Fiber for Breakfast 2023 Week 32 – An Open-Access Network in the Empire State
In this episode of Fiber for Breakfast, join us as we hear from Mayor William Acee of the Village of Sherburne in Chenango County, New York. Mayor Acee will share how after being the first community between Utica and Binghamton to install an EV charger and in 2008 creating and instituting an Energy Efficiency Program filed with the NYS Public Service Commission, Sherburne has continued to innovate. The town is focused on end-of-year completion of a municipally owned fiber to the home network for approximately 2,000 electric customers. The process has included an ahead-of-schedule timeline and state grant funding. Mayor Acee has been instrumental in pushing for Open Access Municipal Fiber.
Webinar Guest:
William “Bill” Acee has served as Sherburne’s Mayor since 2001. From 1990 and onward, Bill has been involved in local government in Sherburne, NY and from that time he placed emphasis on learning as much as possible about the villages’ municipal electric system. This spanned the 1996 transition from regulated electric markets to the current market model administered by the NY Independent System Operator. Bill was a founding member of the NY Association of Public Power (an association of 13 consumer owned electric utilities which includes Coops and Municipals). In 2017 Bill served ex officio on the board of the American Public Power Association in Washington DC (a national trade group representing over 2000 Municipally Owned Electric Utilities) and chaired their Policy Makers Committee. He completed the Legislator Energy Horizon Institute in Washington, DC in 2018. In 2019 Bill completed the 1-week NY Market Orientation class at the NY Independent System Operator (NYISO) in Rensselaer, NY.