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HomeMy WebLinkAbout12/02/03 Telecommunications TELECOMMUNICA TIONS BOARD MEETING MINUTES December 2, 2003 I The Regular Session of The Telecommunications Board of the City of The Colony, Texas, was called to order at 7:06 p.m. on the 2nd day of December 2003, at City Hall with the following members present: Board Members Present Staff Present Richard Kuether, Vice Chairman Rebecca Koo - Finance Director Walter Gillette Linda Camerlin - LT. Manager Bill Cunningham Rhonda Gann - Administrative Assistant - Finance Marcus Latham Wallace Gehrke Board Members Absent Clark Switzer, Chairman - Sick Melvina Sparks - No Phone Call Michael Fogerty - Alternate With five (5) board members present, a quorum was established and the following items were addressed: Clark Switzer was absent. Richard Kuether chaired the meeting I 1. Citizens Input None 2. Consideration of approval of the minutes of the Telecommunications Board meeting held on November 18th, 2003. Minutes were not available. Minutes for November 18, 2003 will be presented to board at the next meeting on December 16, 2003, for approval. 3. Discussion of results of Council Meeting on December 1,2003: Richard reported the Council looked over the policies and had a couple of questions: a. The Volunteer Coordinator - who will that person be? Is the board recruiting someone outside the board or inside? This was not specified for the Council. I Walter Gillett said he understood from the Council Meeting Telecast was that some of the Council did not want the Chairman of the Telecommunication Board to be the Volunteer Coordinator as well. Walter said the Council did not say any other board member could not be a Volunteer Coordinator, just the Chairman. I Wallace Gehrke said that he recalled Clark Switzer volunteering to resign as the Chairman of the board and just be a board member, if Council decided the V olunteer Coordinator should not be the Chairman of the board. I Richard asked the board if the proposed policy stated the Volunteer Coordinator had to be a board member or could it be just anybody. Linda Camerlin told the board the policy stated the Telecommunications Board would recommend a Volunteer Coordinator to be affirmed by City Council. Richard asked Staff if the Council was suggesting the Volunteer Coordinator not be on the Telecommunications Board at all or could it just be a board member and not the Chairman of the board. Richard told the board the Council did not make a decision on the policy, and tabled it. The Council did discuss the policy, and they liked the policy the Telecommunications Board came up with, but no decision was made as of yet. 4. Staff Liaison Report: A. Linda told the board the wrong raincoat was returned and the right one was on order by Bob Sparkman. A box of batteries and labels came in, Linda put them in the Telecommunications Board room. Linda asked the board about Member Melvina Sparks. According to the Telecommunications Board Policy, after a board member misses a certain number of meetings, the board member would be asked to vacate/resign from the board. - Richard wanted to address the issue at the next meeting. With Clark being out sick, he does not know if Clark has information on this or not. Richard asked Linda to put it on the agenda for the next meeting when Clark would be back. Linda requested each board member to document number of hours each member volunteered. This information is for insurance purposes. If the City does not note how many hours are being volunteered, the Insurance Company estimates the hours. If the volunteer hours are less than what is documented by the Insurance Company, the City will not have to pay a higher rate. Linda asked the board members to e-mail this information as soon as possible so she could report it to the Accounting Manager. Bill asked if the hours volunteered, included the board meetings. Linda told the board it would be volunteered hours only, and it needed to be the total h9urs for the year. Linda brought up the upcoming events. a. At City Hall - Christmas Parade, Christmas tree lighting, Christmas with Santa at the Library, The Business Expo. - Saturday 12-06-03. b. Hidden Cove Park - Christmas lights - 12-5 to 12-21. 2 .- Linda asked the board members if anyone knew how to work on a Nextar Phone System. Marcus said he would need to look at the book and the template for information, Linda said she would get the book. I B. Linda told the board the City is looking at XO Communications, formally Nexlink, for data and phone provider services. Phone numbers will not change. Linda said if the City changes services, it would be in March 2004. There are no hidden charges. The City can request itemized phone bills. This is for City Hall only, not other City Department out of the City Hall building. Linda asked the board members if anyone of them had heard of XO Communications. Linda said XO emerged from bankruptcy early year but it did not affect their providing services to their customers at all. Linda said she contacted some of the references. Linda said XO would put in their own PRI and the Data TI. XO will pay for any cancellation fees to S. W. Bell up to $6,000.00. Right now, if we go with them in March, it will cost $3,800.00 for cancellation fees. The City has a three-year contract on the Internet and it ends in March. There will be no cancellation fee. Linda gave the board Pro's and Con's: Pros: I 1. Substantial Savings - XO will simplify the billing process by charging a lump sum for the services and no hidden charges. 2. They will itemize the phone bills if the City requests it. 3. XO services businesses only, not residential. Energies are not converted to other segments of the communities. 4. They built and own it's own backbone, the fiber optic lines. 