Forestville Pushing Forward With Broadband

Voters in the towns of Brussels, Gardner and Union in southern Door County all defeated broadband referendums in the April 2 election, telling their elected officials they did not want their towns to borrow money to connect all addresses with high-speed fiber internet.

But that’s not the case for the Town of Forestville. Chair Kevin Guilette said the town is still going forward with its plans to install town-wide broadband, though the project will be dependent on whether the town receives future funding from the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Unlike the other southern Door communities, the Forestville Town Board elected not to go the referendum route earlier this year because it passed a resolution earlier this year in favor of borrowing up to $868,668 (25% of the estimated project cost) to fund a fiber-optic broadband system for town addresses.