Tower initative meant to improve rural internet, City meetings to go paperless for agenda delivery

Staff Report

It was said by someone long ago (the internet tags various companies and people, depending on source) that computers would never quite catch on, or that if they did they would have a relatively small market.

The person who said that (IF they said that), regardless of whether their remarks were taken out of context, was wrong. Surely this is not up for debate in the present day.

Nonetheless, in order that City and other school district residents have satisfactory internet for remote learning, it was reported at the Monday council meeting that a company named Country Wireless of Spencer, Wisconsin and first approached by the local schools had in turn approached the City of Stanley about placing antennas for wireless on its water towers, including–so it would seem, the prison.

“Country Wireless would access the water tower by the prison and install antennas and hardware to transmit signals to be received with radios at resident’s homes,” the letter from Jeremy Carolfi of Country Wireless to the City of Stanley reads.” Per the letter, the Stanley-Boyd School District is curently providing approximately 45 cellular Wi-Fi repeaters to students, which antennae on water towers would partly be able to replace. The “top tier” according to Carolfi would be ‘50/6,’ with a rate quoted at the meeting of $125/month. Before a final cost estimate can be given, Country Wireless would need to see the work to be done–and this is where wires could enter the picture, pun intended.

“At the most there’s two wires runnign down the inside,” Mayor Al Haas told Council members of the proposed but not yet finalized nor enacted serivce agreeemnet from Country Wireless. But running the wires down the inside of City water has its own challenges. The water towers for the Ctiy will need to be repainted in a few years, and wires might complicate that, increasing the cost of a paint job. Nothing has been agreed upon yet, and the next step would be to have Country Wireless come to a Council meeting. Speaking of which, agenda delivery is about to go wireless, as the members of the Stanley Common Council have all received laptops, a point touched on prior to adjournment Monday February 15.

“Everybody’s got their laptops,” Mayor Al Haas said. “So is everyone ready to use them?” With no objections being entered the next Common Council packet will be delivered to members via the internet–assuming a good connection. If the Country Wireless agreement gets approved, that connection could go all the way to County Line/130th, at the border of Delmar and Colburn. Petition now for better internet, or make due service offered.