Reporting “Live” today, January 17, 2018, from Red Cliff Town Hall, and emailing in over Wi-Fi. A small click for me, a giant one, a long time coming for Red Cliff.
Today, Anuschka Bales, Mayor of Red Cliff is hosting a Thank You Party—plates of cookies, urns of coffee and many cold-cut sandwiches – the works. She thanks visitors from the curtain on the old school stage. Instead of cutting a ribbon, Bales ties a bow in a yellow ribbon to represent a new “connection.”
Nate Walowitz, our Broadband Program Director, and I represent NWCCOG alongside dignitaries from agencies including DOLA, USFS, Forethought, Broadband Deployment Board, Battle 1 Developers, Town of Vail, Eagle County, and Senator Bennett’s office, as well as the town’s two full-time employees, Barb and Floyd. Everyone there knows their way around Red Cliff by now.
While debriefing, a text comes in. I’m impressed. Then my cell phone buzzes on the desk. Caller ID identifies it. Nate and Anushka prod me: “answer.” Predictably, there isn’t enough signal for a connection. “Typical Red Cliff call,” says Bales, and “it’s the best service along the eighteen miles of Highway 24 with no 911 or any other service. We are really isolated.”
Thanks to a town wireless broadband project that really did take a village, today marks progress. Those in attendance agree, determination of town leadership, especially Mayor Bales’ tenacity, won this day.
By the numbers, 150 households plus a handful of hardscrabble businesses now have internet access for $75/month (25 Mbps down, 5 up). That is nearly three times the speed I get from Century Link in Eagle. The new communications tower high above town is fed from another at the top of the lift at Ski Cooper, and also supports a new two-way radio system. Don’t get Nate started on what complicated permissions those two locations require to unravel. NWCCOG doesn’t meter Nate’s technical assistance to the project, but it is over $30,000 in value. Public monies from DOLA, the Colorado Broadband Deployment Board, and town have come together in roughly equal thirds adding up to just over $300,000 to clear red-tape and build infrastructure that enables the market to pencil, and Red Cliff to enter the 21st Century. Much of what exists in Red Cliff echoes a time when ore from nearby mines won wars. Aromas of wood burning stoves hover in the air. This is the Colorado that attracts many of us here—rough, remote, gorgeous, maybe a little dangerous–inviting of individual innovation while confirming why we gather together in communities.
Broadband to Red Cliff is the poster project of a 5-year program at NWCCOG. We are excited, though not as excited as the 45 children who no longer must seek a friends’ house on the other side of Battle Mountain Pass to access the internet for homework before returning after school.
Willa, 15, and Bristol, 6, have birthdays this week. I don’t know them, but I know this because Mayor Bales has a spreadsheet with names and birth dates of each child in town. She has just started a Community Fund in 2017 from donations and proceeds from a $340 bake sale for the children of Red Cliff, thirty-eight of whom are on free & reduced lunch program. This year, Bales personally delivers a book selected and purchased from the Bookworm in Edwards to each child on their birthday. When a resident asks if the town fund could also purchase a Christmas Gift for each child in 2017, the fund doesn’t have enough money, so Bales goes to ‘Larry the Plumber,’ who from the Mayors’ description, is a bit gruff and curmudgeonly. She says to Larry, “hey, this was your idea.” He promptly writes a check to the fund to cover the cost of a gift for every kid in town.
That is Red Cliff, embodying the Colorado spirit of the past, with suddenly, access to technology.
Oh, and the plate of leftover sandwiches from the Thank You party, Barb and Floyd whisper while my phone buzzes on the table. Quietly, decisively, they decide exactly which home addresses could most use a meal today, so Floyd makes the deliveries.
