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The scheduled meeting of the 91st Day Subcommittee held in the Town of
Abingdon Municipal Building was opened by Chairman F. H. Moore, Jr. There were
fourteen members present. These included:
Minutes of the 28 May meeting were approved as presented. Dr. Moore introduced Wanda Fritz, Data Salesperson with Sprint, to the rest
of the group. Wanda was substituting for David Taverner who was unable to attend
this meeting. Dr. Moore then reminded us that at the last meeting Jay Cox, Jean Luker and
David Taverner had been instructed to attempt to model a rate structure based
upon the system costs that David Taverner had presented. Jay Cox distributed draft copies of such a model and explained that the group
had met and attempted to plug into the model as many of the known and
foreseeable costs of such an operation as best they could devise. The model
presented here appeared to be an acceptable one to the group. They had decided
on three main goals for this plan:
Jay then explained the model that the group had devised and were recommending
for adoption The model had taken into account various costs of operation;
including 20 initial drops to individual connections, IP address administration,
billing functions, a part-time contents administrator, a loan for capital in
order to make connections, and the cost of a leasing program offered by Sprint
for the electronic components to be installed in the Sprint Valley Street
Office. The only part of the system costs left unfunded by this rate structure
was that of the physical cost ($39,400) of the purchase and installation of the
48-strand fiber optic cable along Plumb Alley, Court Street and Troopers Alley.
The Town Council had been approached and requested to pay this cost at their
meeting of 3 June and had agreed to do so. Jay also stated that they had
discovered means of economizing on the number of physical connections, a very
expensive part of the Sprint proposal at the previous meeting, that they had
decided on 20 physical connections as a more reasonable number. After the expenses had been included, the revenues to cover the expenses had
been derived and these were in the form of projected connection fees and rates NOTE:
actual rates were submitted and discussed at this meeting, but have been deleted
here since they may have to change as a result of matters discussed later in the
meeting. Jay noted that, to the best of his knowledge, there was no system like this
in the world and that there would be a learning curve on Sprint's part, as well
as that of the Town and NetAccess. Jay also presented as part of the committee's report that there were six
items to be generally agreed upon as part of the service requirements for users.
These are:
With this, Wanda Fritz, Sprint Data Salesperson, discussed Sprint's charges
for maintenance of the system. These were set out as follows:
Wanda reiterated that this was a best estimate pricing and could change after
six months of service. She also explained that the rental rate of the Version 2
electronic equipment ($860/month) included limited maintenance and no ownership
of this equipment, but that when this equipment became outmoded, it could be
traded in for newer equipment. The Free Market Value Leasing price ($597/month)
includes outright ownership of the equipment after 36 months. The consensus of
opinion of the group seemed to be to employ the monthly rental rate. Jay Cox
stated that in his model he had used an earlier estimate of $750 per month or a
total of $ 9,000. The change in rental rates to $10,320 per year would affect
the model somewhat and could change the final rate structure. There followed some discussion of the terms of the model, debt financing and
of the changes to the financial picture that the corrected model might show.
Ultimately, it was decided that the overall picture would change very little. On motion of Jack White, seconded by Ray Millsap, the financial plan was
approved as presented by Jay Cox, Wanda Fritz and others. This motion passed
unanimously. There was further talk of the financing of indebtedness to be incurred and
who actually would apply for and receive these funds. It was hoped that the Town
would be able to do this. Respectfully Submitted,
Albert C. Bradley, Secretary | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||