§ 245-21. Communications plant; authority to acquire, construct, operate, improve, extend, and better

(a) The Village 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 or plants for the furnishing of communications services within or without the corporate limits of the Village, for public, domestic, commercial, and industrial use, and for the provision of communications service. For the aforesaid purposes, the Village may hire, lease, purchase, own, hold, and acquire by contract, agreement, or eminent domain proceedings any buildings, land, rights-of-way, and any other property, real or personal, necessary or convenient to the operation of said 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, except that the Village shall have no power under 30 V.S.A. chapter 79 to take by eminent domain telecommunications or cable television property. 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 the Village may sell any communications service over which the Public Utility Commission has jurisdiction and for which a certificate of public good is required, it shall obtain a certificate of public good for such service.