Good evening, everyone, and welcome for our city council meeting for September the 10th.

If you rise, we'll have a moment of silence, and then we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

I please to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

In accordance with Section 841412 of the Nebraska Rived Statutes, a current copy of the Open Meetings Act is available for review on the wall of the council chambers.

Will you take roll, please?

Mayor Class.

Here's Bush Cutter.

Here we are.

Nicola.

More absent.

Okay, yeah, and we have uh Brenda and Brad and Councilwoman Moore are all at the Czech Republic with our sister cities tonight.

So I'm sure they're checking in.

Hey oh, checking in, I get it.

Um so at this time we have open uh oral communications, so we'll have uh Allo Communications and Dave Miller here if you want to introduce your team and uh just uh presence uh present.

What are you gonna talk about?

Yes, thank you.

It'll be short and sweet.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening, council members.

Uh my name's Dave Miller, general manager for ALO, and with me is Brandon White, Don Larson, and Lauren Bliss.

Uh Brandon and Don played a significant part in bringing our all fiber network to uh Carney.

And Lauren is responsible for our marketing and events and sponsorships, and uh has uh Carney is part of her one of her communities.

So the reason we're here tonight is we want to celebrate with you and present a certificate of completion uh to the city.

One of our four core values is to be hassle-free, and we know that when we come into a new community and we start building our fiber infrastructure that we don't uphold that hassle-free core value uh as well as we would like to.

But now that we're past the majority of the construction phase, meaning that um as Carney continues to grow, we're gonna continue to grow with you uh as far as new vel Dune developments, economic developments, but the majority of city limits we have built ubiquitously, which means if we come into a community and we lay one inch of fiber, we're gonna make sure that every resident, every business, every government entity, schools have the opportunity to connect to that fiber, and we have have done that.

So in May of 24, this year we um completed the construction phase of our project that we started.

Uh we announced it in August of 21, but we actually began in November of 21, so it was a two and a half year build.

So we are extremely excited to be able to come here tonight and say we're done.

Except for again, the growth, which you all are certainly anticipating and we are anticipating with you as well.

Um Lauren has some handouts real quick to share with everyone that's here tonight.

Um so Lauren, if you want to wouldn't mind doing that.

We've got some stats that I think you'll find quite interesting.

Uh for example, and I don't think we have this on the information that you're receiving.

But I checked with our finance team.

Um, our investment into the city of Kearney, and that involves bringing a labor force here, investment in capital as well as the assets that we have in the community equates to about 32 million dollars.

So we're extremely proud of that.

We have 42 full-time employees uh right here in Kearney, as well as uh during that construction phase, we utilize numerous local contractors, and again, as the city continues to grow, we will utilize local contractors as well.

You can see the coverage area map, which you can also go to our website and see.

But Carney is all green, and that's what we want.

And again, a ubiquitous build means that we come in and build out the entire city, everything within city limits.

We don't just cherry pick or uh choose certain areas.

Our goal is to uh provide it for everybody.

Some interesting statistics that are on the right as far as how much fiber is actually here in Kearney that we laid, just over 500 miles of Kearney, and that's split between 22 percent of it was aerial, but the majority 78% of that uh we went we went underground.

And that's obviously where you experience we experienced a lot of the disruption as we were going underground.

But I do have to say special thanks to the city to public works department in working with us, coordinating with our teams to make that uh as seamless as we could.

Uh big thanks in working with the the permitting uh process.

And then the other thing is you'll notice on the bottom right of this handout is the numerous uh organizations that we have worked with and will continue to work with.

In fact, just a few months ago, we announced our community connect program, and that is where we are providing um 10 nonprofits here in Carney free internet service for for three years, and uh some other things you can see, working with, of course, the chamber and business after hours and junior team at UNK.

All that to say is another one of our core values is to be local and to be part of the community.

So again, as you grow, we want to be a good partner and grow right along with you.

Last two things.

One is this Thursday, uh, we are um bringing out a new initiative for Carney called Smart Town.

What is Smart Town?

Well, because of the uh customer base that we have now and will continue to grow throughout Carney.

Smart Town is a way for uh us to provide community Wi-Fi using our allo um routers.

What it does, I'll give you one example.

If if you take your cell phone and you're walking through town, let's say, if your cell phone, if you're an allo customer and your cell phone can pick up an allo signal or an allo router, you're able to get connected and stay connected.

In fact, our director of uh IT in Imperial actually tested this out several months ago when we first rolled it out, and from his house walked from his home to the ALO office in Imperial and was able to stream a YouTube video seamlessly because it just kept uh staying connected to the the allo Wi-Fi in that community space.