County officials intend to go after a piece of $100 million in American Rescue Plan funding that the state will be making available for broadband.

“We have six ‘shovel ready’ projects,” Warren County Commissioner Tricia Durbil told the Council of Governments on Wednesday.

She said that the funding from the state comes with a 20 percent match requirement.

The county has been holding much of its Rescue Plan funding back to serve as a potential broadband match.

Durbin said that two of the projects would expand Breezeline service while four would enhance Windstream’s coverage.

She explained that the projects were put together a while ago but the “match was too expensive for Warren County to do anything with.”

“What that did for us right now, it made us more ready for this first round of grants,” she said.

The application process starts in May and Durbin said the county is “working with both of those ISPs to assist” with two of those projects as part of this grant round.

Durbin also provided an update to the COG on the county’s property reassessment process.

She said the contact with Vision to provide the nearly $2 million reassessment has been signed and that space has been secured for their staff.

Durbin said Vision is hiring and training the staff needed – 12 to 14 individuals – to do the property surveys.

She noted that the county has paid to have “multiple flyovers” of the county completed which capture changes in building size.

“(We’re) certainly hopeful (reassessment) won’t be as big of a change,” she said, because of those flyovers and the individual assessment work done in that process.