By Taylor Boyd
Patrick County supervisors are openly considering alternatives to the county’s long-running broadband expansion plan after learning that parts of the Meadows of Dan area remain at the end of the current construction schedule.
Several members of the Patrick County Board of Supervisors said they support exploring whether another provider could take on portions of the project if grant funding can be reassigned, while others said they want additional information before any decisions are made.
The discussion followed the board’s May 26 broadband work session, where representatives from Appalachian Power, RiverStreet Networks, Citizens, and Spectrum provided updates on ongoing projects across the county.
According to updates from Appalachian Power and RiverStreet, broadband construction in the Meadows of Dan area is among the last phases of the project. During the meeting, Chairman Andrew Overby of the Dan River District, asked Citizens CEO Donna Smith whether her company could serve the area if grant funding were shifted from RiverStreet.
Smith said Citizens could do so, noting the company already has a backbone route through Meadows of Dan and expects to have four crews available after completing work in Wythe County within the next two to three months.
Overby said the county is working with the West Piedmont Planning District Commission to better understand the broadband agreement with RiverStreet.
“I am making sure that we’re looking at all options to ensure that we don’t run out of grant funds and that we can cover as many people as possible. To me, everything is on the table at this point,” he said.
Overby said the board is encouraging RiverStreet to work with other providers, like Citizens, on the broadband projects to deliver service to residents.
“If there’s any way they can work with other companies to come to an agreement, we’re all for it. At the end of the day, we just want to make sure that everybody’s covered. I look at it as a divide-and-conquer kind of thing. To me, it’s better to have several different avenues,” he said.
He added that any changes or developments will be shared publicly.
“I don’t foresee anything else, any more discussions coming about until there’s some sort of change in the system we have right now,” Overby said.
Vice Chairman Clayton Kendrick, of the Mayo River District, said he favors exploring ways to move away from the current arrangement with RiverStreet.
“I’m afraid if we keep holding onto RiverStreet we’re going to lose the grants and lose it all,” he said
Kendrick said Smith followed up after the work session and expressed interest in discussing possible options if the county wanted to pursue an alternative approach.
“I think Smith sent us another email back after that meeting the other night, and told us she thought about it some more, and she would really be interested in looking at it and seeing if we could come together on something. That made it look even better to me,” he said.
Any shift in grant funding would likely require approval from federal officials, Kendrick said.
When attending a Virginia Association of Counties broadband committee meeting about two years ago, Kendrick said he was struck by how far Patrick County lagged behind neighboring localities.
“I told” the presenter “that we wouldn’t even have that if it hadn’t been for around Ararat, where Spectrum got that area. I said Floyd County is rougher than Patrick County and more rural and everything else, and here they are with 100 percent, and we got 14 percent and no idea when we’re going to get the rest of it,” he said.
Kendrick said reliable broadband is essential for residents, businesses, and access to services such as telehealth.
“It’s stuff like people that want to work from home, old people that could use telehealth if they had fiber to where they could do it. It’s just pitiful. We’re a rural, low-income county, actually a poverty county, I guess, and we get left out of everything. We’re always the last county to get anything, and I’m tired of it,” he said.
Peters Creek District Supervisor Jonathan Wood said he also believes the county should consider every available option.
“As I said in the meeting the other night, it’s kind of like Ford or Chevrolet, it doesn’t matter. It’s just which one is better at that particular time,” Wood said. “I’ve owned them all, so I don’t care if it’s RiverStreet, I don’t care if it’s Citizens, I don’t care if it’s Xfinity, it doesn’t matter as long as we can get reliable internet for all of the citizens in the county.”
Wood said he would support examining whether grant funding could be transferred from RiverStreet to Citizens.
“We owe it to everybody,” he said.
Wood, who lives along U.S. 58, said Starlink is currently the only high-speed internet service available at his home.
“When it pours down rain or is very overcast, I go from 123 megabytes a second down to the 20s,” he said. “The 20s were as fast as I could get with any other hardwired internet.”
With some of the hardwired internet he’s had in the past, Wood said it would drop down to one or two megabytes per second.
“In modern society, that’s not going to get it done. He said the issue affects residents who rely on internet service for work. My wife works from home, and she knows when the internet slows it down. It’s not like we’re playing video games and streaming three or four different things. It’s her trying to actually do her work at home and not able to get it done,” Wood said.
Smith River District Supervisor Richard Cox said he has not reached a firm conclusion and wants additional information before deciding how the county should proceed.
“To be truthful, what I got out of that meeting, particularly for Woolwine, is we might as well look to Starlink up here for service unless we want to wait two more years,” he said. “As far as Citizens, that may be a solution for the Meadows of Dan area, and those areas where Citizens has service available.”
Cox said he has asked for more information regarding the county’s broadband efforts and RiverStreet’s position on several issues.
“Right now, broadband is kind of up in the air,” he said, adding that it is unfortunate because broadband is an immediate priority for Patrick County’s economic future.
“I can’t see companies coming in here without the capability of adequate communications, and that seems to be the method that’s most suitable to corporations, and that’s broadband,” he said. “So we’re at a disadvantage if we don’t have broadband, but what the solution is, we’ve got to get that broadband — it’s still questionable.”
Once additional information is gathered, Cox said the board may hold another work session to discuss the issue.
“But right now, until we get the information that I think Mike (County Administrator Michael McGuinness) is trying to acquire, I think we’re kind of at a standstill without that,” Cox said.
Blue Ridge District Supervisor Steve Marshall did not respond to requests for comment.
