INSIDE Goochland publisher, Louisa author earn gold for ‘Horn’ book > page 3
Volume 66 Number 26 • July 8, 2021
Partnership marks ‘major milestone’ in effort to bring broadband to entire county
School Board OKs contract for new GES Virginia-based firm MBP tapped to head up project, vote still needed on funding
Contributed Report
By Roslyn Ryan Editor
While it remains to be seen if Goochland voters will support a bond referendum on the ballot this November to incur a $60 million debt for a new elementary school, the Goochland School Board voted recently to sign a contract with a construction management firm to oversee the project. On June 8, board members voted unanimously to enter into an agreement with McDonough Bolyard Peck (MBP), a Virginia-based company that specializes in building schools. The $585,709 contract is one that school division leaders have given plenty of consideration, said Goochland County Public School Superintendent Dr. Jeremy Raley. “Building a new school is not something that happens every day,” said Raley, “and we want to make sure that any work we do to build this project is representative of the community, is a school building that we can be proud of, and is a school building that represents the hard work of our tax payers and the dollars see School > 3
A thrilling finale to the Fourth
Photo by Angela Allen
The Goochland Middle School parking lot proved a great place to take in the county’s wildly popular Fourth of July fireworks display, which returned last Sunday after being on hiatus due to the COVID19 pandemic.
Efforts to significantly expand broadband internet service in Goochland County moved forward with the announcement of a regional partnership among nine Central Virginia counties and the energy utilities serving the region. Goochland County, Dominion Energy Virginia, Firefly Fiber BroadbandSM, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Central Virginia Electric Cooperative, and Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding to advance a regional partnership that aims to deliver fiber-optic broadband service to unserved and underserved households and businesses, subject to regulatory approvals. The project is intended to cover all possible locations in Goochland that do not have access to broadband meeting the minimum qualifying service speeds that the Commonwealth of Virginia has established, which are 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload from a fixed wireless or wired connection. Dominion and REC are both installing fiber to improve system reliability and resiliency. Firefly will then lease the “middle-mile” fiber to provide broadband access. see Broadband > 2
