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Blue Mountain Eagle
BROADBAND
Continued from Page A1
Trail Electric Cooperative
about hanging the cable on
the co-op’s power poles, but
no price has been established,
Green told the Grant County
Court on Nov. 8.
Making connections
A big question for many
has been how broadband ac-
cess would be distributed from
the main cable to individual
homes and businesses. Com-
missioner Boyd Britton asked
Green if the new broadband
network would connect with
rural homes in the county by
underground fiber or wireless.
The answer depended on
a number of variables, Green
said, including the density of
homes in an area and whether
the coalition that will build and
operate the network can obtain
state or federal funding.
There are advantages to us-
ing fiber, Green told the Eagle.
“Fiber is more expensive
on the capital side but much
lower cost on operations and
maintenance,” he said. “You
also get lower capacity (with
wireless). At least in John
the
Day, we intend to explore both
wireless and wireline options
as well as services from vari-
ous providers.”
When Oregon Telephone
Corporation replaced aging
copper wires hanging from
poles in Mt. Vernon with bur-
ied fiber-optic lines in 2005,
it was supported with a $10
million federal loan from the
Rural Utilities Service.
Directional-boring
ma-
chines were used to run cables
under the John Day River and
Beech Creek. Once the cables
were buried, crews connected
fiber-optic lines to customers’
homes, providing better ser-
vice than offered in Portland,
Ortelco manager Stephen Sch-
weitzer said at the time.
All this came at no cost to
Ortelco’s customers. The $10
million, five-year project con-
tinued into Hereford/Unity,
Dufur, Dayville and finally
Prairie City.
Ortelco General Manager
DeeDee Kluser said the com-
pany is continuing with its
“fiber to the home/premise”
program. Homes and business-
es along Main Street in John
Day have been connected, and
crews will soon be running
aerial fiber in the Hillcrest,
corner’s
SH T
HOT
EEK
OF THE W
School: Grant Union
Grade: 12
Parents: Rocky & Deanna Maley
Sport: Football
Position: Offensive/Defensive Linebacker
What I like best about my sport: “I like
spending time with a great group of guys. It
keeps you busy and doing something
productive. It gets you in shape and makes you
work hard.”
Coach’s Comment: “Dillon has been a pillar of
our program for four years. He has
earned multiple all-league honors
and has been a pleasure to coach.”
-Coach Jason Miller
munities and customers in
Grant County, Kluser said
the company’s goal is to pro-
vide internet service to some
areas by using wireless.
Running fiber to Seneca,
Long Creek and Monument,
however, is beyond Ortel-
co’s capabilities for now, she
said.
“We’re expanding us-
ing our own manpower and
funds,” she said, adding
that while Ortelco’s month-
ly fees are higher than
what the coalition’s broad-
band network might offer,
“our install fees are very
low.”
911
ties. It might prove difficult
for small rural communities in
Grant County to find money
for 911 dispatch in their city
budgets or to pass a special
option tax or bond measure to
fund the service.
“It’s not my job to travel
around the county educating
the various city councils on
this issue,” Green said.
Green offered three op-
tions to the city council: out-
source 911 dispatch to Fron-
tier Dispatch in Condon; form
a cooperative dispatch center
with an adjacent county; or
create a new intergovernmen-
tal agreement to maintain a lo-
cal dispatch center with local
cost-sharing and local control.
Green said he preferred
the third option and would be
happy to see the joint service
be independent of the city.
“Couldn’t this independent
agency charge us whatever
they wanted?” Councilor Paul
Smith asked.
“We would become a cus-
tomer,” Green agreed, “but we
don’t have a lot of options.”
Green suggested that the
head of the new joint agency
or its board could be elected
by countywide voters. In the
meantime, Green suggested
creating a task force with the
four members that “have skin
in the game” — the city, the
county, Blue Mountain Hos-
pital and Malheur National
Forest — to work on a solu-
tion that could be presented to
the dozen or so communities
and groups that would form a
new joint dispatch service.
“This is solvable, but
there’s too much politics,”
Green said. “It should be a
policy decision.”
Councilor Shannon Adair
suggested ways to improve
how the issue could be pre-
The Eagle/Richard Hanners
Kelvin Taysom, left, temporarily left his engineering
post at Oregon Telephone Corp. on Nov. 17 to help field
technician Cory Hayes run fiber cable to the Families
First office on South Canyon Boulevard in John Day.
The big spool behind them holds twin-fiber cable for
running to businesses and homes. The private company
continues to expand its fiber-optic access.
the history of the local dis-
patch center, suggested mem-
bers stopped coming to User
Board meetings because in
the early years after the joint
service formed in 1989 the
statewide telephone excise tax
“covered everything.”
