Township Says Comcast Needs to Make Good on Promise to Connect All Residents

Officials in Cass Township say they were mystified by an announcement this week by Comcast and the state’s Dept. of Community and Economic Development.

In that announcement, Comcast celebrated the successful connection of Cass and Reilly townships to its broadband internet service.

However, at Thursday night’s supervisors meeting in Duncott, Cass supervisors chairman Michael Sorokach III indicated there are about a dozen homes in the municipality that aren’t connected.

And when he finally connected with a Comcast representative, he says he got a list of “excuses” as to why those addresses weren’t connected. Those “excuses” included Comcast supposedly not having a right-of-way and needing to do engineering in order to get those homes on the network.

Solicitor Mark Semanchik took particular exception with the press release that was issued and published by two local news outlets in Schuylkill County.

“(The article) doesn’t mention that the grant that was awarded was to serve all the residents of Cass Township and somehow some of the money of that grant has filtered over into Reilly Township,” Semanchik claimed.

Back in 2022, according to a report from the Coal Region Canary archives, both townships were awarded about $1.7 million in grant funding through the state’s Unserved Highspeed Broadband Program. They were the only two Schuylkill County municipalities, at least at that time, to get such an award.

Semanchik went on to say that Cass Township and Comcast had agreements in place three years ago that would make its services available to all residents. He said Comcast has not fulfilled the scope of services it agreed to in its grant application or the franchise agreement it had with Cass Township.

He said Cass supervisors agreed to a franchise agreement with Comcast based on a presentation the internet service provider made there to connect all residents, stressing the all.

Further, Semanchik said Comcast promised that if grant money ran out as it was connecting all Cass residents, the company would foot the bill to meet its obligation.

Supervisors OK’d a motion Thursday to allow Semanchik to put Comcast “on a deadline” to complete its work connecting all residents or he’d file an objection with DCED about the company’s inability to finish the work it promised to do.

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