GREENFIELD — Despite the pandemic, Greenfield Community Energy and Technology, better known as GCET, continues to grow, General Manager John Lunt says.
“We’ve installed so that 85 percent of residents in town now have the capability to join GCET,” Lunt told the City Council last week.
Lunt said the city has 1,100 internet customers, 425 internet and cable customers, and 200 phone customers. Additionally, several dozen families are taking advantage of GCET’s Equity Access Program, making sure families whose students need internet for school but can’t afford it can connect.
At this point, Lunt said, if a person signs up for GCET, the system is installed within 10 days. The areas GCET is connecting next are Deerfield, Mill and Meridian streets and Petty Plain Road.
City Council voted to provide GCET $32,000 for fiber and equipment.
“COVID-19 has affected our supply chains,” Lunt said. “We need to buy now, because it could get more difficult. Lead times are anywhere from weeks to a year at this time.”
City Council President Ashli Stempel-Rae said she is concerned about low-to-moderate-income housing developments and making it a priority for those residents to get connected. She said she’d like to see a low-cost service available to those who need it.
Lunt said Oak Courts, for instance, is completely wired, while GCET is waiting for the go-ahead at Leyden Woods.
“We can’t put receivers on buildings until we get the OK,” he said. “We’re waiting for permission.”
Greenfield Gardens and Briar Knoll will be more difficult to connect, though, he said, because the utilities are underground.
“There’s no conduits that we own at those places, so we’ll have to come up with another solution,” Lunt explained. “Trenching is very expensive.”
Lunt said the city and its residents should consider, though, that internet has become an infrastructure in the 21st century, a necessity.
At-Large Councilor Penny Ricketts said she’d like GCET and the city keep track of folks who might fall through the cracks, because they don’t have the means to join GCET.
“It’s really important that low-income families are able to obtain the services like everyone else,” Ricketts said.
She also asked whether, because the Equity Access Program has been so successful for students, GCET might consider offering a similar service for seniors and veterans. Lunt said GCET is looking at creating other equity programs for those populations, and is applying for grants to help pay for them.
“I wonder if people would like to adopt a senior or veteran, and pay for part of their bill as something to do for the holidays,” Ricketts pondered.
“We do an ‘adopt a family’ now, so that wouldn’t be difficult,” Lunt replied.
Lunt said GCET continues to pay down the $5 million bond that City Council approved in 2016 to start the municipal company. While GCET ended the last fiscal year, on June 30, with a deficit, he said that was a temporary setback.
“We had a deficit because we didn’t receive the $175,000 Community Development Block Grant — state and federal governments were overloaded during COVID-19 — we had expected to receive in fiscal 2020,” he said. “We will be getting that money this year, though, and we can see that by the end of fiscal 2021, we’ll be self-sustaining like was always planned, and won’t need grants to help us along. It’s always tough with a start-up.”
Lunt reports the pandemic impacted GCET’s performance as it wasn’t able to grow as planned during the shutdown. He explained GCET wasn’t able to go into residents’ homes and do installations.
However, the company did provide service to the city’s Emergency Operations Center to make sure it could run smoothly and remotely, and worked with Greenfield schools to make sure every student was connected, for free, to the internet so that they could learn remotely.
Once Greenfield started reopening, Lunt said GCET began following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines so that staff could go into residents’ homes to do installations.
Over the past two years, Lunt said GCET has seen its billing double.
“Our growth has been very strong,” he said. “We just ask people living in the areas that aren’t installed yet to be patient. We’re getting there.”
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.