Information Services Advisory Board

MINUTES

June 7, 2007, 6:00 p.m.

Town Hall Campus

Council Large Conference Room #10035

316 N. Academy Street, Cary, North Carolina

www.townofcary.org

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 6:02 p.m.

Present

Terra Brown-Shelton, Lee Douglas, Mark Evangelista, John Fitzpatrick, Helen Hutchings, Todd McGee, John Nolander and Staff Liaisons Susan Moran and Teri Peralta

Absent

Tangie Hofer, Nazi Kite, Vijay Raghavendran and Council Liaison Julie Robison

Approval of Minutes

Mr. McGee moved to approve the minutes from the May 3, 2007 meeting.  Mr. Fitzpatrick provided the second and the motion carried unanimously.

Watch List:  RSS Technology

Mr. Evangelista submitted that RSS technology be added to the watch list and all in attendance concurred.

Watch List:  Web Site Overhaul

There were no updates to this item.

Watch List:  Traffic Management System Update to Citizens

There were no updates to this item.

Watch List:  Dynamic Message Signs

Mr. Fitzpatrick noted that the last update indicated two signs remained inoperative and asked that staff inform the board when all signs have are functioning properly and communicating with the Traffic Management Center.

Watch List:  2007 Annual Report

Mr. Evangelista noted that the annual report is still in the early stages and indicated that he should have enough to share with the board at the next meeting.

Old/New Business

Downtown WI-FI

Mr. Evangelista introduced Ms. Moran who provided some background on the efforts made to date to offer WI-FI in downtown Cary, noting that members of this board have been interested in WI-FI for a number of years and have taken many steps toward encouraging council to support publicly available WI-FI in the downtown area.  She explained that the last major action on this topic involving the board concluded in June 2006 when, after meeting with Heart of Cary representatives, the board recommended that council direct staff to investigate implementation of downtown WI-FI, adding that staff did not concur with the board’s recommendation.  After some deliberation council voted down the board’s recommendation.

Ms. Moran went on to explain that this year the Heart of Cary requested $30,000 from the Town’s non-profit funding to establish a pilot program for WI-FI within downtown and stated that staff pulled their request from the rest of the requests and dealt with it separately since the topic had less than one year ago received Council action. She indicated that several staff members met with Heart of Cary representatives and their consulting engineer to determine what they hoped to accomplish and observed that it was an extremely productive discussion of their goals.  That meeting ended with the Heart of Cary saying that they would come back to the Town once they had shared the outcome of the meeting with their members.

Discussion then turned to House Bill 1587, The Local Government Fair Competition Act, which Ms. Moran thought could impact any decision council might make regarding downtown WI-FI implementation.  When asked what the Board could do to provide assistance to the Town, Ms. Moran indicated that they could, as citizens, communicate with the committee, but that as a board their communication would need to be directed to council.

MOTION: After further deliberation of the topic, Mr. Douglas moved that the board table the discussion of WI-FI until dispensation on the bill or until the end of the year.  As a courtesy, Ms. Moran agreed to inform the board when a decision had been made on the bill.  Ms. Brown-Shelton provided a second and the motion carried unanimously.

Some board members indicated that they would like to continue to do further research on the subject.  Ms. Moran recognized that this was their prerogative as citizens, but emphasized that they would not be acting as a subcommittee of the board and should they wish to bring their findings to the board, a majority vote would be required to bring the topic back off of the table for consideration.

Statement of Findings

The board decided, upon one more visit to the topic of downtown WI-FI and after getting updates regarding legislation and Heart of Cary, to table all discussion of WI-FI for the remainder of the year unless sufficient additional information could be presented to warrant further consideration by the board.

Citizen comments

Mr. Evangelista relayed greetings from Jo Rathgeber, previous chair of the ISAB.

Mr. Fitzpatrick asked if the instant runoff that came up at the council meeting was the result of someone.  Ms. Moran replied that the Board of Elections requested participation by Cary in this pilot program.  Mr. Fitzpatrick noted that he has heard positive feedback from neighbors who feel the instant runoff is a good idea.  He also suggested that the new ballot should be portrayed on the Web somewhere, to which Ms. Moran replied that a focus group would be held in Cary to discuss the design of the ballot.

Member Comments:

Ms. Brown-Shelton stated that her gas water heater blew up over the weekend and needed replacing and noted that when she came to the Town to get an application for permit at about 8:30 a.m. there were a lot of people in the office with only one staff member trying to service everybody.  She asked if the Town has considered having volunteers involved in working with the inspections and permits department.  Ms. Moran acknowledged that two employees that worked at the front counter in that department left at the same time and that the Town is actively recruiting to replace them.  She explained in the interim staff from other departments are helping out, adding that North Carolina law prohibits filling paid positions with volunteer workers.

Mr. Evangelista noted that he received a comment from a citizen who felt the Town was getting into the private business by sending out notices about RailHawks activities. Ms. Moran responded that she heard a similar comment at the Public Speaks Out segment of a recent Town Council Meeting.  She explained that since the Town has a relationship with the RailHawks and receives money from ticket sales, there is no conflict of interest for the Town to publish information about their events.

Mr. Evangelista reminded the board that the topic for the next meeting is streaming video and Ms. Moran asked if the board would like to invite Mr. Stice, Technology Services Director, to speak on the topic again and all agreed.

Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 7:21 p.m.