body
Staff will make a presentation about the Community Broadband Network (CBN) infrastructure project. Note: the presentation includes information about the operating agreement AGR24-46b and will be a combined presentation.
The project background dates back to the completion of a community broadband initiative in 2013. At that time, the project was deemed too expensive to be feasible. The project was restarted at the end of 2021 with hiring a Broadband Manager and funding an updated study. The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically heightened the need for high-speed video capabilities and became a necessity to keep families and loved ones connected. Furthermore, the community suffered a full day outage of all internet and cell phone coverage at the end of 2022. This outage in conjunction with disappointment with the service levels and maintenance of current providers and infrastructure limitations lead the Council to adopt the following goal to: Provide community broadband as a basic essential service that will enable reliable high-speed internet service throughout the county at competitive pricing.
After a public engagement process and comp...
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