CCPA Takes Steps to Provide Wireless Connectivity
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio --The Columbiana County Port Authority resumed its efforts Monday night to bring wireless connectivity to East Liverpool and Wellsville.
The board engaged Ice Miller Whiteboard LLC, a consulting firm, and will pay it $5,000 to pursue a $100,000 grant for a more detailed study of what’s involved in providing residents and businesses in those two municipalities with wireless, and some wired, connection to the Internet.
Much of Columbiana County lacks wireless connectivity.
Whiteboard will determine demand, the CEO of the authority, Tracy Drake, explained, and how to meet that demand with the cellular towers and other infrastructure in place plus what would need to be built and at what cost.
The board hopes “the study will show enough need,” Drake said afterward, then determine, “Here’s what you can do. Here’s the cost, then get loans” from the state Local Government Improvement Fund to conduct a full-fledged study and build the structures needed.
Loan repayments would come from user fees.
If the study determines sufficient demand as anticipated, the port authority can submit its application to the Local Government Improvement Fund by the end of October and should learn its determination of the $100,000 grant sometime during the first half of next year.
Should Columbiana proceed and provide the wireless connectivity, it would be the first rural county is Ohio to do so, Drake said. To date, 22 counties, all of them urban, have provided most of not all of their residents with speedy access to the Internet. Columbiana residents still have to rely on dial-up.
Under the agreement with Whiteboard, the port authority would pay $2,000 of the cost with East Liverpool and Wellsville contributing $1,500 each.
Drake also hopes to resume discussions with the Port Authority of Pittsburgh to extend wireless connectivity to the Ohio River east of the state line. At present it extends only as far as the last lock on the river in Pennsylvania.
The board extended Drake’s contract as CEO a year under the current terms. Drake is paid $200,000 in annual salary and granted a car allowance. His new employment contract expires Sept. 30, 2014, and the board has the option of renewing it once more until Sept. 30, 2015.
The board also ratified an agreement to grant an easement and right of way to Ohio Power Co., a subsidiary of American Electric Power, that will allow it to install and maintain an underground electric line to provide service to Arrowhead Utica Pipeline owned by Hilcorp.
The authority hopes to soon award a contract for work along Clark Avenue in Wellsville that will allow the line to be built by Nov. 1 to the Wellsville Intermodal Industrial Park, Drake informed his board. Hilcorp has taken down the tanks on the property it bought there, Drake said, “and is moving forward.” When the preparatory work is complete, about Dec. 15, 200 more trucks a day will be moving in an out of the industrial park and the project will provide jobs for “10, 12, 15 people,” the port authority CEO said. “It’s about job creation.”
In fiscal officer Penny Traina’s absence, Drake delivered the financial report that shows the authority is $200,000 under budget, he informed the board.
Copyright 2013 by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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