At the public hearing held today on the county budget for 2014, a resolution proposed by Supervisor Bob Martini was passed with overwhelming support to allocate $24,000 towards the county’s goal of providing the best possible broadband access to its electors and property owners. Speaking as Chairman of the board-appointed Technology Committee, NWBDC Founder Don Sidlowski told the 21 supervisors why their committee urged passage of the funding resolution. “The funds will be used to develop point-to-point wireless broadband infrastructure aimed at concentration of second homes inside the County with deployment by means of public-private partnerships willing to invest up to $50,000 to which will be added matching broadband grant funding administered by the Public Service Commission (PSC) resulting in the County’s investment becoming a pool of nearly $100,000″, said Sidlowski. He went on to add, “a study on the economic benefit of providing broadband access to these second homeowners commissioned and paid for by the NWBDC and conducted by the UW-Whitewater Fiscal & Economic Research Center (FERC) calculated an economic impact of $5.8M per year, every year. If rolled out to this market segment at a rate of only one-tenth of second homeowners per year for the next ten years, the County’s investment still results in an economic impact of $580,000 per year, every year”.