minutes

The scheduled meeting of the Electronic Village of Abingdon "91st Day" Subcommittee held in the Johnston Memorial Hospital Cafeteria was opened by Vice-Chairman Jay Cox, since Dr. Moore was temporarily called away. There were fifteen members present. These included:

F. H. Moore, Jr. Chairman	Pat Shrader
Jay Cox, Vice-Chairman	Jean Luker
Al Bradley, Secretary	Ray Millsap
Steve Galyean	Coni Patrick
David Taverner	Steve Laek
Randy Robertson	Daveena Sexton
Burt Bassham	Bill Chaffin
Rachel Fowlkes

The Phase 3 fiber project was the first agenda item. David Taverner reported that the fiber was in place and the electronics were ready and that all should be ready by the following Monday. A press release was discussed to publicize the availability of this system. Daveena Sexton volunteered to help with this press release. Rachel Fowlkes suggested that personal contacts should be instituted, also, since there was a limited area of availability. Members were to coordinate these contacts among themselves. Extension of the EVA project beyond the Main Street office of Highlands Union Bank was discussed also. Bill Chaffin suggested that any future connection into HUB offices as an extension would most likely have to be made underground initially and that further extensions would likely be to the area west of HUB near the ex-Social Services building and back onto the above-ground poles in that vicinity.

Al Bradley reported that on 15 September he and Ray Millsap had attended a meeting in Lynchburg, Va. of several municipalities interested in legislative approval of the use and development of fiber optic services. Other municipalities attending included Manassas, Va. and Salem, Va. as well as Lynchburg and Abingdon, all of whom had vested interests in providing such services. They had decided not to immediately approach the legislature, but to adopt a watchdog stance for the coming legislative session and to attempt to generate interest by other municipalities for a scheduled 30 September meeting. Dr. Moore noted that he would be speaking at a VML ad hoc committee meeting on Saturday about the previous legislative attempt and future attempts also. A representative from Lynchburg is a member of that VML Committee.

David Taverner explained that NetAccess had requested assistance by Sprint in all three instances. The last item, C. on the list, had been the inability of the hospital to access the router. This turned out to have been due to the fact that the library had installed a router of its own and that the router had not been set properly to allow JMH to network as in the past. David had reset a switch on the router at WCPL. Item B, above, was due to improper connections from the demarc in Congressman Boucher's office to the Washington County Treasurer's Office. Sprint had replaced these. Jay Cox volunteered that NetAccess would pay for B and C since they had some complicity in those items. There followed a discussion of Item A, which had turned out to be a bad splice connection on the pole at the rear of Congressman Boucher's Office and David was unsure why the splice failed. There followed further discussion of this situation, after which it was decided that we wished to have no warranty or pay any fixed cost for maintenance, and that we should pay for this expense and learn from it.

Under the subject of connections, Jay Cox stated that we were now billing to some 28 entities. Virginia Gas Co. connections were finished on 9/23 with 8 IP addresses. Another new connection was that of Highlands Union Bank on Valley Street - a connection that they would offer to their tenants at that location. The wireless technology was discussed and it was considered for integration into EVA. David Taverner suggested that it might be a good way to connect potential users such as the Martha Washington Inn that were close but outside of the immediate operating area. Jean Luker suggested its use for home purposes.

Ray Millsap suggested that selection of a regular meeting date for EVA was finally in order. It was eventually decided to hold regular meetings on the last Wednesday of each month at 12:00 noon at the Johnston memorial Hospital Cafeteria. Accordingly, the next meeting of the EVA 91^st Day Subcommittee was set for 12:00 noon on 29 October 1997 at the Johnston Memorial Hospital Cafeteria meeting room.