electronic village of abingdon

The scheduled meeting of the Electronic Village of Abingdon "91st Day" Subcommittee held in the Johnston Memorial Hospital Cafeteria was opened by Jay Cox, Vice Chairman. There were ten participants present. These included:

The minutes of the 27 January 1999 meeting were approved as presented. Eric Schuler was welcomed back as a representative of the Washington County Public Library.

The next item for discussion was that of the status of new connections. These were as follows:

It was noted that, with the exceptions of items numbered a and d, above, all of the new connections were completed or underway. No word has been received from Washington County as to their desire for connection as of this date. The Love House B & B has underground utility services and did not wish their connection to be made overhead as we had planned. We will try to work further with the owners in this regard. Item no. f, above, will be handled locally as an extension of an existing route in the area of that office. The status of proposed connections was seen and approved by the 91^st Day Committee.

Third on the agenda was a correction to the proposal for creation of an Authority for E V A based on the Service District provision of Section 15.2-2400 of the Code of Virginia (1950) as amended. This code section reads as follows [emphasis added]:

There followed a discussion of how best to describe the E V A Service District. It was agreed that the district should be described as encompassing the Corporate Limits of the Town. In this manner, when the Corporate Limits were expanded, if that were to happen, the Service District would change

with such expansion. This was agreed upon for submission to the Town Attorney and to the Town Council as the recommendation of the 91^st Day Subcommittee.

Agenda item number four at this meeting included a notification from NetAccess that they had established a Dedicated Network Support Department. Jay Cox stated that they had employed two people, Will Carty and Ray Neal, who are presently operating this department and will employ two additional people in this capacity. NetAccess is monitoring these connections for problems and notifying the users of problems, often before they are aware of the problem themselves.

The possible formation of a Regional Technology Council was the next agenda item. Many areas of Virginia have such councils already and one is needed in this area as well. Rachel Fowlkes stated that Jay Lemmons was heading up an effort to begin such a council and had invited representatives of the Center for Innovative Technology to meet with any of us who may be interested. The target dates set for this were March 15 or March 18 at 2:00 PM at the Higher Education Center here in Abingdon.

Jay Cox also wished to make everyone aware that the Washington County Chamber of Commerce was studying another Expo event. Now that a good location such as the Higher Education Center was available for such an undertaking, it was thought to have even greater potential for success. Target dates for this event are November 5 through November 6 of this year. Jay Cox said that they hoped to have at least five key vendors, such as Microsoft, NetScape, Cisco and others committed to attend by March 31. Then they would be assured of a successful conclusion to this event.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:30 PM.

Albert C. Bradley,