Green noted that under
state law the lead agency for
the dispatch center — which
is now the city — can’t sim-
ply abdicate its responsibility
without following a required
process. But the city “is not
obligated to cover the smaller
communities,” he added.
State law requires cities
and counties to provide 911
emergency service, but Mea-
sure 5 passed in 1990 limits
the total amount of tax com-
munities can levy on proper-
PALMER
PROUD SPONSOR OF GRANT COUNTY ATHLETES
100 E. Main • Stoplight in John Day
541-792-0425
Seventh Street and Charolais
Heights neighborhoods and
west of John Day.
Ortelco has also run fiber
south along Highway 395
into Canyon City as far as
the courthouse, with homes
connected along Humbolt
Street. Kluser said addition-
al capacity will be run along
the highway from the high
school to the courthouse.
Ortelco originally began
offering high-speed internet
for business customers and
was surprised by the rapidly
growing demand by residen-
tial customers.
As for more rural com-
Two models
Green presented two mod-
els to the county court for how
a public broadband network
could be established in Grant
County.
Sandy, Oregon, which has
the best network in the state,
used no tax dollars in building
its citywide network — it was
paid for by user fees. The net-
work is run as a public utility
overseen by the city council.
SandyNet began with DSL
and wireless in 2001 and be-
gan to switch to fiber in 2008.
The network has never seen an
outage in eight years, accord-
ing to Sandy’s IT manager, Joe
Knapp. Green said Knapp has
visited John Day to talk about
Sandy’s network.
The broadband network in
Ammon, Idaho, is also pub-
licly owned, but it was built
neighborhood by neighbor-
hood with multiple local im-
provement districts, similarly
to how sidewalks are funded.
Ammon offers an open-ac-
cess network, and users can
switch internet service pro-
viders within seconds through
software. Green told the Eagle
that the task force is consider-
ing working with EntryPoint,
the company that developed
the open access network used
by Ammon.
Green told the court that
Continued from Page A1
DILLON MALEY
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Continued from Page A1
24815
At least eight people sent formal com-
plaints about Palmer to DPSST after he
met with people who participated in the
41-day occupation of the Malheur Na-
tional Wildlife Refuge in 2016.
Most of the complaints focused on
Palmer’s involvement with the refuge
occupiers, after Palmer met in John Day
with three occupiers and the president of
a militia group in January 2016. A com-
plaint from John Day Police Chief Rich-
ard Gray also accused Palmer of destroy-
ing a public record, and an anonymous
complaint accused Palmer of issuing
costs to connect fiber to homes
ran about $3,000 in Ammon
and $4,000 in Sandy.
Ammon offers 100 mega-
bits per second symmetrical
(upload and download service)
for about $45 per month, and
Sandy offers 1 gigabit (1,000
megabits) per second symmet-
rical for about $60 per month.
For comparison, Ortelco
offers up to 100 mbps for $120
per month, and CenturyLink
offers 10 mbps DSL service
for about $45 per month.
Green told the Eagle the task
force’s target is to start at 100
mbps and go up to 1 gbps. No
specific prices were cited, but
Green has said the proposed
network could offer lower
prices than the private sector.
Green told the court he
wasn’t opposed to a public-pri-
vate partnership, but he said
the private sector has failed
so far to provide quality inter-
net service to many area resi-
dents and businesses. He also
said Ortelco and CenturyLink
lack the capital needed to run
broadband to rural communi-
ties, such as Seneca or Long
Creek. When asked if commu-
nities could opt out after they
joined the coalition, Green
said yes.
“If it doesn’t pencil out, we
can back out,” he said. “We
would only use state money.”
sented to voters, but Green
said he doubted the Grant
County Court would bring
the special option tax back for
another vote. It likely would
only come back by petition
from the voters, he said.
The optimal solution to the
funding problem would be to
raise the telephone excise tax
from 75 cents per month to
about $1.50, but Smith noted
that the legislature and the
League of Oregon Cities were
not interested in addressing
the issue.
If a solution is not found,
the city could end up spend-
ing $1 million on 911 dispatch
over the next 10 years, Green
said.
“This is a problem that
needs to be solved,” Green
said. “It can’t just be met with
a shrug and the comment,
‘Oh, John Day will figure it
out.’”
concealed handgun licenses to out-of-
state residents.
Department of Justice Chief Counsel
Michael Slauson said in an Oct. 10 letter
the investigation found “insufficient evi-
dence” Palmer destroyed public records,
and “the evidence does not support a con-
clusion” Palmer violated state concealed
handgun license laws.
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