'Digital Underground' approved by city council

Bloomington City Council debate ran late Wednesday night because of an approved appropriation ordinance that grants $600,000 to complete a loop of fiber-optic cable underneath the city. The project is part of a program known as the Bloomington Digital Underground, which will provide city agencies with a connection that is faster and higher in capacity than the existing connection that is leased from Ameritech. \nThe project consists of six conduits installed beneath streets and sidewalks from West Acuff Road to Hillside Drive. One of those conduits will be filled with a fiber-optic cable to be used by the city. The extra conduits will allow the city or other companies to install high-capacity cables without digging again.\nGregory Volan, chief information officer for the city's Information and Technology Services Department, said the extra conduits can be installed at a marginal price because much of the cost associated with installing the cables is related to digging into and replacing streets and sidewalks. Volan said the completion of the project was crucial to the city's prior investment.\n"If we do not complete the other half (of the fiber ring), then we are not going to be fully utilizing the resource that we've already started," Volan said.\nCouncil members didn't voice much opposition to the plan itself but were concerned with the future of the excess capacity. The ordinance did not specify a governing body that would create policy deciding to whom and at what price the technology would be distributed.\nFurther complicating the debate was an urgency to decide the issue as quickly as possible so public schools that would connect into the cables could be hooked up by the beginning of the next school year.\nTwo options weighed included granting the authority to the city telecommunications committee, which would then send its recommendations to the council for final approval, or a separate working committee that would decide and implement policy.\nCouncil member Jeffrey Willsey said city council should make or approve the decisions associated with policy.\n"I was not invited into policy-making; I was elected into policy-making." Willsey said. "The reason that I'm not supportive of a working committee is because it constitutes that form of invitation, and I did not run for office to be invited into that kind of working committee."\nWillsey said if the working committee would voluntarily subject itself to council approval, he would support it.\nThe final vote was 6-3 in favor of the proposal. Council members Willsey, Andy Ruff and L. David Sabbagh voted against it. The council expressed its desire to take up the issue of who will make the policy associated with the fiber-optic project soon. \nSabbagh said he doubted whether the council will effectively handle the issue in the future.\n"There's going to be lots of pressure on this council not to approve something like (granting the policy-making power to the telecommunications council)," he said, "and I'll bet you that we'll cave."\nNew legislation will be introduced to solve the policy-making problem. The lag between approving the funds and creating a governing body should not affect the project because it will not be completed before council decides the issue.