St. Lawrence County
Information Technology Advisory Committee
August 28, 2008, 2pm
Location: Human Service Conference Room, Canton, NY
Meeting Minutes
Present: Sign in sheet handed out (Laura Perry has on file)
No minutes to approve from the July 24, 2008 meeting (strategic planning event).
1) Pat McKeown, Executive Director of the St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce provided a description of the current plan to use the broadband grant funding received from Senator Clinton. She described the funding source as having a broad goal of improving broadband access to unserved and underserved areas of St. Lawrence County and it is to be used for economic development purposes. The amount of the grant is $196,000 and it is being run through HUD (US Dept of Housing and Urban Development). Ms. McKeown explained that she sought the input of private providers, DANC, SLC Planning Dept and the IT Committee in preparing this plan.
The plan is for the Chamber to partner with DANC, to utilize its existing fiber backbone and to target three communities, those being (1) Hammond/Morristown, (2) Lisbon/Waddington, (3) Norfolk/Lousiville/Brasher. The Chamber will issue an RFP in the winter 2009 which will invite all providers with preference given to local providers, to provide a proposal to provide service to the target communities. The grant will provide matching funds to aid the providers in their proposal to deliver service.
Beyond the ‘who’ and the ‘where’, Ms. McKeown admitted that not much detail on the ‘how’ has been worked through yet. The committee offered suggestions on items to include in the RFP designed to help ensure the end product they are seeking, namely the desire of providing cost competitive universal broadband services to residents and businesses alike. The chamber should take measures to ensure the funding is used to get access for the customers that are costly for providers to serve, and to avoid crème skimming as has been the criticism of such efforts in the past. Laura is to provide those suggestions to Pat in a follow up email. A suggestion was made that if the Chamber’s model is successful, the committee may seek additional funds which could be used in additional communities.
2) Laura mentioned the opportunity with the Shared Services Grant offered by NYS. Several opportunities were identified where the County can serve as a service provider or a central clearinghouse for services at the local municipalities. The Shared Services Grant may be an opportunity to initiate this effort. Carrie Tuttle mentioned a tight time frame for getting local municipalities to commit and to prepare applications. A short list of some of the opportunities include: web services, tech support services/LAN, equipment sharing, equipment purchasing, data backup and storage, and data imaging. Carrie Tuttle also mentioned other possible sources of funding including NYS Archives. Committee should check in with Patty Richie.
3) Laura mentioned the Fort Drum Regional Planning effort and their North Country Telemedicine Project. Two of SLC’s hospitals were left out of the network, Massena Memorial Hospital and Claxton Hepburn, because of their physical distance from Fort Drum. It is thought that if the hospitals are interested in joining the effort, that there may be an opportunity at the Federal level for funding. Phil Deleel was to check into Claxton’s interest in the project. Laura is to contact Massena Memorial to find out if they are interested. Also, Laura is to speak with the director of the Fort Drum organization to see if she can offer assistance.
Pat Turbett offered that NYS Department of Health representative visits SLC each month and may offer some suggestions on funding opportunities for such an effort. His name is Peter Galeriesy and Pat will check to see if he could attend a future meeting to offer some advice.
3) As a suggestion from the legislature, the committee is asked to pass on to the Web Site Committee/Ruth Doyle to enable the new SLC site with a listing of County employee salaries, similar to what is available on http://www.seethroughnewyork.com/. The thought is that this information is FOIL’able, and we should be proactive in providing it before we receive a request for it. Laura will pass this on to Ruth.
4) Finally, Laura led a brief discussion on next steps with the strategic planning effort and a preparing a budget request for 2009. Budgets are currently being prepared and we should put a request in now for any projects the committee would like to undertake in 2009. Those present offered suggestions on requesting funds to finalize the strategic planning effort, funds for the NYS grants we have discussed, and for the mapping effort. Jon Montan cautioned the group to identify more clearly the objectives for the mapping project so that there is a useful outcome.
Members present discussed the status of the strategic planning event. It was recommended that the worksheets from the event be distributed to all members of the committee for their review. It was recommended that we focus September’s meeting as a working session to summarize and identify the outcomes of all inputs. The goal felt it important to finalize this effort by end of 2008. Laura will circulate to the committee and highlight the collective effort in September to summarize the data.
There was also a discussion about revitalizing meeting attendance. Laura will distribute a meeting schedule for the remainder of the year, and invite possible new committee members to join the effort.
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