Cleveland City Council Cuts $1 Million From DigitalC Contract After it Fails to Meet 2024 Subscriber Goal

Joshua Edmonds, the CEO of DigitalC, at a Council pitch meeting last year. Council took away some of DigitalC’s funding after learning it fell short of its 2024 subscriber goal on Thursday. Credit: Mark Oprea

In Joshua Edmonds’ first major pitch to Cleveland City Council about DigitalC, the future of fixing the city’s digital divide seemed promising.

As the company’s CEO noted, they would help provide Clevelanders currently without home internet access a new, fast, and affordable connection for less than $20 a month with financial help from the city. They would, their pitch deck vowed, gain 23,500 subscribers by 2028. (And eventually cover a third of the entire city.)

On Thursday, City Council’s Utilities Committee learned that progress hasn’t matched promises: Edmonds had planned for 3,500 households, from those in Clark-Fulton to Collinwood, to pay for a DigitalC broadband connection in 2024.

Tthat wasn’t the case.

Only 2,802 people, Edmond and his team reported, signed up as subscribers last year.

As a result, the six members of the Utilities Committee voted 5-1 to modify spending parameters of DigitalC’s original contract, which originally allowed a $20 million allowance. Roughly $1 million was cut from that deal, which was finalized on a performance-equals-pay basis last year.

That subscriber shortfall, and promise to fix Cleveland’s digital divide, led to a kind of it-is-what-it-is vibe across the room, with neither side—DigitalC or Council—taking the full brunt of the blame as far as metric-watching goes.

“I think the administration, the Council and DigitalC have all learned a lot within the last year,” Councilman Brian Kazy, who heads the Utilities Committee, said. “Good, bad, or indifferent.”

Councilman Kris Harsh, the only member to vote no on amending DigitalC’s in their favor, told the room he didn’t think a light reprimand would cut it.

Not one dollar, Harsh argued, should be handed over to DigitalC until their subscriber goals are met—that is, the contract Council signed originally.

“It’s as simple as that. We don’t have results. I think this is a premature conversation,” Harsh said. “Mr. Chair, they have not identified with the terms of the agreement. I think that modifying right now is absolutely inappropriate.”

Councilwoman Jenny Spencer took more of the middle-of-the-road stance, feeling that Council may have overlooked DigitalC’s true ability to meet their subscriber goal right out of the gate. “I think we were very much optimists,” she said.

“We all want what we want,” she added, “which is the ultimate outcome of 23,500 households being connected.”

Edmonds himself backed up DigitalC’s attempt, and signaled 2025 as a “clean slate” for a new target of 4,700 Clevelanders signed up for their service.

“But for us, we’re looking at those households that we didn’t connect last year,” he said. “We’re not losing sight of that goal.”