Inside A3 Families share first day of school moments
Powhatan, Virginia B1 BSH football defeats Covenant in heat-shortened opener
Vol. XXXV No.. 9
September 1, 2021
County commits $3 million to broadband Two resolutions aim to ensure timeline on construction of fiber By Laura McFarland Editor
POWHATAN – Powhatan County prioritized its commitment to bringing broadband to underserved portions of the community by committing at least $3 million in county funds to a regional project that is expected to be built out over the next two to three years. During the board’s meeting on Monday, Aug. 23, the supervisors voted unanimously to pass two resolutions that authorize the county to spend between $3 and $5.3 million on a broadband build out in Powhatan being led by Firefly Fiber Broadband. The final amount will depend on whether the project receives state funding.
ment of Housing and Community Development through its Virginia Telecommunications Initiative (VATI) with an application on or before Sept. 14. That application process provides additional scoring points for local contributions to the project, Wood said. With the VATI funding, the county would only need to contribute $3,024,000 to fully support the project with a local match. The board of supervisors’ first resolution authorized spending up to that amount. With this option, the goal is to bring in more early crews that can install underground fiber. Although they are more expensive, those crews are easier to find in the market right now, thus allowing the project to begin sooner and get finished more quickly, Wood said. After the board unanimously passed the two resolutions, Wood praised them for being aggressive in their broadband efforts before the county became involved with Firefly.
Firefly Fiber Broadband announced in August it had received a $14.1 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Reconnect Program that will aid in the expansion of rural broadband in five localities, including Powhatan and Cumberland counties. In Powhatan, Firefly President Gary Wood said it would take about $14.4 million to lay 192 miles of fiber optic cable, mostly in the western and northern parts of the county, which are severely underserved. This project has the potential to serve 2,016 “unserved passings,” which could either be commercial or residential customers without access to speeds faster than 25 mbps download or 3 mbps upload. Firefly’s portion of the construction costs is about $7.3 million, Wood told the board last week. The rest of the project would hopefully come from two additional sources. The project will seek $4.04 million in grant funds from the Virginia Depart-
PCPS opens for 2021-2022 school year
“You have made clear from the very early days that you are looking for solutions for your citizens and you have taken steps to do it,” he said adding that not all of the counties the company is dealing with are starting this far along in the process. With the passage of the resolutions, Wood said his company would start on data collection in the next few weeks. He estimated the first area the company works in will see about a month of data collection, four to six weeks of design, and then permitting. He estimated three to four months before those people might seeing fiber buried in the ground. “Shortly after that in the early areas, we should be able to start seeing some connections,” Wood said. Although Wood said he was confident they had a good chance of being awarded the VATI funds, they had to plan for what to do in case they didn’t receive them. To that end, the board see BROADBAND, pg. 4
Blessed Sacrament welcomes students
Prsrt. Standard U.S. POSTAGE PAID Powhatan, VA Permit No.19
PHOTO BY LAURA MCFARLAND
DELIVER TO: Postal Patron Powhatan, VA 23139
PHOTO BY LAURA MCFARLAND
Powhatan County Public Schools began the 2021-2022 school year on Aug. 23. Above, students at Powhatan High School arrive for the first day of school. See more photos from the high school and Flat Rock Elementary School on Page 5A.
Blessed Sacrament Huguenot Catholic School Head of School Paula Ledbetter welcomes students on the first day of the new school year on Aug. 24. See more photos on Page 8A.
Survivors: Board split on Local women show resolution about they are more than medical freedom a cancer diagnosis By Laura McFarland Editor
By Laura McFarland
POWHATAN – The issue of supporting the medical freedom of residents was recently back in front of the Powhatan County Board of Supervisors and once again causing division. The topic came up twice last week – at the board’s meeting on Monday, Aug. 23 and again during a workshop on Wednesday, Aug. 25 – and led to a heated debate and split 3-2 votes both times. During the Aug. 23 meeting, David Williams, who represents District 1, followed through on an announcement he made a week earlier to present the board with a resolution for his fellow supervisors to consider that asks for the General Assembly to repeal the authority that it has granted officials to impose mandates. The board voted 3-2 in favor of passing the resolution with Williams; Tom Berry, District 2, and Bill Cox, District 4, voting in favor of it. Chairwoman Karin Carmack, District 5, and Mike Byerly, District 3, voted against it. The same 3-2 split was seen in a vote held during the Aug. 25 workshop when the board voted on a motion made by Williams to share see FREEDOM, pg. 4
Editor
POWHATAN – There is no one single story for cancer survivors – there are only individual experiences. In writing the Survivors series about local breast cancer survivors for the Powhatan Today, the very nature of their type of cancer affecting so many people every year means some aspects of what the women featured in the stories battled are easy to learn about. They give you a diagnosis name and you can search prognosis, symptoms, and even see diagrams of
what it might have looked like in their body. But those medical definitions can’t tell you what it was like for a person hearing the word cancer for the first time, wrestling with how to approach a treatment, trying to live daily life while having essentially toxic chemicals pumped through their body, or waiting for tests results to see if this time – this treatment – has set them free. When local photographer Anjie Kay first talked about the idea for giving a group of local breast cancer survivors a pampering, fun free photo session, it was a great see SURVIVORS, pg. 4