Subscribe to Newsletter
Tell a Friend
Print this Page
02/27/2007County Negotiates a Win-Win with Private Sector
Q: What are the origins of Wireless Washtenaw, and the early drivers behind the plan?
A: The middle of 2004 is when we first started having a conversation about how wireless technology could impact Washtenaw County. Our major goal was to provide access to a large part of our county that does not have many options at all — as a matter of fact, they don’t have any … dial-up. In a community such as ours, with a very high quality of life, we decided that that was unacceptable for various reasons -— the digital divide, economic development, quality of life. We first addressed our board of commissioners in January 2005.
Q: How did you build consensus behind the plan?
A: I just went around and talked to stakeholders, entrepreneurs in our area, getting advice from all of them; our universities, nonprofits, and then also our local governments. I talked to them about whether or not this was a viable option. We had a public-sector forum in March 2005 where more than 100 public stakeholders came together, and we put out our goals. We asked for them to participate with us, and to volunteer in this initiative — not financially, for hard dollars, but for human resources to assist us in this project. This made it a community project, not just a Washtenaw County project, where everyone, once they volunteered and started participating on our committees, really had some skin in the game. It really became a community project in March 2005.
Q: You chose to go with a public-private partnership.
A: We made decision early on that this had to be a win-win situation. The community needed to be serviced with a wireless network, and to meet our vision and our goals. But also the private sector — our partners — needed to make a profit. So we decided to do three things to assist in this win-win relationship. One was that we were going to be an anchor tenant to whomever we selected to be our partner. Not a free anchor tenant, but one that will actually pay for the service. We felt that we have a tremendous amount of mobile workers, and right now we’re using the wireless cards, and they’re costly, and they really only cover 65% of our county. So we thought we’d be more efficient and effective as a government with the network.
The second thing we were going to do was streamline the process, put put together an agreement with all of our stakeholders, so our partner would not have to go in front of their boards. Once they sign the contract with us, they’re only dealing with Washtenaw County, they’ll have all the assets in the community, through this agreement with our stakeholders, so they would then just be able to start deploying. So we wanted to streamline that process.
And finally, we were also going to bring forward a tremendous amount of community assets, whether it would be towers, buildings, fiber. So we put all those three things on the table and said, let’s sit down and make a partnership.
Q: What was the biggest unexpected hurdle?
A: It was the amount of time it has taken to negotiate with our stakeholders. Actually, it took us nine months to streamline that process and get our stakeholders to sign what we call our master participation agreement, which really was the transfer of assets to the county. That really was the biggest challenge, but in many ways the most satisfying challenge because it in many ways, it gave us an opportunity to sit down and make our partnership more solid with the stakeholders.
back
Comments
No records were found.
Post new comment:Only registered users can add comments.
Please Log-in
| 
