Broadband Forward! certification shows support

Editor’s note: This is the third in a five-part series highlighting the need for broadband internet expansion in Pierce County.

When Zach and Heather Fjelstad moved to the town of Trimbelle from St. Paul in 2014, it was a dream come true. Both grew up in small towns and Pierce County offered the type of lifestyle they wanted.

“We were kind of excited about a ‘living off the land’ type of lifestyle,” Heather Fjelstad said. “We wanted to plant a garden or have animals. At that time, we didn’t know if we wanted kids, but if we did, we wanted them to grow up on a farm. That’s why we moved out there.”

Zach Fjelstad loves to hunt and wanted to teach his wife to bow hunt. Both worked in downtown St. Paul high schools in special education

See BROADBAND, Page 9

No Farm Left Behind

Bringing Rural Areas into the Digital Age

Zach and Heather Fjelstad live with their two children in the town of Trimbelle. Their dream was to live in the country, raising their kids on a farm. When they moved here in 2014, they didn’t realize an internet nightmare was waiting for them. Photo courtesy of Heather Fjelstad BROADBAND

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with high-risk youth, an emotionally and mentally draining, yet rewarding career.

“We were really looking for a place where we could recharge,” Heather Fjelstad said.

When they found their town of Trimbelle paradise, it had been on the market for 3.5 years. They thought they had lucked out. It had everything they could ever want – or so they thought.

“The first thing we realized was that we had no cell phone reception,” Heather Fjelstad said. “But if we can get online, it will fix the cell phone issue, we thought. But we had a terrible time. No one gave service to our address. Satellite internet was extremely expensive for very little bandwidth. It was a huge surprise, and we never thought internet would be an issue.”

Not a huge deal, they thought. They commuted to their jobs in the Cities. They wanted to stream TV, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They would just get cable or satellite TV.

Then the pandemic struck and much of the world moved online. What had been a minor annoyance became a life-changing issue.

The schools they taught at shut down and moved to full-on distance learning in March 2020. At the time, their children were 1 and 3, which presented a challenge besides lack of internet: Working from home fully online with two young children with very different schedules from one another.

“They were very hands-on; you can’t just stick them in front of a TV,” said Heather Fjelstad. “We were constantly (online) having meetings all day every day with our coworkers to come up with a plan. They were understanding what we were going through.”

In addition to meeting with co-workers to formulate a distance-learning plan, the Fjelstads had to teach classes and meet with students online, which was next to impossible with spotty internet service. Add trying to care for active, small children into the mix, and their days were overwhelming.

“Trying to get through 45 minutes to an hour of a class on the internet at the same time, and trying to keep our kids entertained,” Heather Fjelstad said. “It was just way too much. One of us always felt like we were not meeting our students’ needs. We also felt like we weren’t meeting our kids’ needs.”

Something had to change; they couldn’t keep on the way they were going. After making it through the end of the school year, Zach Fjelstad commuted to his parents’ home in Balsam Lake to work, where they had a good internet connection. He brought the kids with him so his mom could provide child care. But by November 2020, it was all just too much. Heather Fjelstad made the gut-wrenching decision to leave education, a field in which she excelled and loved deeply, to take an entry-level sales position.

“I didn’t want to get out of education,” Heather Fjelstad said. “It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was so I didn’t have to be always on(line). I could schedule phone calls with my customers, there aren’t meetings all day every day. The bandwidth was not needed.”

She took a major pay cut in order to bring some sanity to their lives. But more importantly, she lost a part of herself.

“It was my identity and it just wrecked me. It was my life’s work. That’s what I planned to do the rest of my life, was work with students and advocate for them. It was my passion. I couldn’t bear it. Seeing what teachers are going through now, I never would’ve been able to withstand that kind of pressure,” Heather Fjelstad said.

Hope on the horizon

The Fjelstads are signed up with Pierce Pepin Cooperative Services high-speed internet division SwiftCurrent Connect, and will be part of the first phase of customers connected to fiber. While there have been some delays in connecting customers due to supply chain issues, they’re hoping once the ground thaws they’ll be connected.

While Heather Fjelstad is grateful for the sales job she took, it didn’t turn out like she hoped, due to supply chain issues with the products she was hired to sell. Having high-speed internet will open up more prospects for her. With more than 10 years of education experience and a master’s degree, she took “a massive pay cut” when switching careers, she said.

“During the pandemic, what do we cut? What else could give when so much was cut already? It was a very, very difficult year to get through,” Heather Fjelstad said.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Heather Fjelstad started calling and emailing legislators to bring Pierce County’s broadband woes to light. She received many calls back, including from Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s aide, who interviewed her. The interview was used on the Senate floor as testimony for broadband expansion needs and in promotional materials. Fjelstad also advocated for local government to support broadband expansion, asking the Trimbelle Town Board to become Broadband Forward! Certified.

