St. Lawrence County: December 2008

St. Lawrence County
Information Technology Advisory Committee
Meeting Agenda
11/20/08, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Location: Training Room, New County Jail

The meeting was called to order by Laura Perry at 2:45pm following a tour of the new county jail facility.

1. Welcome New Committee Members & Meeting Attendees
Introductions – Present: Mike Cunningham, Phil Deleel, Laurel Golden, Bill Hunter, Marc Rusch, Pat Turbett, Helene Mellon, Rick Johnston, Jennifer French, Greg Stahl, and Laura Perry

WAN – connects to jail via Gouverneur Street. Enough Fiber for the Industrial Park too. New jail gets everything ready for the utilities of the new phone system.

2. Strategic Plan

Laura shared the strategic plan she worked on this past month. It was sent to all committee members to review. Looked specifically at each industry segment and put in general information.
She is looking for help to get specific information from different industries and groups (ie: libraries, medical).

Highlighted parts seem to be unnecessary? Laura left them to see if we have something that we want to substitute or should we just delete it? It was decided that it may require both.

Parts, in Sections 2, 3, and 4, need to be edited and submitted to Laura by December 10 so that she will have time to compile it and return it before the meeting.
• Jennifer and Helene will edit K-12 Education sections
• Phil D. will edit Healthcare
• Marc and Phil W. will edit business and industry
• Mike, Francine, and Rick J will work on Government
• Greg will work on the Higher Ed
• Laura will contact library folks to work on the library section
• Laurel will follow-up on the community based organizations
• Laura will contact the Cornell Cooperative Extension, USDA and/or soil and water for help with agricultural section
• The Chamber should be able to help with Tourism – Laura will contact Pat to obtain this information

First part of section 3 will need to get help from economic development or planning (business profile). May be on the website?

On the last page is a list of questions, things to include in the plan perhaps? (ie: need to change culture attitude toward technology). Check out the list of questions on the back page and see where they may fit.

3. Old Business
a. Newton Falls Broadband Project Status
Laura met with Tom, Steve McBathe, and
Ran into issues with poles for transmission lines. They agreed to do double guying (extra supports). This makes the National Grid poles more sturdy because they were currently not in compliance. Tom is going to National Grid to discuss cost sharing since National Grid will have to do something anyway. The funding will be there.
How are they functioning? The T-1 has been a bit more stable. The local Verizon folks have been helpful to make things more reliable. The parent company is vested in improving the telecom for VoIP and the hosted application. The business is going strong and bottom line is improving. The downturn in the economy will actually help them. They are creating the paper for the Obama book. Target date: Tom is still hopeful for the end of the year if National Grid clearance is gained.

b. 2009 Budget Request for Tribal Compact Revenue
Originally $90K proposal was submitted to fund future projects. SLCIT questioned how it was accepted. The meeting of the legislature resulted in our committee getting $10K for strategic planning endeavors for 2009. It is believed that broadband had a great cost/benefit for economic development.

c. St. Lawrence County IT Director
There is still not an IT Director in the budget proposal. Next week is a meeting that may lead to the position going into the budget. This topic is still unknown.

4. New Business:
Broadband Over Powerline
Phil D. shared an article to the group via email. Phil is trying to find someone to further discuss this to learn more about this subject. Perhaps a company like Massena Electric might be able to pilot this. Marc shared that the transformers must be bypassed to make this happen. Phil will try to share more information in December. Pat thought NYPA might be interested in the project.

A discussion pursued about different models: ie – fiber to electric (no need to have repeaters)

Questions & Discussion
It was recommended that someone from the SLCIT committee should attend the county legislature meetings. It could be one person or it could rotate. This would benefit public relations.

Marc mentioned that as the economy has dropped there has been more discussion about public works projects. He suggested we work out our plan so if monies become availably nationally to support broadband. We may be able to partner with an electric company? There no straight business case for any plan but we need to be prepared to capitalize in any direction (fiber, wireless, electric….). For St. Lawrence County there is no one answer to get broadband out. Perhaps we need to create a clearinghouse of all possibilities. Marc also suggested that we need to have discussions with the towns since the village and town highway departments may be willing to help. Maybe this committee can help create this framework. Need to educate the towns on what they can do and the fact that the work may not be profitable.

New Visions in Syracuse – press releases show development of 3 suburbs. Curious how they are doing? Are they moving forward? Laura offered to gather information from them.

Laura spoke with someone at Ridgeview Tel Wireless. They are reconsidering coming back to SLC.

Phil D. spoke of a conference he attended by Verizon “A Wireless Broadband And Emergency Preparedness Seminar” – Verizon is working on upgrading their cell towers. EVDO is working in many areas.

Action Items for Next Meeting
Chart path for 2009
Continue work on Strategic Plan

Next Meeting: Thursday, December 18, 2008

The meeting adjourned at 415: PM.

Minutes submitted by Jennifer French.

St. Lawrence County

Pages

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

11-20-08 Meeting Minutes

Meeting Agenda 12_18_08