Orleans County's multi-year push to bring wireless internet service countywide reached a new marker on Jan. 23: money earmarked specifically for construction in the Village of Albion. Meeting in the Legislative Chambers on Route 31 West, the Orleans County Legislature authorized Lynne Johnson, chairman, to execute a $533,000.00 change order with RTO Wireless, the contractor holding the county's original $3,608,435.00 wireless-internet contract under Resolution No. 352-721. According to the minutes, the new money — a modification the New York State Office of Community Renewal accepted to a Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Securities Act grant — pays for construction of "micro towers" in the Village of Albion, the Village of Medina and the Town of Gaines. The change order amends Resolution No. 457-922, a $1,738,890.00 agreement for Capital Project Broadband Phase 2 covering wireless service to the towns of Albion, Gaines and Shelby and the villages of Albion, Holley and Medina. Like nearly everything the Legislature took up that day, it passed on a motion from Eick, legislator, seconded by Morgan, legislator, 7 ayes, 0 nays, 0 absent. The same meeting showed how far the broader build-out has already progressed elsewhere in the county. Legislators authorized payments of $760.36 and $2,605.25 to Barre Stone for foundation-stone work at a tower site in the Town of Carlton, plus $6,500.00 to RTO Wireless for equipment installation in Medina and $254,752.00 to RTO Wireless for activating a tower in Gaines — invoices drawn from the Capital Project Broadband's Phase 1 and Phase II accounts. Towers are already rising and switching on elsewhere in the county even as Albion's own micro-tower construction is only now being funded. Legislators also set a date for Albion residents to weigh in directly. Resolution No. 47-124 calls a public hearing for 4:25 p.m. on March 26, 2024, at the Legislative Chambers, 14016 Route 31 West in Albion, on the Community Development Block Grant funding, Project No. 857CVPF23-21, that supports what the resolution calls "the Orleans County Broadband." According to the minutes, the hearing is meant to obtain the views of citizens, public agencies and other interested parties on the program's implementation and to report on its progress — the first forum on the record where the public can respond to a build-out whose Phase 1 and Phase 2 contracts alone already run into the millions of dollars. The broadband items were bracketed by a full slate of other business the Legislature moved through in about 20 minutes. Legislators approved an $8,995.00 annual service contract to maintain the Sheriff's Jail body scanner, authorized $10,218.69 in new portable radios for the jail funded by local equipment grants, and filled vacant positions across the Sheriff's Office, County Clerk/DMV, Treasurer's Office, Department of Public Works, Mental Health Department, Office for the Aging and Department of Social Services. They set the County Clerk's annual mortgage-tax collection allowance at $113,540, approved a $97,500.00 agreement with the Soil and Water Conservation District in Albion, and approved a $240,000.00 contract with Cornell Cooperative Extension. The Legislature also set a Feb. 20 public hearing, again in the Albion chambers, on a proposed Technical Rescue Team for county firefighters, and a separate Feb. 20 hearing on extending the county's pilot youth deer-hunting program. One resolution stood out for what the minutes do not record. Resolution No. 24-124, authorizing the Treasurer to set up $133,334.00 in state homeland-security grant funds to pay Radio Technologies on the county's radio-communications project, is followed only by "Moved, Draper; second," with no seconder named and no adoption tally — unlike every other resolution that day, each of which closed with a 7 ayes, 0 nays, 0 absent vote. Kimberly DeFrank, treasurer, told legislators the county's books closed 2023 in good shape on a cash-flow basis, though the office remains open on an accrual basis while it collects outstanding state aid claims and prepares to switch to a new payroll and tax-collection system this year. The meeting, which opened with an invocation from Nancy Traxler, veterans services director, and approval of the Rotary Club of Albion's request to use Courthouse Square for the June 7 and 8 Strawberry Festival, adjourned at 4:51 p.m. The next scheduled checkpoints on the county's spending, per the record, are the Feb. 20 hearings on the rescue team and the deer-hunting law, and the March 26 hearing in Albion on the broadband program's progress.