For those Americans of a certain age, growing up meant not having instant access to information on everything from medical advice to sports information to breaking news. But the internet has changed all that. With a simple click, there is—at one’s fingertips—access to almost everything from great literature to, well, almost anything an imagination can inspire.
Internet access is to the 21st century what the telegraph and telephone may once have been to Americans of previous eras. It is, quite simply, indispensable in countless ways. Yet, in 2022, not all American cities—including many in Colorado—still have pockets that, if not absent this essential tool, sit in internet deserts where access is spotty even on the best of days.
Pueblo, the economic hub of southern Colorado and an area larger than a couple of U.S. states, said Fred Galves, special assistant to the president of Colorado State University-Pueblo, is not only ‘internet lite,’ but rated “the 82nd WORST community in America for access to wireline broadband services.” Galves, a Pueblo native and Harvard-trained attorney, in an editorial in the Pueblo Chieftain, wrote that his city’s connectivity puts the city at a huge disadvantage in numerous and critical ways.
It is not only Galves who is pushing for city voters to address this challenge by voting in the affirmative on Proposition 2A on November 8th when they go to the polls, but also the City’s Chamber of Commerce and one of its leading educational assets.
Chamber President Duane Nava said Pueblo has “made leaps and bounds” in selling the city to outside businesses and individuals in recent years. “But having better access to internet” increases chances of maintaining the upward trajectory. “This community deserves everything bigger communities have.”
“We want our students to have every tool and resource available to them,” said Janelle Quick, Executive Director of Pueblo Hispanic Educational Foundation, an organization that assists Latino students in higher education and also provides a variety of scholarships. Without uniform broad- band across the city, she said, students are put at a decided disadvantage.
Galves, who has both practiced and taught law over his career, said Colorado’s Senate Bill 152 which was passed in 2005 represents a barrier that prevents public funds from being used for infrastructure to improve local broadband service without first being voted upon by local communities. He says the law is an unnecessary impediment citing the fact that “well over 100 municipalities and counties in Colorado have placed measures on the ballot to override the prohibi- tions of SB 152.” Moving away from the law, he said, would allow Pueblo to invest in the future by using public funds for expanding broadband.
One of the ballot item’s most compelling selling points, said Galves, is that passage of 2A would not result in a single cent increase in taxes on Pueblo citizens. The city, using general fund resources, just as it does in any local improvements on parks or streets or brick and mortar projects, would make those decisions.
Broadband, said Galves, is critical as was proven over the course of the country’s battle with COVID when some Pueblo students, as well as students elsewhere whose communities struggle with the same challenge, were forced to sit outside a “McDonalds or library parking lot to access their classes.” Galves is not alone in that opinion. Educational leaders across the country say that the impact of COVID on the learning opportunities for a still unknown number of students that were compromised over the period of the pandemic may not be known for years.
The advantages of widescale internet are, in many if not most cases, obvious. Internet access opens up knowledge, constructs a pipeline for delivering information and creates a whole new landscape for learning; it connects people in ways previously unavailable or even unimaginable; it makes cities and towns more desirable for attracting new business opportunities; it provides volumes of information on everything from personal finances to personal health. Of course, widespread internet also has its downside, most of which has been well documented, including exposing children and young adults to dark corners they may be too young to fully appreciate or provide the keys for the theft of private information. The list here is also long.
In the end, said Galvez, Pueblo is a community whose future can be as bright as any city in the state. But without passage of 2A and the ability to serve everyone equally, it will be handicapped intellectually, economically and socially. “Voting,” he said in his editorial and underscored in a recent phone conversation on the ballot item, “is the only way for Pueblo to take back the right that SB 152 took away from us.”
