The invisible community media task force

Ross Currier wonders in his Whut Up with Wi-Fi? blog post last week:

I know that the City set up a Task Force to look into this, and other communication technologies topics. I’m wondering if anyone can update us on their progress.

IMG_0572w800.jpgI wonder, too. The City Council created a community media task force in May of 2005 and put Councillor Scott Davis in charge of it.

It was to have delivered its report by Oct. 31, 2005. See this blog post I wrote for N.org which includes the full text of the final motion.
We briefly mentioned on our Feb. 10 show that the task force had met once recently but I don’t remember any other discussion about it.

I’m wondering:

  • What have been all the reasons for the delay in the report? Have those reasons been documented and reported to the Council?
  • Who’s on the committee?
  • When and where does the task force meet?
  • Where on the City’s website are the minutes of the task force?
  • How much of the $20,000 budget has been spent and for what?
  • Is the task force suited to study the wi-fi infrastructure issues facing the city? Burnsville, Mpls, St. Paul and now Eden Prairie have all recently launched such task forces. The issues are complex and many. And it’s not just wifi. Wimax and FTTH/FTTP (fiber to the home/premises) need to be examined, too.
  • What’s the status of the roughly $500k that was sitting in the cable TV fund? The City’s new $60,000+ website was funded from it. I seem to remember that the Council authorized a temporary loan from that fund to pay for something else.
  • What’s the status of funding for NTV, the “non-profit organization operating the public, education, and government cable access“?

One Comment

  1. Chip Cuccio said:

    The issues are complex and many. And it’s not just wifi. Wimax and FTTH/FTTP (fiber to the home/premises) need to be examined, too.

    Exactly right.

    September 25, 2006

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