Otis Technology Committee
Minutes for Meeting of
February 2, 2017
Otis Town Hall
Meeting called to order at 5:00 pm in the Town Hall Conference Room, is being recorded, and a quorum is present.
Present: Bill Hiller, George Mabee, Laurie Flower, Larry Gould, and Lisa D’Orazio
Absent: Frank Tolopko
Others Present: Terry Ryan, Diane Sawyer, Bob Rosen, and Ken Mayer
Henkels & McCoy Presentation: We began the meeting with Terry Ryan’s presentation. Otis is going through Whip City Fiber who will actually issue the RFP and Henkels & McCoy has worked with Whip City before. The construction RFP for Otis is expected to be issued in March or early April. One of Henkels advantages is they have the trenching equipment and locators to check where buried lines actually exist instead of guessing where they are. Henkels was founded in 1923, has their main office in Blue Bell, PA and is a nationwide company. They are privately owned and their core value is safety with a motto of “Nobody gets hurt”. They have experience with both longhaul and backhaul fiber networks.
Approval of Meeting Minutes: The December 19, 2016 Technology meeting minutes were approved as written with Laurie abstaining.
Approve Annual Town Report: Lisa presented a draft document and Bill and Larry would like to make some changes. This was tabled.
Review Proposed FY2018 Budget: Lisa presented what she had gathered so far knowing the information was incomplete. Bill asked about the $15,000 for the Technical Assistance Grant and was told this was a separate account and not part of the budget. We still need figures from Acella for the SoftRight modules. The budget was discussed and altered. We added a new line item for email charges. Website figures were changed to include two separate projects proposed by Prospect Marketing. The first project is to create a new website for Otis called OtisFiber.com and the second project is for revamping and upgrading townofotisma.com to newer technology. The new budget figures for this line item will cover the cost of the second project should we choose to do it, and will also cover upgrade and maintenance costs if we decide to remain with VTS and/or do their upgrade.
Broadband Updates: The Town of Otis has received a proposal from Whip City Fiber for operational expense and the proposal includes a website at no charge (equivalent to otisfiber.com). Phase 1 of the pole applications has been submitted to both Eversource and Verizon. The Phase 2 survey has been completed and we are beginning to submit make ready pole applications for Phase 2.
Other:
New Computers: We will be testing out a new 128G solid state drive that has an Intel 5 chip with 8G and slides into a connector on the back of a monitor with the appropriate plugin hardware. This would eliminate the separate CPU boxes we currently have in house. The hardware is also easily updateable.
Email Response: Bill will respond to the email inquiry about when the Old State Road area will have broadband. We anticipate 18 to 24 months for that area of town.
The meeting was unanimously adjourned at 6:54 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Lisa D’Orazio, recording secretary
Town of Otis Technology Committee
List of Documents
A copy of Terry Ryan’s email will be filed with these meeting minutes.
A copy of the initial budget draft will be filed with these meeting minutes.
A copy of the draft Annual Town Report will be filed with these meeting minutes.
A copy of email inquiry about broadband installation around Old State Road will be filed with these meeting minutes.
A copy of the proposed logo for OtisFiber.com will be filed with these meeting minutes.
A copy of the two Project proposals from Prospect Marketing will be filed with these meeting minutes.
A copy of the Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny specifications will be filed with these meeting minutes.