May 12, 2021
The Community Engagement Summit will highlight success stories from across the WSU system, including the Drive-in WiFi Hotspot Project initiated by WSU Extension.
By Steve Nakata, Division of Student Affairs
Community partnerships across the Washington State University system will take center stage during a virtual Community Engagement Summit on Friday, May 14, at 10 a.m.
Ryan Lazo, the community partnerships coordinator at the Center for Civic Engagement (CCE), said the summit has three main objectives: to share community engagement success stories; to facilitate networking and potential partnerships between WSU representatives, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders, including elected officials; and to educate participants on best practices for community engagement.
Boomer Consumer
State report and more funding for broadband will help state reach its broadband goals By Rita R. Robison on April 29, 2021 at 10:26 PM
The Washington State Legislature approved new broadband and digital equity investments in the session that ended Saturday.
The Department of Commerce’s Broadband Office was launched in 2019 to meet a legislative requirement that all Washingtonians have access to high speed internet by 2024.
In the office’s first report to the legislature, the Broadband Office-focused on preparing local communities and tribes to compete for new levels of broadband funding and expanding digital equity efforts that make sure lower-income and older populations aren’t left behind.
In Our View: Capital budget exemplifies investment in state The Columbian
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Differences between the House and Senate versions of the state’s capital budget for the coming two years still need to be hammered out. But the preliminary budgets – which passed unanimously in both chambers – provide some sense of how the Legislature expects to guide the state beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
The biennial capital budget for construction projects does not receive the attention of the two-year operating budget, but wise spending on construction will be essential for helping Washington recover from the pandemic. Capital projects not only provide the infrastructure for a prosperous future, they put people to work in constructing that future.
Colorado appears poised to reap some of the benefits from the sprawling $2 trillion infrastructure proposal unveiled by President Joe Biden last week.
The president on Wednesday unveiled details of the package in an address at a carpenters union training center in Pittsburgh, touting it as one that “people are going to look back and say this is the moment when America won the future.”
“It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago,” he said. “In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II. It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.”
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Melissa McCaw
But the providers of that service are also watching with concern as Connecticut’s state government ramps up efforts to seek greater control over their plans, policies and checkbooks.
“It s critically clear in the 21st century the importance of having access to reliable internet,” state Budget Chief Melissa McCaw said during a recent briefing on the proposed state budget. “This is also about economic opportunity to the extent to which more remote work is done. There are sectors of our population that don t have access to those types of jobs without closing the broadband divide.”
Central to the issue is the state’s persistent digital divide, the difficulty that a portion of the community has in getting online. Gov. Ned Lamont’s office estimates that 23% of Connecticut’s population can’t access reliable internet, either because they lack service, skills or the right devices. Lamont’s focus for 2021 is building out the broadband infrastructure.