NY State Grants $9M For Upstate Broadband Projects

An anonymous reader writes "According to a news report, New York State is giving about $9 million in grants to give broadband connection to 33,000 households and 4,500 businesses in rural areas of the state. This works out to $240 per connection. This second round of grants by Empire State Development is part of a Cuomo administration program to reach more than 500,000 residents with no high-speed Internet access, many in rural areas."

Comments

Re:The Onion

[phantomlord]

NY has a progressive rate starting at 4% for $8200 and going up to 8.82% over $1 million. It ranks among the highest bottom rates and top rates and in addition to that, we also have one of the highest sales taxes, some of the highest property taxes, etc in the country. The state also pushes a lot its costs, like much of the cost of Medicaid, to the county level, where the expenses aren't seen in the state's budget expenditures.

California spent $145 billion last year for 34 million people ($4265 per capita). New York spent $135 billion for 19 million ($7105 per capita).

NY has been strangling business and people economically for years, but as long as NYC was humming along, nobody important cares. We haven't had a governor from outside the Hudson Valley Corridor in more than a century, NYC (one man in particular) straight up controls the Assembly and the Senate has been a farce for quite some time. There's a governor that is simultaneously telling people that they can GTFO of the state if they don't believe the same things he does while also begging businesses to come into NY by granting them a decade of complete tax exemption if they open near a college, even if it screws existing businesses and forces them to close or leave the state.

Frankly, I'm not sure NY does ANYTHING right... the only reason I stay is family, but things are getting bad enough that I may just have to leave anyway.

Re:New Headline, Old Pork

[SJHillman]

I find it hard to believe that geography is a choice if you accept that income is not. Especially given that the lower your income, the more difficult it is to move elsewhere.

Re:New Headline, Old Pork

[thaylin]

Yes, it is a choice, of 10k a month rent or not. But seeing as I dont have a choice to be able to afford a 10k a month rent, where you live is not completely choice.

Northern New York Broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

As a resident of North Lawrence, NY (about 15 minutes from Massena and the Canadian border) these grants have been a lifeline to the north country. Most of us have had to use dial up or pay Verizon $60 a month for 5Gbs of spotty service from a 4G hotspot. This next batch of grants will bring a 100mb fiber connection to my house for $80 a month. I'm generally not big on government spending, but we just had our first real data center put in. The nearest one being almost one-hundred fifty miles south. This is bringing a boon to the local economy, as a number of call centers are looking to move into the region because of cheap power (Massena Electric) and the availability of broadband to run VoIP call center systems.

Re:Northern New York Broadband

[wiredlogic]

As a former Resident of Rochester you should be so lucky. Try living 1 mile from a Frontier CO and only be able to get 2Mbps down. NYs upstate cities could use some broadband funding too.

Re:Northern New York Broadband

[SJHillman]

As a current resident of Rochester, I get 30mbps down from Time Warner (whilst paying for 10). Maybe the problem is just Frontier... they're our ISP at work and we regularly have issues with them. That said, I would happily welcome more ISPs to the area.

Re:Northern New York Broadband

[SJHillman]

"Why should the government subsidize the cost of living in a place like that?"
For the same reason Upstate residents subsidize the cost of transmitting power downstate? It's infrastructure that does have long-term economic benefits for the population as a whole.

"$100k household income down here is hardly rich, but it goes a lot further in the North Country."
It may go further Upstate, but it's also much, much less common, even in areas that technically have a higher per capita income than Downstate regions. There's also things like density and scale to consider.

Re:Northern New York Broadband

[SJHillman]

Google defines infrastructure as "the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise."
I'd really like to know how welfare, wealth redistribution or medicare fits into that definition.

As for industry before highways and Internet access, industry was extremely limited in upstate NY unless you were right on the Erie Canal/Mohawk/Hudson system, St. Lawrence or Lake Ontario. Route 12 allows Lowville to have the largest cream cheese factory in the world. I-81 is the only reason Fulton Boiler can even exist in Pulaski, because they truck some seriously massive boilers. The benefits of the NYS Thruway (I-90) are pretty obvious - without it, cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica and possibly even Albany would have completely died once the Erie Canal became obsolete. Before the highway infrastructure, there was some limited industry along the Erie Canal but not much else outside of logging. And if you need someone to explain how Internet helps industry, this probably isn't the site for you.

Re:The Onion

[ebno-10db]

Property Tax, doesn't really fairly cover the population so a Farmer

Property tax on farmland and undeveloped land is generally much lower than for residential real estate. And since you point out that real estate taxes are levied at the town and county level, you have to specify where you're talking about in order for your comment to make much sense.

Re:The Onion

[tepples]

a millionaire who is renting, will pay no tax (directly)

A renter pays property tax through the landlord. What matters about "directly"?

Re:The Onion

[ebno-10db]

It is not like they ever take Upstate seriously.

Cry me a river. NYC sends $4.1B more to Albany than they get back. The NYC suburbs (Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland & Westchester) send $7.9B more to Albany than they get back, yet the upstate "we're getting screwed" refrain never ends. How much more of a subsidy do you want?