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Supervisors authorize amendment to Cox broadband agreement after update on progress and outages
Summary
After a staff presentation and questions about cluster completion, outages and billing, New Kent supervisors authorized the county administrator to execute an amendment to the Cox Communications broadband expansion agreement; the motion passed unanimously.
The New Kent County Board of Supervisors voted Jan. 27 to authorize the county administrator to execute a proposed amendment to the broadband expansion agreement with Cox Communications intended to change how project “clusters” are measured and when the county pays for completed work.
Mr. Hathaway, presenting the amendment, told the board the county plans to replace its current 12 large clusters with 45 smaller “service groups” so the county can track progress more precisely and pay Cox for completed work at the service‑group level rather than waiting for an entire large cluster to be 100% finished.
Cox representative Erin Rice said the company is “over 90% complete with connecting the unserved” and that much of the work is ahead of schedule, with a target to finish the unserved connections and upgrades within the calendar year. Rice said the project already showed 21 service groups complete in the board’s most recent monthly report and about 6,500 serviceable passings now have fiber.
Board members raised customer concerns during the presentation. One supervisor described a four‑hour outage on Saturday that affected multiple neighborhoods and local businesses; Ms. Rice said she would research the incident and report back. Another supervisor asked why a resident’s Cox bill had increased; Rice said she would investigate that account and look for cost‑saving options.
Motion and vote: Supervisor Ms. Pearson moved to authorize the county administrator to execute the amendment in a form approved by the county attorney. The motion passed on a roll call: Mr. Moyer — Aye; Ms. Pearson — Aye; Mr. Stiers — Aye; Miss Stewart — Aye; Mr. Evelyn — Aye.
Why it matters: Under the existing agreement the county pays Cox only when a cluster is 100% complete; staff said the change to service groups would allow partial payments for completed service groups, help release federal ARPA funds being held on county books, and reduce staff reporting workload. Mr. Hathaway told supervisors that, although the contract still requires payment only for work actually done, the amendment would let the county compensate Cox for substantial progress already achieved.
Next steps: Cox and county staff will return updated project completion reporting to the board; Cox said it expects to finish the unserved connections and infrastructure upgrades ahead of the original schedule.
