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Regular Council Minutes <br />5-17-04 <br />Page 18 <br />Council President Buckholtz said it is not only architecture. It is understanding the architecture <br />of what we need and then the buying power. <br />Mr. Marquardt asked, is Case going to provide this for us, or what architecture-to connect into <br />their system or to do what is being proposed for the network or what's being proposed to give <br />everybody in the Village free internet connection.... <br />Council President Buckholtz said no; I think that has been blown out of proportion. We are not <br />going to be an internet provider. That was never really in the.... <br />Mr. Marrie said you're talking, like you say internet for everybody in the Village. That hasn't <br />even been in discussion at this point. <br />Mr. Marquardt said I am asking what are they going to do for us? <br />Council President Buckholtz said access to people that design networks, that evaluate networks, <br />that evaluate the need for networks.... <br />Mr. Brett said I will review my notes again that I gave Council. I gave it with the caveat that <br />yes, they were all over the place; we are going to try and refine as time goes on. But my <br />understanding of the Strategic Alliance Contract (and I provided a copy of both that contract and <br />the secondary contract) that there would be no confusing the two--that it just buys us into the <br />cooperative purchasing plan of Case Western Reserve and taps into essentially their buying <br />power and their arrangements with whoever their vendors are for a number of things: hardware <br />and systems or people who work in those systems; so regardless of where we go in the future we <br />would still have the option of taking advantage of that buying power or not. We are in a similar <br />position with the State of Ohio where we use the Ohio Cooperative Purchasing. We spend <br />$150/year for that and it more than pays for itself. My understanding from Del Klingingsmith <br />and my understanding from just a cursory read of that agreement is all we are doing is buying <br />into buying power; into that cooperative. <br />Mr. Marrie said basically, if I can say, it's not a perfect analogy, but it is close: it is how we get <br />police cars. We get them through the State buying power. We don't go out and get them on our <br />own so that gave us the ability to go through there on the same basis. Now I realize police cars <br />and'technology aren't the same, but buying power or having the ability to tap into it is there. <br />Mr. Saponaro said I think the question is this: why do we need to do this now without the game <br />plan, when we can get the game plan and do this after. Is there a time frame? Is there a window <br />that is going to close? Is there an issue. What you are saying that in order to make the game <br />plan, if I am hearing correctly, you need to do this. Not only do you have the buying power but <br />you have the knowledge and it's the architecture design of those people and we are going to tap <br />those resources at no cost to us to help us make these decisions. <br />Mr. Brett said I think it is a much more comprehensive list. If we need one computer now, it <br />may be that we will be able to purchase it from this cooperative at less than what we are able to <br />purchase it now from Dell directly (I don't even know if Dell is one of their preferred vendors.) <br />If we decide to go in another direction, there inight be something offered there, much in the same <br />way as Ohio Cooperative. Ohio Cooperative offers purchasing on garbage trucks. We don't