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UnresolvedResolution2004

Back in October 2003, the Telecom Board and City Council began drafting a resolution to reinforce work already underway on the Cox Franchise negotiations. It also provided the charges for the City TTIP Task Force. The resolution called for completion of both efforts by December 2004. As of this writing, the Council has not reconsidered the lapsed Resolution.

Attach:FinalUnresolved Δ Task Force ResolutionJan-Feb2005.pdf

Attach:C:redsquarebullet.gif Δ

.TelecomWatch 2005
Digital Dumpster Diving

As our Mayor and Mayor launch their “State of” addresses this week, TelecomWatch pledges only to recover and recycle the City’s 2004 telecommunications resolutions and related wikiwords for another spin in 2005.

In the our town's digital world, slow news is no news, and since most of our Fayetteville's Telecom Board and TTIP Task Force activities remain very much “under construction”, local telecom watchers could have another lean year. But we’ll make a safe prediction that the top telecom stories for 2005 will be driven by ripple effects stemming from actions (and inactions) underlying the City’s key wikiwords for 2004, (SeeUnresolvedResolution2004 and /Finalresolution-EarnesJan15?-04.pdf.) Our greatest hope -- and challenge to City leaders -- is that our Council will make some major digital waves by quickly addressing the Council resolutions that have guided the Telecom Board’s work with the Cox Franchise renewal, as well as the TTIP Task Force’s broader charges for telecommunications strategy and infrastructure development. We’ll do our digital best to bring you into the process. (How? See WhatsaWiki and AddYourCommentary. We’re going for a more interactive wiki in 2005)

In our view, after looking in TelecomWatch's rearview monitor, the hardworking volunteer members of the Telecom Board and TTIP Task Force have pushed the limits of what our Fayetteville community can reasonably expect from planning and oversight efforts based on volunteer members -- no matter how well qualified and energetic. Both of these groups of top-notch folks have voluntarily taken on complex technical tasks that in many cities demand large, highly trained staffs, and hefty budgets. And several Council Members, notably Marr, Jordan, Cook and Thiel, have been especially thoughtful leaders in working alongside the volunteers to ensure closer attention to the City’s needs in our 21st Century “Knowledge-based Society”.

However, the City staff and financial support anticipated under the Council's Resolutions never materialized in 2004, and the City’s CAO has since resigned. Our City does not yet begun a City organizational chart or planning schema for telecommunications staffing, infrastructure, and strategy issues, which were some of the charges for study by the Task Force. Similarly, the Cox Franchise negotiations remain at about the same stage as found by the Council last January (and as found throughout the last eight years of negotiations that began in 1996.) Clearly, the telecom ball remains in the court of the Mayor and City Council to resolve their own 2004 telecom resolution and provide senior City staff support and budgeting to accomplish the charges to the Task Force and Telecom Board. (We’ve heard that some sort of Information Office will replace a few of the CAO functions, but we’d suggest a much broader look at the City’s near non-existent communications organization and operational setup.)

Watchmaster footnote: In some weird way, the City’s continued dirth of Telecom planning and documentation may actually rank as the top telecom story of the year -- and of the last decade. Thus we may have buried our best lead for our Story-Of-The-Year.) Sadly, however, we are certain that our wimpy website remains the only place in town where you’ll find the background on most o fthese local telecommunications topics, whether on paper, or in other media or entity. (And if you think TelecomWatch is loosely organized, take a look at some of the City’s ( See FOIAFilesFor2004?, CityTelecomWebsites?). So our only sure promise for 2005 is this: If our City ever manages to establish an organizational framework and systematic documentation for local telecom issues, we’ll gladly fade even further into virtual obscurity. In the meantime, we wish our City leaders a productive New Year and hope to see Telecommunications line items more clearly identified and strongly supported in the City’s planning and budgeting for 2005. They’ll be coining some mint-fresh wikiwords for our Story-of-the-Year for 2005, which should put our stale old stories and current wikiwords out of circulation and into the virtual history wiki in the sky.