trying to help our first responders, teachers, social service employees, vital workers who need to be in our community. We can’t solve the housing problem ourselves but adding more supply at all different levels including affordable housing for those at the very low income level is a big step forward for our city.” AN EXPANDING INFRASTRUCTURE As Grover Beach’s population grows over time, so does the need to maintain and expand its infrastructure. Bronson explains,“For many years, we didn’t have the funding to do critical infrastructure projects such as street repairs, utility work, and park improvements which hindered our vitality as a community.The city was hidden in plain sight because our infrastructure was in really bad condition.That changed beginning in 2014 when voters authorized nearly $50 million in bond funding to improve local streets. That was nearly unheard of – for a city in California to tax itself, to invest in itself to fix local streets. 10 years later, we have fixed over 70% of our local streets across our community with a plan to fix the remaining streets within the next 10 years. We’ve also taken steps to improve our water and sewer infrastructure, and our park and facilities infrastructure.The city’s work has created the foundation for the current development taking place as we’ve seen much greater private investment in part because we’ve invested in our own infrastructure.” In one crucial piece of the infrastructure design, Grover Beach is clearly a leader. “We have one of the strongest and most extensive broadband infrastructures in our county,” Eriksson affirms. “So, one of our advantages is that over the next year, all businesses and residences in the city will have access to high-speed fiber internet service to enable Grover Beach to be a digitally connected community.” Perhaps because Grover Beach happens to be home to several transoceanic fiber optic cables that come from Asia, positioning the city as a hub for the data network between the United States and the orient, it was expected to be an early adopter of fiber technology. In any case, the city’s fiber broadband network is the result of a public/private partnership with a local internet company called Digital West, now known as Astound Business Solutions. “Years Council Member Daniel Rushing Council Member Zach Zimmerman 42 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 05, ISSUE 12
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