approval from:
JTRockville 
| Some corrections if I may You've missed a few vital points and have confused a few separate issues.
For starters, the 18-month delay was due to a lawsuit from Qwest that halted construction. Qwest was attempting to assert ownership over utility poles owned by Pacificorp, the power company, and ultimately lost that suit but not before causing UTOPIA to expend a lot of resources on legal costs. Not satisfied with that outcome, Qwest then resorted to illegally delaying and blocking access to poles anyway and UTOPIA has chosen to work around those obstructions as opposed to embroil itself in another expensive lawsuit.
The RUS money is a fiasco caused by federal incompetence. The RUS approved a loan for $67M and started authorizing UTOPIA to perform the work under the loan. The problem is that the program is designed to reimburse the network for costs and the RUS approved construction costs that they later didn't reimburse for, effectively forcing UTOPIA to expend bond money intended for other construction. Had the RUS followed through appropriately, UTOPIA would have finished the network in all RUS cities by the end of last year and have passed about 68,000 homes by the end of last year with a balance of $34M to continue construction in Phase I cities.
I'm personally amazed that this team has been able to get as far as they have without calling in tax money. The re-bonding, which looking likely to be approved by all but Payson, will allow UTOPIA to reach the 68K homes passed mark and start adding up to 20 new providers to the network. Opponents seem to be preaching a mantra of "if at first you don't succeed, you're a failure." That short-sighted thinking has, thankfully, not been shared by the cities. |
