ECTOR COUNTY, Texas — The Ector County Commissioners received a presentation from Superintendent Dr. Scott Muri with ECISD on Tuesday, who is part of the ConnEctor task force.
"To develop a high speed affordable broadband plan to ensure that every resident of our community, every business in our community has access to highspeed affordable broadband," said Dr. Muri.
The total cost of the project is $90 million. Around 75% of the funding could come from the government, particularly the infrastructure bill.
"That is our goal to seek out 75% from the federal government but in order to access those funds, 25% have to come from the local community. Our conversation with our county commissioners today was to petition them for dollars to support the 25% local match," said Dr. Muri.
The local match would be over $20 million, but it's something Dr. Muri believes is worth the investment.
"We recognized during the pandemic that 39% of our students didn't have access to highspeed affordable broadband in our home," said Dr. Muri. "We also don't attract businesses to our community that need access to high speed affordable broadband in rural areas, so the economic benefits of this as well as the economic benefits of this investment are significant."
The project would benefit people in the county that have a hard time getting internet.
"It is the more rural parts people that live outside of the city limits, north, south, east and west that don't have access and if we think about our friends in west Odessa, west Ector County there can be families out there that are very rural and broadband for them just isn't an option," said Dr. Muri.