11/18/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Minutes 11-18-02 Page 13 support economic development objectives. From the meeting, BTS will work with the Village to determine if there is an interest and desire to move forward with the development of a detailed plan to achieve these technology related economic development goals. I said it during their presentation and it goes on-that's not even-there's more.... What I found in my research, and I've done the research because I've got 4 different companies' information here and they are clearly fast at a time when a lot of companies are going under and going out, these guys are doing nothing but going straight up. And when they make a call to Ameritech, or they make a call to Sprint or MCI, they carry a lot of weight with their 120 school systems and their growing number of municipalities, so in other words, they know who's on the way up, who's on the way down; it starts with Donna's phone is connected to Bill's phone and.... Mr. Riter said what you referenced in Section 8, I don't believe, unless I misunderstood last week, that that's included in the $8,700 proposal. Dr. Parker said no, I didn't think so either. Council President Buckholtz said I made sure it was. That's all taken care o£ ... Mr. Riter said my impression was that it wasn't.... Council President Buckholtz said I have it right here. This is entitled, BTS, Phase I Ser-vices. Section 1 is a telecommunications audit; Section 2 is a voice-dated telecommunications inventory assessment; Section 3 is a local exchange services which is discussing our providers; 4 is long distance service providers; 5 is telecommunications equipment; (mostly hardware and software); 6 is wireless services (which I assume would be pagers, walkie talkies, all the stuff that you guys are constantly upgrading and coming back with); is it well integrated with our web services; 7 is telecommunications cost management (which is the smallest section; I think they may come into some communities and the way that they get their foot in the door is to say, well, like Bedford, we could save you $130,000 and get you a check out tomorrow; well, that's a no- brainer, we'll hire you) but what I respected is that they made no bones-and I was going to say it this way; I don't think that's the focus; I don't think that's what they are here for is to get us a check-you know, for over-billing. I think they're here to help us, you know, get into the newer technologies and get into it where the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. So, I mean, forgive me for saying, but for the amount of effort that this plan shows, it doesn't seem like a lot of money. I was under the impression it was going to be a lot more. Mr. Marquardt said the thing that is missing here that I see, is they had discussion and consensus on what the objectives are we are trying to accomplish before you go out and evaluate tools. And what we are doing here is evaluating tools without having a consensus or a discussion among Council as to what's the objectives here. I mean you have a bunch of ideas that you've thrown out, but there hasn't been a discussion on that to say what's important to us and where do we go. I mean, jumping in and evaluating tools is backwards. All the projects that I've worked on, that's the first thing you spend your time on is determining where you want to go, not how you are going to get there.