2007 1213 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting December 13,2007 City of Sunny Isles Beach, Florida 12. DISCUSSION ITEMS 12A. Discussion on Recommendation to Scale Back the Wireless Island Project. Action: [City Clerk's Note: Additional Information on Wireless Island Status, distributed prior to meeting.] City Manager Szerlag reported noting that a full scale Wireless Island initiative will cost over $5 Million Dollars, and that he is proposing to reduce the scope of this initiative to include Government access and certain hot spots throughout the City. He said this would mean that we would no longer strive for lOO% penetration of street access available (three stories or less), and we would nqt have total vertical access (above three stories). He said that the primary reason for this recommendation is that there is no cost savings for government access service because the City will still have to purchase Wi-Fi access cards. He said the issue of having access points on rooftops of our condominiums was considered initially to be at zero cost, because essentially we are providing the utility and we wanted to have a good pro quo free wireless service for free access points. He said there is also the issue of WiMax vs. WiFi technology. Assistant City Manager Doug Haag said there is emerging technology called WiMax which is widely used internationally, but not in the United States. He said companies such as Sprint, Nextel, etc., are pursuing this and considering a nationwide WiMax type of technology and infrastructure such as already exists for cell phone providers. He said the WiMax technology is significantly lower in cost of implementation because it has a wider range and greater penetration capability than the WiFi technology. Public Speakers: none Commissioner Goodman asked how much are we spending up to this point to do the system, and Assistant City Manager Haag said we projected a five-year cost of$5 Million Dollars to do citywide including the verticality, but by focusing on the hotspots we are projecting that the five-year cost would be about $500,000.00. Commissioner Scholl said he supports the scaling down of this project due to budgetary constraints, and that it is unpredictable at this point. He said when WiFi first started to go across the county, for the past few years most municipalities focused on trying to make money on a public component of it, and they focused less on what it could do for the municipality to make them more efficient. He said what is happening now is, because the public component hasn't shown a revenue stream as clearly, other cities are making the same decision that we are making. He said the hotspot issue that is being proposed by the City Manager and staff is a good way to get our feet wet, it is not overly expensive, and it will still provide a great benefit to our citizens because you can sit in the Park with your laptop and have wireless access. He said as technology matures and comes down in price, the uses for the City will also mature, and in the future we will be able to make a cost comparative, and then we can justify it and we will be able to make a more prudent financial analysis. Vice Mayor Thaler asked when this project will be done, and Assistant City Manager Haag commended IT Director Edel Fonseca and IT Analyst Kamran Sadighi, for actually pointing toward this type of solution and direction of focusing initially on just the hotspots. He said that they have been working with a number of vendors, getting proposals, doing a lot of 21