Baltimore will install more than 100 free public Wi-Fi hot spots across ten West Baltimore neighborhoods and city-owned fiber at 23 recreation centers using $6 million in federal stimulus money, Mayor Brandon Scott announced Tuesday.
The mayor also set aside about $100 million to be used to close budget gaps, should the pandemic continue to wallop city coffers. Another $10 million will fund the Mayor’s Office of Recovery Programs, an office Scott created to oversee pandemic stimulus spending.
The Democrat touted the programming as making good on his campaign commitment to close Baltimore’s digital divide — the gap between those that have internet access and those that don’t — by 2030, calling it a down payment on open-access fiber across the city.
“The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that internet access is critical, basic public infrastructure,” Scott said at a news conference outside the James McHenry Recreation Center in West Baltimore. “We have to move towards treating broadband as a public good… and a necessity for everyday life in the same way that we deal with water and electricity.”
Read more (and listen) at WYPR.
