§ 1912 — Communications plant; authority to acquire, construct, operate, improve, extend, and better

(a) A municipality is authorized and empowered to own, maintain, operate, improve, and extend, or otherwise acquire, and to sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of, in accordance with and in any situation or manner not prohibited by law, its communications plant for the furnishing of communications services within or without the corporate limits of the municipality, for public, domestic, commercial, and industrial use, and for the provision of communications service. For the aforesaid purposes, the municipality may hire, lease, purchase, own, hold, and acquire by contract, agreement, or eminent domain proceedings any buildings, land, rights-of-way, and any other real property necessary or convenient to the operation of the communications plant, and may use any public highway over which it may be necessary or desirable to pass with the poles and wire of the same, provided that the use of such public highway for the purpose of public travel is not thereby unnecessarily impaired. These powers may be exercised through a taking by eminent domain in the manner prescribed by law. All of the foregoing powers are in addition to and not in substitution for or in limitation of any other powers conferred by law.
(b) Before a municipality may sell any service using its communications plant subject to Public Utility Commission jurisdiction and for which a certificate of public good is required under 30 V.S.A. chapter 5 or 13, it shall obtain a certificate of public good for such service. Each such certificate of public good shall be nonexclusive and shall not contain terms or conditions more favorable than those imposed on existing certificate holders authorized to serve the municipality.

Legislative History

(Added 2007, No. 79, § 4, eff. June 9, 2007.)