Escambia County chooses partner to bring broadband to rural areas, but challenges remain

Escambia County is looking back to Escambia River Electric Cooperative's proposal to build a rural broadband network, but the unusual path the county has taken drew the objection of cable and internet provider Cox Communications on Tuesday.

The Escambia County Commission voted Monday 4-1 to negotiate an agreement between the county and EREC to back the co-op's effort to seek a state grant to build a $24 million rural broadband network with $6 million in Escambia County American Rescue Plan Act funds.

The move comes after the county sought official proposals from internet providers through its procurement office for a broadband network north of Nine Mile Road with an offer of up to $10 million in county ARPA funds. The county received four responses from Cox, NextCity, CSpire, and EREC.

Escambia County has set aside $22 million from its ARPA funds to dedicate to broadband infrastructure, with $10 million for the northern half of the county and $12 million for the southern half.

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The commission held a special meeting to provide the county and EREC enough time to meet an early December deadline to apply for a state grant from the Department of Economic Opportunity to fund the rest of the project.

In October, the County Commission, which had made itself the selection committee for the RFP, voted to waive the procurement "blackout period" that would prevent a county commissioner from speaking with representatives of the organizations that submitted responses to allow Commissioner Steven Barry to meet with representatives of EREC.

David Deliman, Gulf Coast market vice president for Cox Communications, asked the County Commission to reconsider the direction it was heading, noting that Cox was the only provider who could serve the entire geographic area included in the original request for proposals.

"We believe the fact that the Commission is asking to negotiate with a provider separate from the outlined procurement process may touch on an issue of fairness, and we would like to ask that the Commission and county attorney review the public procurement process and reassess next steps," Deliman said.

Commissioner Robert Bender asked the county attorney if the county's decision to select ECER could be challenged in court.

Assistant County Attorney Kristin Hual said anything could be challenged.

"We typically do stick to a defined scope (in the RFP), and the decision is made based on the scoring with the selection criteria. And this has not followed our usual process," Hual said.

Bender said he understands that is typical for a selection committee made up of county staff who then bring a shortlist to the County Commission to make the final decision.

Commission Chairman Lumon May said the commission has the ability to modify an RFP however it wants before it makes the selection.

"It's going to be appealed and sued anyway," May said.

Bender said he didn't want to get caught up in that if they took extra time on the selection and perhaps Escambia County could apply directly for the state grant first and vote afterward to partner with EREC.

"This is the extra time," Barry responded, referring the special meeting.

New Commissioner Mike Kohler was the only no vote Tuesday, but he said he was voting against it because he did not have enough information about the project.

While ECER was the lowest cost for the county, it did not score the highest in a ranking based on the county's own RFP criteria. Commissioner Jeff Bergosh asked Barry the justification for not selecting a company that scored higher under the criteria advertised in its RFP.

Barry said he felt the board intended to get fiber internet to people's homes in unserved areas, and that was not the top criteria in the RFP.

"I don't know that the staff people that were tasked with evaluating this were doing so from the intent of what was the priority to the board, which is getting fiber to the homes," Barry said.

Much of the RFP was drafted, which appears to be largely based on the county's earlier Magellan Advisors study, which the county accepted as complete in April. That study called for partnering with providers to build a ring network of fiber internet and broadcast towers.

While the commission voted to accept the study, the commissioners said at the time that it was not the direction they were interested in going.

Barry said that based on all the proposals, ECER's was the best as far as cost to the county and the number of homes served, with between 4,200 to 4,300 homes and 700 miles of new fiber internet infrastructure.

"I think this partnership is exactly what was intended with the ARPA funds," Barry said.

Barry said as a non-profit, ECER is owned by its customers.

"This is also an opportunity where we're partnering with an entity that our citizens, that our property taxpayers, that our constituents own, which I think is a very unique opportunity in this instance," Barry said. "And that's why I had recommended, maybe three or four weeks ago, to alter the geographical area of the first phase to only have this phase be the Escambia River Electric Co-Op footprint. So that's further north than what we had originally put out."

Barry said there is still a need for a second phase of the project, which he guessed many other internet providers will be interested in bidding in.

"Whatever is not going to be contained within this (to the) south, that's what I envision all of that being phase two — maybe even the beach," Barry said.

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com and 850-208-9827.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia County looks to partner with ECER on rural broadband