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incremental plan, it would have certainty that the full funding would be in place for implementation <br />of the entire plan. <br /> <br />Mr. Pap~ asked the EWEB representatives "what's the rush?" Ms. Wright attributed it to the <br />existing market and the fact people were excited about the project. She added that many <br />businesses consider the service to be vital and necessary public infrastructure. They struggle now <br />to get what they need and are excited about getting the service from EWEB. She said the rush <br />was to take advantage of some of the momentum around the project. Mr. Pap~ said that last year <br />he felt that EWEB was pushing the council to go someplace it did not really want to go. He <br />thought the business plan should have been fully developed for presentation to the council. Citing <br />PeaceHealth, he said he assumed that the hospital could get the kind of provider it needed to do <br />what it did on the Internet today. Mr. Bartel disagreed. Mr. Pap~ asked if there was a private <br />sector provider who could provide services to PeaceHealth. Ms. Wright said that there were <br />traditional services that have the ability to mimic what EWEB would provide, but their availability <br />was limited, and the Eugene market was not attracting the needed capital investment or <br />infrastructure improvements. Currently the cost for such services was prohibitively expensive. <br />EWEB's services would be significantly less expensive. <br /> <br />Responding to a comment from Mr. Pap~ that he had not seen a marketing report showing support <br />for the proposal, Ms. Wright said she would provide Mr. Pap~ with the full business plan, which <br />included details about market surveys performed by EWEB. EWEB had talked to both end users <br />and service providers, and the service providers had given EWEB some very specific figures about <br />their customer needs and what they would pay EWEB for service. Ms. Wright noted that the full <br />business plan had been placed in the council office. <br /> <br />Responding to a question from Mr. Rayor regarding the proposed method of financing, Ms. <br />Wright said that EWEB was acknowledging that markets had changed. The telecommunications <br />market had tightened and funding was more difficult and expensive to access. EWEB would like <br />to have the flexibility in financing if it needed it, but hoped to find financing that was completely <br />separate. Mr. Rayor said that EWEB could do what it wanted if it had the electric utility as a <br />recourse, but the question to him was whether the plan stood alone. He wanted to keep Section 3 <br />of the existing resolution intact until adoption of the next resolution. He thought the voters could <br />understand the finance question for the lesser $2.5 million amount. <br /> <br />Mayor Torrey asked if anyone else in the community could provide the service EWEB proposed to <br />provide. Mr. Smith said no one was proposing to provide such a universal system. <br /> <br />Mayor Torrey asked if private companies had attended the stakeholders' meetings to express <br />concern. Mr. Bartel said the utility was challenged to make its case during meetings of the <br />Telecommunications Technical Group, but in the end people appeared to believe the service was a <br />valuable thing to have because it was currently not available. <br /> <br /> MINUTES--Eugene City Council June 25, 2001 Page 11 <br /> Work Session <br /> <br /> <br />