> However, you may be correct that the pay scale is not adequate.
It depends on the cost of life in your area. Here in western europe, 140k€/year is almost unheard of for a public servant (except for a few specific, very corrupt branches of public service).
But i believe having a single person responsible for both the infrastructure and the human networking/sales is a dead end. As long as you have support from other local public utilities a less-skilled "liaison officer" (with some understanding of the technical issues) could be a separate job, or even integrated into another job posting (eg. infrastructure commission).
The hardest part for starting a local ISP is getting permission to use infrastructure to lay fiber and put antennas. If you have cooperation from local public services, you're already 80% of the way and the rest is just throwing a little money at public servant who are convinced about public service and the utility of public infrastructure.
If you just employ any commercial sysadmin, you'll get the same problems all commercial ISPs face: an inadequate network disconnected from the actual needs of the people below. Network architecture should be achieved with consent and feedback from the local communities. For example that's what the Scani.fr cooperative has been doing here in France in partnership with local city halls and smaller communities.
One thing to keep in mind is an architecture for a public service is pretty different from an architecture for a private commercial project. Commercial ISPs optimize for selling as many subscriptions as possible, making it artificially harder/crappier to share connections. When you're running a public project, you're trying to break even (plus save some money for hardware renewal and future investments), but trying to make profits is antithetical to your goals. Here's a few pieces of advice, feel free to take or ignore:
- router freedom: you should enable all clients to run their own hardware if they wish
- ouf-of-the-box router acquisition: for clients who don't understand (and don't want to) network settings, still have a commercial "box" offering for 2€/mo or paying the hardware cost upfront
- public IPs and reverse DNS: since some of your clients will want to selfhost their infra, you need (free or really cheap) options for that
- your routers should support multiple multiple client connections on a single uplink, so that people in more remote communities who share uplink (eg. wireless over >10km) can still benefit from advanced features ; as much as a i despise legal responsibility for the person on the lease, this enables people to share their connections without becoming liable for what other people do with it (not sure if that's a concern in USA, but definitely a concern in France)
- you should setup a "public access" program so that local cities/communities can request shared internet access for librairies and other public places; setting up public wifi networks is a "hard" problem for them and contractors ask for crazy amounts (dozens of thousands of euros for just a few access points)
- your network should serve as educational tool: partner with local associations, high schools, universities and companies so you can take trainees to learn all about network infrastructure... Internet is a public good but lack of access to infra/knowledge is often a barrier to get people to maintain that infrastructure
- two kinds of people may be very interested in early access to your network: people who don't have broadband yet in their communities (because commercial ISPs can't bother to serve them), and organizations with broadband but bad service (usually due to bad routers, or lack of advanced network features) ; the former is easy to get connected for cheap using wireless links (given permissions to lay antennas on high points), while the latter has more money upfront to develop your fiber local loop, which in turn helps develop the network to reach more users elsewhere
- human proximity/support is the most important part of public service, no matter how wrong things can go, having actual humans facing you to tell you all about what went wrong and how they're fixing it is very valuable... commercial ISPs are well known to crap on their customers, local communities and regulators. if you plan to open a public service internet access, there should be 7/7 support (not 24/24, except maybe if some commercial clients are willing to pay big bucks for that) and an actual physical location you can visit in person in case your phone service is down, or you need to bring damaged equipment, or you'd like an actual human being to face you to answer your questions
- social justice is an important part of public service: there should not be a huge wage gap between the different workers ; ideally, there would be equal pay for all, but that can be a tough sell to your local government (who can sometimes be as corrupt and greedy as national governments) ; in any case, noone should have more than twice the pay of the lowest-paid workers (including cleaning staff), because that's good for morale and cohesion of the team reducing competition and envy and fostering cooperation for the benefit of the entire project ; support staff in particular should have technical background/formation (unlike commercial ISP support staff who doesn't know shit and just gets in the way) and decent working conditions, they are the primary interface between the service and the customers, and having happy/knowledgeable support staff is one of the top criteria to ensure happy clients and good service
There would be plenty more to say about economical models and political concerns, but i think that's already a lot to go through. Good luck with your project, it's a pretty cool one! And don't forget to partner with local non-profits/coops/schools, they can be an invaluable source of insight/feedback into how to do things well given a local context.