Shaheen Supports Grafton Broadband
Hub66 Hopes For Grant To Provide Further Expansion Of Its Fiber Network
Also on today’s menu:
Postal Service Reform Act of 2022
Sacred Tribal Lands Returned
Shaheen Supports Hub66 Grant Proposal
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-Madbury) has sent a letter of support for Hub66’s application under a USDA Rural Development ReConnect Loan & Grant Program as the company looks to expand fiber internet access to the Grafton County communities of Bristol, Enfield, Canaan, and Lebanon, as well as Plainfield, Francestown, and Hancock. The company already is connecting Bristol businesses and residents and wants to be part of a larger Grafton County Broadband initiative based on Bristol’s model.
Shaheen, who previously said Bristol’s project can serve as a model for other states looking to expand internet access, said Hub66 is working closely with several municipalities in New Hampshire to provide broadband coverage and infrastructure to underserved rural areas. The lack of consistent internet service across the state is creating a “digital divide” that puts communities without high-speed internet at a disadvantage, she said.
Bristol’s project was a public-private partnership between the town, eX², and Hub66 that included $1.52 million in federal CARES Act grant funding, along with a $260,000 grant from the New Hampshire Northern Border Regional Commission. Hub66 is looking for the new grant to enable further upgrades and expansion into Bristol and other rural communities that have traditionally been underserved by internet service providers
Postal Service Reform Act of 2022
President Joe Biden Jr. has signed the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, intended to make the U.S. Postal Service solvent and reliable.
Ben Franklin served as the first postmaster general, seeing mail delivery as a way to connect the colonies and build the nation. He foresaw a role in protecting some of the most basic freedoms and rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the security of the mail, prohibiting the opening of mail that belonged to somebody else. Today, the USPS delivers 4 million prescriptions per day, along with COVID-19 tests.
The postal service has been stretched since 2006, when Congress passed a law requiring the USPS to prepay retirement benefits 50 years into the future., something no other company or federal agency has to do. The bill repeals the pre-funding mandate in order to place the postal service on a more sustainable and stable financial footing.
The changes have been promoted by the current U.S. Postmaster-General, Louis DeJoy, a controversial figured appointed by former President Donald Trump. He was criticized in June 2020 after removing sorting machines and slowing down the delivery of mail. He recently defended those decisions, saying the agency’s training manuals on how to operate mail processing plants were 40 years old. His 10-year agency turnaround plan is now embraced by postal workers. Although the plan included price increases and the slowing of some first-class mail, many are now seeing those measures as necessary. Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that the postmaster-general collaborated with the White House to successfully deliver 320 million free COVID-19 test kits to American households in an average of less than two days.
The new plan commits the USPS to continue Saturday letter delivery, which several of his predecessors wanted to abolish. It also includes price hikes, made possible by a 2020 ruling by the Postal Regulatory Commission, the USPS’s primary regulator. DeJoy also argues that the postal service has relied too heavily on FedEx Corp., United Parcel Service Inc., and commercial airlines to fly mail across the country. His solution is to shift some first-class mail back to trucks, even through it will add a day or two of delivery time to some mail. He argues that it will enable the USPS to provide more cost-efficient, reliable service.
Sacred Tribal Lands Returned
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams celebrated the Rappahannock Tribe’s reacquisiton of 465 acres of sacred land at Fones Cliff last Friday, according to a press release from the Department of the Interior. Rappahannock Tribe Chief Anne Richardson, told the Chesapeake Conservancy that, “With eagles being prayer messengers, this area where they gather has always been a place of natural, cultural, and spiritual importance.”
Fones Cliff, located on the eastern side of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, is the ancestral home of the tribe. Plans call for it to be publicly accessible and placed in trust with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribe plans to teach the public about its history with a replica 16th-century village, and will expand its “Return to the River” program, which trains tribal youths in traditional river knowledge and practices.
In 1608, the tribe first encountered and defended its homeland against English settler Captain John Smith, who played a role in establishing the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Virginia. In the 1660s, the colonists began forcibly displacing the tribe, according to the Chesapeake Conservancy.
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