5. XO will review S. W. Bell billings after the changeover; to ensure SBC are not billing us on discontinued services. Cons: 1. XO emerged from bankruptcy January 2003. 2. Deal with two vendors; one for hardware - S. W Bell, one for phone services - XO. 3. We will still be dealing with S.W. Bell in our other City locations. I 4. If anything goes wrong with the phone system, we will have to call S. W. Bell as the hardware vendor. And XO for software vendor. 5. There will be confusion during cutover. 6. Staff will have to provide overtime hours to reconfigure the firewalls and mail servers because we have IP address configured inside all of our firewalls throughout the City, and because we have VPN tunnels between I the buildings. We will be assigned a completely new range of IP addresses. 3 7. Right now, we have local plus calling, with 817 and 940 as local numbers. With XO, we will not have that option. The 817 and 940 will be long distance calls. XO will provide us with a block of 25,000 minutes of long distance per month, both fax and voice. If we exceed the 25,000 minutes, the cost will be 5 cents per minute. 8. Right now, we do not know if all calls to 817 and 940 will be within the 25,000 minutes. Bill Cunningham said there were some cities in this area, Allen, Frisco etc. that their residents did not have to pay for extended area long distance charges. Bill said the Council needs to go back to SBC and ask why Frisco, Allen etc can call 817 numbers without dialing a 1 for long distance but The Colony residents have to. Linda said she has an S02 report from SBC. This report itemizes what the City is paying for and what it means and how much we are paying. SBC has to charge us by mandate, by law, by the government to charge extended area calling service. The charge is $28.80 per month per line. Bill said the City residents have to pay an additional charge per month to call outside the 972/469 area codes. In Allen, you can call anywhere in the metroplex, Denton, etc. and you do not have to dial one or pay an additional charges per month. Rebecca said she attended the meeting by SBC and they were looking into reviewing the extended area calling plan because the people were getting upset with the extra charge. SBC has to go to the PUC to get it changed. The citizens voted to go with the charges on the extended area plan in the past. Richard asked if the citizens could go back and re-vote on this. Rebecca said SBC was working with PUC to come up with a plan, she did not know how long it would take. Wallace asked Rebecca if the staff contacted SBC and told them the City was going to make this change and asked for a SRA (Special Rate Assistance). Linda told Wallace she did go to SBC and kept the channel open. SBC knows that the City is seriously considered making a change. SBC can lower certain prices that they charges and are trying to skim off other things such as mandatory $28.80 per line. SBC is trying to lower that to$24.00 line. Wallace said he did this for a living. They (TI) told SBC what they were going to pay and SBC accepted that. Wallace told staff that when we change Telephone Company's, things can go wrong and may effect our jobs. Linda said she is presenting the facts at this time and her responsibility is to bring it up to the Telecommunications board for advice. Linda gave Wallace copies of the paperwork from XO, and Wallace said he would review the paperwork and get back with Linda. 4 Wallace asked Linda on the PRIDID data Tl, is XO multiplexing through something, or what are trying to do? How are they going to do all that in one big chunk? I Rebecca said they bundle it together for total charges of the services. Linda said from what she understands, they are going to be replacing the City's PRI and the data T 1 . Wallace Questioned why the PRI and data Tl were labeled as quantity 1. Linda said the City has a PRI and a data Tl and XO is bundling it. Does this mean XO is replacing Q!!£ piece of hardware to the City's two pieces of hardware? Linda said she would look into that information. Wallace said that could be scary because it would defiantly cut down traffic hauling capability by some large measure. Marcus said 25,000 for 25 phones are not very much. The question is how much Internet work do we do and how big of a bandwith would they use for that. Linda said XO would not be replacing the PRIor Tl card at City Hall. They are going to be the City's provider only. From what Linda understands, they will be re-programming the PRI, the technician will program the current hardware, because our hardware is at City Hall. Hardware is from SBC; XO just wants to be our I phone and data service provider. Wallace said he wonders what XO is giving us. XO may put a router and packatize the voice and everything through a packet switch. Linda said XO said they would give us a new Tl router, and Sysco 1723. They are going to assign us 32 IP addresses. Right now SBC gave us 125 IP addresses. Marcus said if they packatize the voice, we will not be getting a solid connection. We might have dropouts and delays, etc. Wallace concurred the packatizing does work, and they use it extensively. On a daily basis, he gets people yelling at him because something happened, when there is a lot of conversation. Linda asked Wallace if packatizing was something that happened over a PRI ,or a TI. Wallace said it was a Tl, but you could do it over any kind of a TI. Usually Sysco wants you to connect the PRI to it. They will run the voice in the back side of a Sysco switch and they takes care of multiplexing the voice and data together into a packet system over the PRL Basically, it converts the voice over to data. Same as I voice over IP. Rebecca asked Wallace if he meant voice over IP. 5 Wallace said that is what we need to know, if it is voice over IP. Linda and Rebecca said they did not think so but