The Pennyrile Area Development District Board of Directors heard updates about the 2020 Census and the Kentucky Wired project at Monday’s regular meeting.
The Kentucky Wired project first began in 2015, with the hope of bringing broadband internet service to all 120 counties in Kentucky to provide that service to rural areas and assist in economic development. Holly Hopkins Scoville is the manager for government and resident relations in the public-private partnership and says Kentucky Wired is installing fiber optic cables to existing telephone and utility poles that business and internet service providers will be able to connect into.
The cables connect into central ‘rings’, of which there are four established currently in Kentucky and provide the broadband to the users. Hopkins says by the time everything is done, Kentucky will be leading the nation in broadband service and accessibility.
She says the deadline to have Kentucky Wired complete is October of 2020, but she intends to be done before that time.
US Census Bureau Partnership Specialist Kisha Mische spoke about what efforts are being undertaken to reach more people and therefore get more accurate results than ever for the 2020 Census. She says the usual census mediums will still be available, but this time people will be able to respond online.
Mische says accurate census counts—which are kept totally confidential for many years and cannot be used for anything other than census data—help determine many things including the amount of grant funding going into a community, how many representatives a district can have and more.
She says many communities are already developing outreach teams to hopefully get a hold of those who may not know about the census, or those who are regularly under counted. The Census Bureau is actively looking to hire people as census workers—for more information, go online to 2020census.gov.