Broadband Forward!

The Public Service Commission’s Wisconsin Broadband Office created in 2015 a voluntary program called Broadband Forward! for local units of government (city, village, town or county) to show that they recognize the need for broadband expansion. It also shows that they’ve taken steps to reduce obstacles to broadband infrastructure investment. A Broadband Forward! designation:

•Means a local governmental body is supportive of developing broadband infrastructure and minimizing the barriers to the development and implementation of broadband in the community.

•Specifies a single point of contact for applications •Reduces fees and assures a timely turnaround in applications related to broadband build-out in right-of-ways, etc.

•Signals a supportive approach and recognition of the need for broadband internet on the part of community leaders.

As part of the certification, municipalities are required to enact an ordinance outlining the above requirements, showing they are serious about working with broadband providers to extend service. It’s free to apply and easy to submit.

The surrounding counties of Buffalo, Polk, Chippewa, Eau Claire and Dunn have all passed ordinances to become Broadband Forward! certified, as have the towns of Warren and Kinnickinnic in St. Croix County, and Martell, Gilman, River Falls and Ellsworth in Pierce County, according to the PSC’s latest list.

Katie Pata of the local nonprofit organization Western Wisconsin Needs Broadband has been actively educating local boards about the program, along with members of Pierce County GrassRoots Organizing. Her nickname for the project is #Letsgetonthemap. If you are interested in bringing the certification to your local board, go to Pierce County GrassRoots Organizing’s website at piercecountygro.org/broadband to learn how. It’s a meaningful step that community leaders can take to amplify the need for broadband in their communities when applying for grants.

The State Broadband Expansion Grant Program gives priority to applications that include any of seven priority factors listed in state statutes: 1) Matching funds (up to 10 points). An application will receive higher priority based on the percentage of matching funds the applicant proposes to invest in its project and the variety of sources of matching funding provided by partners and others.

2) Public-private partnerships (up to 10 points). An application that includes a city, village, town, or county as a participating partner, in partnership with a telecommunication provider or other private organization and exhibits active community engagement shall receive priority.

3) Existing broadband service (up to 15 points). An application proposing to serve an unserved area shall receive priority. The priority will be based on the percent of the project that reaches unserved locations.

4) Project impact (up to 15 points). An application that proposes to serve a larger geographic area, a larger number of customers or communities in an area or provide a higher performance service shall receive higher priority than one that serves a comparatively smaller geographic area, fewer number of potential customers or communities in an area or slower service as compared with the cost of the project.

5) Scalability (up to 5 points). An application that demonstrates a commitment to increase the size or scope of its broadband network in the future shall receive priority. An application that discusses possible growth potential, but declines to make a specific commitment regarding future growth of the broadband network, shall receive a lesser priority.

6) Economic development (up to 10 points). An application that demonstrates the potential to promote job growth or retention, expand the property tax base or improve the overall economic vitality of the municipality or region shall receive priority.

7) Effect upon broadband service to adjacent areas (up to 5 points). An application that demonstrates that it will not impair the ability of a competing broadband service provider to extend broadband service to areas adjacent to the proposed project shall receive priority.

The points awarded in these applications are one reason why Broadband Forward! certification is beneficial. Also, when local government units promise to allocate awarded American Rescue Plan Act funds to internet service providers (such as SwiftCurrent Connect or BevComm, for example) in a public-private partnership, priority is also given to those applications.

If an internet service provider (ISP) is awarded a state-issued buildout grant, think about it this way: The ARPA funds go three times further. If the township provides $100,000, and the ISP provides $100,000 and the grant awards $100,000, the township’s funds are worth $300,000 in broadband buildout buying power.

Local townships that have allocated some or all of their awarded ARPA funds are River Falls, Trimbelle, Oak Grove and Ellsworth. Pierce County Economic Development Director Joe Folsom has spent hours traveling to the county’s town boards, village boards and city councils asking them to consider putting up match funds for broadband expansion.

“Time is of the essence,” said Folsom. “It will never be easier or more affordable for counties, cities, towns and villages to invest in broadband infrastructure than it is right now. Broadband internet build-out grant funding is currently available from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC). Providing available American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) funding allocated for broadband infrastructure as local match, strengthens PSC grant applications, which is crucial to grant funding success.”

While the next round of applications is due March 17, Folsom is hoping more towns will become Broadband Forward! certified before the next round is due, which has not been announced yet. Heather Fjelstad had a message for the Pierce County Board specifically.

“If you want your community and your townships to survive and thrive, the internet is going to be a gateway to people wanting to be here,” she said. “If you don’t have the resources that people have to have to live and work in your community, they’re not going to stay.”