St. Charles and St. Louis Counties joint WiFi meeting

December 6, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night, St. Charles County and St. Louis County Councils held a joint meeting in Clayton to discuss creating wireless Internet services for both counties.

This meeting was heralded many times during the evening as an historic event. St. Charles County Executive, Steve Ehlmann, a history buff, cited documents found from 1805 when petitioners from the two counties went to the courthouse and petitioned for a ferry service to cross the river. He mentioned that this event over 200 years ago must have been “the beginning of cooperation between our two counties.”

St. Louis County Executive, Charley Dooley, said “Our counties are urban, fast growing and changing.” He said that businesses look for infrastructure. “Technology is infrastructure,” Dooley said.

Dooley also talked about being neighborly with St. Charles County. “Let’s establish a relationship. Let’s get to know each other,” Dooley said.

The councils heard presentations from the presidents of each county’s economic development council. Missouri Democratic Party Chairman, Attorney John Temporiti, gave a technology study presentation. A comparison was made with Cleveland, Ohio’s wireless network initiative.

The councils agreed to move forward with the WiFi plan. The next step in the process is to form an ad-hoc committee comprised of two appointed council members from each county as well as one staff member from each county. This committee will report quarterly to both councils.

This meeting comes on the heels of the City of St. Louis’ cancelled plan of municipal WiFi Internet access. The project was to use streetlamps and stoplight poles in a network of transmitters. However, since the streetlights only receive power at night, there would not be an available power source during the day. Rewiring would have cost an estimated $28 million.

 

Copyright 2007 Neighbors About Town

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