Hillsboro council talks sausages, computers
Staff writer
A grilled sausage meal and arts and crafts displays will highlight a July event thanking community members for 50 years of support for Hillsboro’s Annual Arts and Crafts Fair.
Mayor Lou Thurston gave city council members a heads-up on festivities planned for the event, which will include an evening meal of grilled sausage sandwiches, chips, watermelon, beverages and cake. Vendors will be invited to set up booths, there will be music with Tabor jazz band or a similar group, and local stores will stay open during the evening.
Although the event is planned for community members, the association would also like to invite writers for tourism and arts and crafts magazines to attend.
Economic Development director Anthony Roy gave council members results of a local survey on Internet use. The city is gathering information to determine if they can entice a fiber optic Internet provider to invest in laying fiber optics lines in the city.
Roy said 239 people took the survey and most of them use broadband Internet services.
“We don’t have anybody who still has dial-up, thank God,” Roy said.
Ninety percent of survey respondents said they use Internet service at home and nine percent use the service for business purposes.
Thirty-two percent of people surveyed use fewer than five devices at home for Internet use and 52 percent use five to 10 devices.
Half of them use Internet services for social media, streaming video and reading.
Forty-six percent said they use Internet services more than 20 hours per week.
Nine percent said they use Internet for telework and 25 percent said they have a home-based business.
Nearly half of Hillsboro
Internet users upload large files, 70 percent said they have issues such as buffering or outages, and 84 percent said they would pay for Internet service separately from services such as cable and telephone.
Forty-seven percent pay less than $50 per month for Internet service.
Roy said that with people paying generally less than $50 a month, the question is whether a company that invested in fiber optic equipment would make enough money for their expense to be worthwhile.
City administrator Larry Paine said the next thing the city needs to decide is whether the city can make a business case to get fiber optic Internet in Hillsboro.
“We need to grow the community,” Thurston said. “If we’re going to bring people in, we need to make sure the programs and benefits are there.”