Linda said she would look into it. Wallace said a big question would be how much bandwidth are they actually talking about. Linda said no it will be a full PRI with 23 channels, 1.544 mega bits dedicated internet access, a block of a 100 DID's and basic lines. Linda said at this time we are using approximately 30 IP addresses. XO is giving us 32 IP addresses. We will have to justify anything-over 32 IP addresses, and they will give us more. We have more DID numbers than we need and XO is giving us 100, the same as we have with SBC. Linda said the input she would like from the Telecommunications Board is what questions does she need to ask the representative at XO. Wallace asked Linda what she used the point-to-point Tl for. Linda said the point-to-point Tl is between this building and 5151 North Colony Blvd. Data goes back and forth. The Municipal Court uses the server here. It is strictly data at this time. This is something that was set up years ago. Before we moved in this building, there was a point to point set up between 5151 North Colony and 1 Harris Plaza. Wallace said what XO is proposing for the data services is DSL. The PRI is separate. Richard asked Wallace to sit in on a meeting with Staff and XO since he knows what to look for and what questions to ask. Wallace said he can attend a meeting with them but he wants to look at the paperwork first. Wallace asked Linda if they could look at this after hours at some time. Wallace said XO is using some interesting information and he suspects with all good vendors they are punching in a bunch of extra words that they do not need to. They are not being quite as honest as we would like them to be. Rebecca told Wallace they have been talking to XO for the last six months and the last few weeks they have been going with full speed trying to get the information together and checking the references. They have talked to the City Manager ,and are compiling the number of minutes used on calls to 817 and 940, because 214, 972 and 469 are all local calls with XO. This information will be presented to the City Manager and he will be the one to make the final decision. Rebecca said we had called the references and the references said they were very happy with XO and there were no interruptions when XO filed bankruptcy. Walter told staff the law will not allow the phones to be disconnected without informing the customers 30 days before pulling the switch so the customer can make other changes as needed. 6 Walter said one of the other problems that can come up would be is if XO owes a big bill to SBC for the use of their line, (XO pays SBC for a whole lot of stuff) then I all of a sudden SBC decides to quit carrying XO on the credit side, XO can get shut off. Linda said she will give Wallace copies of all XO's paperwork for his review and asked Walter to e-mail her his advice. Rebecca told the board she was informed at the managers meeting, that the Council wants to interview all board members possibly December 8th or the 15th. Rebecca will be receiving more information from the City Secretary's office and get back to them. The Staff Liaison will also have to attend this meeting. After the Council meets with the board members and the staff liaison, the committee will recommend the board members to the Council for approval. 5. Sub-committee Reports: a. Bill reported nothing new from Police. b. Richard asked if there was a better way for communication on scheduling for the broadcast. Richard said he has been trying to keep a schedule together on what is being broadcasted. He has no communication on what is being changed in the playback system. It is not a big/important issue but at one time they have a schedule of events broadcasted. Richard does not know how to coordinate that. He knows Veterans Memorial and I Congressman Burgess tapes have been pulled, and he was not made aware of it. Richard said he had tried to set up a method to keep track of what was being downloaded. Richard wants to know if they need to set up a procedure or what. Things that need to be coordinated are not being done. Linda concurred. Linda said she had taken something out because Diane e-mailed her to take something out, e.g. (the Denton County Commissioner Tape) Diane had to walk her through on how to replace a tape. Linda said maybe we need to have a sign in and sign out tape sheet to keep track of it. Rebecca asked the board if they want staff to notify them if changes are being made. Richard said it would be good to keep some kind of schedule so everyone knows the schedule. Richard said possibly a policy or procedure would be good so that anyone involved in changing out the broadcast, will know what is going on and why. Richard said he and Linda could work on this later. I 7 c. Upcoming events: 1. The parade - Saturday 12-6-03 Take snapshots of the event all day. Starts at 12:00 noon Richard will contact David Swain on directions of the Parade and Santa information. About 2 hours Volunteers - Richard - Marcus - Clark - Walter Linda will be available to let them in to get cameras Richard will e-mail Linda on logistics. 2. Wrestling Match - Friday 12-12-03 About 2 hours Junior Varsity at 6:00 - Will not tape Varsity at 8:00 - Will tape Will set up before Junior Varsity matches. Volunteers - Richard - Wallace - Marcus '" Holiday in the Park -'. Richard will look at putting on Rushworks System. Holiday music will be playing - Linda will find out where the music is coming from. Richard will contact David Swain, Frieda and/or Rose. 6. Chairman's Report: Richard would like to add something to the "To Do List" Add fixed cameras at the Council Chamber for Council Meetings Richard told the board the next meeting will be held on December 16,2003. Richard adjourned the meeting at 8:24p.m. APPROVED: Clark Switzer, Chairman Rhonda Gann, Recording Secretary 8