Placer County District 5 Bulletin | April 14

Hello all, 

First, thank you to all of you who responded quickly to our request last week to share your comments with the California Public Utilities Commission about their broadband infrastructure funding allocation for Placer County. The CPUC received nearly 200 comments from Placer County, which may have influenced their decision to postpone their planned April 7 vote to April 21.

Though they didn’t give a reason for the continuance, we are hopeful this means changes in the proposed decision are coming. So if you have not yet provided comments, or if you would like to provide further comments, now is a critical time to do so, as soon as you can.

As a reminder, the CPUC is set to approve a plan to allocate $2 billion for broadband infrastructure in California. Each county will receive a portion of this funding. Under the current proposal, Placer County would receive about $30 million— less than half as much as we would receive were we grouped with other rural counties with comparable infrastructure challenges.

It is the position of Placer County that the CPUC’s funding methodology is flawed because it groups Placer County with “urban” counties like San Francisco and Los Angeles, rather than “rural” counties like Nevada and El Dorado. In addition, the CPUC relied on inaccurate data related to existing internet access. Placer County staff filed comments with the CPUC requesting additional funding for these reasons, and the Board of Supervisors approved those comments April 5.

Providing input for the April 21 hearing will work just as it did for the April 7 hearing. 

1. Submit comments online:

• Go to the CPUC Docket Card
• Search for Proceeding Number 2009001
• Click the blue hyperlinked Proceeding Number
• Click the “Public Comments” Tab at the top
• Click the “Add Public Comment” button

2. Speak at the CPUC Meeting:

• California Public Utilities Commission
• Thursday, April 21 at 11:00 a.m.
• Participate by phone: 1-800-857-1917, passcode: 9899501#
• MORE INFO HERE

*Please be advised that there may be a long (2+ hour) wait time for public comment. If you are not prepared to wait that long, we encourage you to submit a written comment for the official record.

Thank you very much!