The Warren County Planning Commission met Tuesday to identify many of the key issues for the future as part of a planning process.

One issue dominated the discussion and you can probably guess what it was — broadband.

Warren County School District Superintendent Amy Stewart and Warren County Chamber of Business and Industry President/CEO Jim Decker joined the Commission Tuesday for the discussion.

Stewart said, from a high-speed internet perspective, the school buildings themselves are in “good shape.”

The problem?

“It’s the 4,000 students,” she said, “that have a great disparity. From our perspective, we’ve been trying to leverage grants” to expand access.

But Stewart said that’s complicated by the need to have accurate survey data about service availability and needing to have a project pre-engineered to go after funding.

She highlighted the district’s efforts to seek to expand access in the Cherry Grove area and current grant work in the Lander area.

“(We) have to have a coordinated, pre-planned effort,” Stewart said. “It’s not going to happen by itself.

She told the consultants facilitating the planning process and the commission that coordinating a broadband effort for the county would be a full-time job.

“Everybody wants it, everybody needs it,” she said, calling it the key to economic development, education and “everything.”

Decker highlighted the need for people to test the FCC’s new broadband map. That map gives individuals the opportunity to challenge the service options that the FCC believes a given address has.

The county held a series of public hearings as part of this comprehensive planning process and broadband was one of several issues the commission discussed. The rest of the list included declining population and workforce, attracting new business, marketing the county, preserving natural and recreational resources, protecting rural character, promoting alternative energy sources, identifying locations for EV charging stations as well as discussing several specific targeted areas for development.

Decker said that attracting new business and the declining population issue are “absolutely tied together” as businesses don’t look to invest in places with low unemployment rates like the county has.

“What we’re seeing in terms of business growth is spin off, small entrepreneurial” growth, he said.

County Planner Dan Glotz said that some local entities like car dealerships are installing electric vehicle charging stations.

“(That’s) something we’ll probably need to be prepared for,” he said.

Decker said there are plans currently to build a charging station into planned improvements at Warren’s riverfront.