Those in the city of Española waiting for high-speed wireless Internet access will have to wait longer after a city of Española official declined to accept over $800,000 in federal funding for a project to install broadband equipment throughout the city.
According to an email from U.S. House Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández’s office dated June 20, acting city manager Carla Martinez wrote a letter stating the city declined to accept $879,506. This money is meant to fund the installation of antennas around the city to provide high-speed wireless Internet access. The email does not contain any explanation for Martinez’s decision to reject the money.
District 4 City Councilor Samuel LeDoux shared the email from Fernández’s office with the Rio Grande SUN. He he asked about the funding during a community meeting Fernandez hosted on June 16.
This funding was part of the federal Fiscal Year 2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which included more than $550 million to expand broadband access in rural areas, according to an email newsletter from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.
The city learned it received the funding in 2021, according to a July 2021 article in the Los Alamos Reporter. In the article, then-mayor Javier Sanchez said the need for high-speed Internet connectivity outpaced Internet providers’ capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The city worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory to conduct a needs assessment for these services.
LeDoux said that in a follow-up conversation with a representative from Fernández’s office, he learned that Martinez is not able to formally reject the funds. Instead, the decision has to be made by the city council. In his last conversation with Fernández’s office on June 27, he learned Martinez has not sent in a letter to rescind her previous email declining acceptance of the funds.
“It is incredibly disheartening for the council to hear from a third party about actions being taken by the administration about funds approved by the council,” LeDoux said in a telephone interview. “Particularly since Carla, at the time she made this decision, had not been ratified as interim city manager by the council.”