Broadband in McDowell County Report June 27, 2022

Connect McDowell is a group dedicated to bringing broadband to all of McDowell County and was begun by Keith Buchanan of APlus Networking. https://connectmcdowell.org/

They are a pro-bono board and normally meet the third Wednesday of every month at 3 pm in the Universal Advanced Manufacturing Conference Room behind MTCC. The meetings are open to any who wants to attend.

The next meeting is Wednesday, July 20 at 3 pm. James Ayers of the Foothills Regional Commission will speak about completing the digital inclusion plan to present to McDowell County Commissioners for adoption.

Marty Elliott and I have been invited to attend the meeting.

This still does not answer the question of why a larger percentage of the $8.8 million that McDowell County received from the Biden American Rescue Plan was not spent on broadband infrastructure as we were lead to believe it would be.

Hopefully, we will learn more as we go along and be able to have some input. It would be nice if these board members saw fit to include someone from the Democratic Party on their board.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan Elliott

McDowell Co. Democratic Party