Kiowa Tribe meets with officials from Texas City to discuss turning Hobart into a "Smart City"- By Anthony Winn

HOBART, Okla. (KSWO) - The Kiowa Tribe and the mayor’s office for the City of Pharr met Wednesday to discuss Hobart and options on how to supply the city with broadband service.

The tribe is hoping to help by making the small town of Hobart a “Smart City”.

Cynthia Garza Reyes, the Director of External Relations for the City of Pharr, talked to those in attendance about what this new plan could do.

“You have the ability to now have the ability to work remotely, you now have the ability to now connect in terms of telehealth,” said Reyes. “If you don’t have access to a doctor that is an hour away you can jump on the internet and be able to talk to your doctor.”

She says service companies leave them out because they are too rural.

”They are considered to be on the outskirts of the state and so on but yet those populations are still important and that’s why it is important that a lot of these rural communities feel that they can get to a position where they feel self-sufficient,” Reyes stated.

During the presentation, people brought up how students have to buy from food places with free wifi just to do their homework.

Kiowa Tribe Chairman Lawrence SpottedBird talked about discovering that students are struggling to find the internet.

“We need to target the youth to connect them not just surf the internet but for practice purposes like education like for us the Kiowa Tribe where language and education learning our Kiowa language learning our history,” said Spottedbird.