GENEVA LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS PRESENTATION, March 25, 2003
Presenter, Ed Hodges, Chairman of Fiber For Our Future

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting us here this evening. My name is Ed Hodges and I am the chairman of Fiber For Our Future, a citizen group of residents of Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles who are in support of the Tri City Broadband initiative.

Simply stated, we support this initiative for seven main reasons:

1. This is a great opportunity for our three cities to build a state-of-the-art fiber optic network to provide telephone, television and Internet services to EVERY home and EVERY business in our community.

2. We have complete confidence in the years of research and due diligence done by our three city’s elected officials and staff that has resulted in their recommendation that we undertake this project.

3. We have read and studied the Feasibility Study that was performed by an outside consulting company with expertise in the area of municipal broadband utilities and we concur with their findings.

4. A municipally run fiber network will provide better services at a lower cost than the current providers and will be more reliable and provide better customer service.

5. We believe this utility will be self-funded from subscriber fees.

6. This will launch our communities into the 21st century and will allow us to become a highly desirable place to live and do business. This much-needed boost to our local economy will be of benefit to every citizen, whether they subscribe to any of these services or not.

7. The fees paid for these services will STAY IN THE COMMUNITY.

We have received a number of questions from residents that I would like to address here so we can correct a lot of the misinformation that has been circulating about this initiative. These are the eight questions we have received most often: CLICK HERE to read the questions and answers.