Adhoc Technology Committee Minutes 2006 05-09-06 APPROVED
UNITED CITY OF YORKVILLE
AD HOC TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE MEETING
Tuesday,May 9, 2006
City Hall Conference Room
MINUTES
PRESENT: (No Minute-Takerl
Ron Robinson, IT Coordinator
Dean Wolfer, Alderman
Rose Spears, Alderwoman
Valerie Burd, Alderwoman
Michael Anderson, PDQLink
Art Prochaska, Mayor
John Crow
Bart Olsen
Press
CALL TO ORDER:
The meeting was called to order at 6:30 p.m. by Alderman Dean Wolfer.
MINUTES FOR APPROVAL/CORRECTION:
No minutes were approved.
TOWER RENTAL AND WIRELESS INTERNET SERVICE:
An RFP was put out with wireless internet service providers to provide the City with a
quote for leasing the water tower space on all five of the water towers to supply the
residents with a service for high speed internet through the chosen wireless internet
service provider. PDQLink had responded to the request and would like to rent small
portions of the top of the water towers to place some antennas to provide an alternative or
the only alternative to what is available for Broadband. Currently, PDQLink has 28
towers and covers about a thousand square miles of northern Illinois. They are a small,
independent company, unlike SBC and Comcast, so they are unable to give away a lot of
free things. They are, however, reasonably priced and do not require a long term
commitment. They do month to month contracts with their customers without
reconnection fees or re-signup fees. They currently have just over one thousand
customers. They get the majority of their money from the small businesses because they
can offer businesses TI for much less than SBC. Their antennas will not, though, give
better coverage for cell phones. They are able to block sites for children and monitor
them as they know about them.
For the City to do this themselves,based upon findings with municipalities between
20,000-40,000 residents, on an average, approximately 50% of currently municipality
owned Y5 projects will fail to break even within the first five years if the total
registration fee is $25 per month per prescriber. The national average for installing at the
customer's home if the city were to hire employees, get equipment, and training it costs
approximately$200 per install. The help desks will receive between 300-600 phone calls
on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis. The total cost to design the ploy and manage a
municipal Y5 network within the first five years is $150,000 to $400,000 per square mile
of the city, Some cities buy the equipment but have someone else manage it. The
municipality funds the whole project from design to installation and then subcontract or
hire a consultant to management they system. No one in the local area does this.
PDQL,inlc stated that the reason why this is so is because as a private entity, they are
willing to do a lot more than what they are paid for. If, however, they are working for
someone else, if they work twelve hours they should be paid twelve hours. The cost of
keeping the technology current is also an issue because technology changes yearly,
making all equipment needing to be updated. Ron Robinson provided in the packet some
issues that needed to be addressed. At the next meeting they would like to discuss
document retrieval on the internet
ADDITIONAL BUSINESS:
The next Ad-Hoc Technology meeting date will be .Tune 13, 2006 at 6:00 p.m.
ADJOURNMENT:
The meeting was adjourned at 6:55 pan.
Typed by—.Jeanne Arbet
(No minute taker was present at the meeting. All in attendance at the meeting may not be
accurate as there was not an attendance list passed around.)