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EDC Successfully Pitches $70,000 Expense For Grant-Writing & Fiber/Wireless Connectivity Plan

Richie Duncan gathered Christy Shearin, Coy Floyd, and BOE reps along with representatives from Excelsio Communications to explain the importance of spending 70k to get a plan for making Franklin County a part of the communications "backbone" for North Carolina as well as grant-writing services that might result in getting stimulus dollars to build part of the recommended "backbone". Duncan and Excelsio reps explained that, with a system such as the one that might result from these plans in place, the county would become the proud owners of a massive communications network and could potentially sell usage of their new system to commercial communications providers such as cable & cellular service providers. Another key component of the pitch was that Franklin County would be part of a multi-county cooperative effort to procure the stimulus funds which would put the application in a much better position to gain approval. It was only later that we learned that no other counties had actually signed on to the project yet, though 2 had approached Excelsio asking for additional information.

Throughout Duncan's opening comments regarding the proposal, EDC Director Ronnie Goswick sat faithfully beside Lucy Allen and only made brief comments later in the presentation. No one ever explained why the EDC's Existing Business Coordinator was acting as the primary pitchman for a communications-upgrade rather than County IT guru Coy Floyd. Floyd did get to offer comments but none addressed how the proposal might benefit the County IT department. Rather, his seemingly random comments discussed EMS and other departmental benefits.

Christy Shearin indicated that her current upgrade plans for FC emergency communications won't be impacted by the Excelsio plans other than by gaining redundancy. School Board reps indicated that the new plans might be helpful down the road for them and will certainly provide redundancy, but won't have any other impact on their inter-system communications capabilities in the near future.

Excelsio reps were asked about their success rate in procuring stimulus funds and their response indicated that the results of their other stimulus-fund grant applications are still unknown. Duncan was asked how she narrowed the providers of the proposed services down to Excelsio and her response was sketchy at best, indicating that she would be happy to show commissioners the other quote she received. The commissioners expressed no interest in learning more than what they were told during the meeting on the issue.

Near the end of the presentation, NC Rep & Louisburg resident Lucy Allen also stood and voiced her support for the expenditure. County Commissioners stuck to their normal routine and unanimously approved the expense without any discussion amongst themselves, without ever seeing the actual written proposal from Excelsio or other potential providers, without learning anything more about the true liklihood of other counties coming on-board for the large-scale project, and clearly without having any real understanding of the nature of the "backbone" project or the potential cost to build such a system.

Copyright 2008,2009 by Sheila Hanna. The names "FC Stop the Rock" and "FC Concerned Citizens" are copyrighted 2008, 2009 by Sheila Hanna.
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