DARLINGTON — Mayor Mike McDermott called the City of Darlington meeting to order at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 21 with action regarding switching phone service and internet service away from the county and procuring the city’s own services.
At a Finance and Personnel Committee meeting, Bob Ward, Lafayette County’s IT Director, provided information about the current phone and internet setup.
Ward began by showing the council an ethernet cable and comparing it to a garden hose and correlated the megabits of information that flow through an ethernet cable, similar to the water that flows through a hose.
“What’s confusing for people is the question: If you split the internet away from the county, will the phones go down?” Ward said. “The answer is no. Every one of the city’s phones is actually two garden hoses. One hose is carrying water that goes to the phones, the other hoses take the water to the computer (PC). Like a two-lane highway.”
Boiled down — the ethernet cabling has two types of traffic within each cable and the phones will continue to work if the city moves the internet service away from the county and obtains its own internet service.
“What I’m proposing what the city does is to route the one garden hose that carries your internet traffic to an internet provider (such as Lumen, Mediacom or ComElec) and continue to run the phone traffic connected to the phone controller at the courthouse,” Ward said.
It was noted that the city uses one-fifth of the internet data that is available at the county’s system. It was also noted that increasing the amount of internet megabits would result in a huge increase in pricing.
Regarding the cost of a new internet provider Alder Steve Pickett said, “The last time I talked with ComElec, they said it would be free for us because they use out water tower (antenna dishes are placed on the tower to provide internet to their customers).”
ComElec, $110 per month (internet service); MediaCom, $445 per month (includes phone and internet); Lumen, $895 per month (includes phone and internet); phone and internet from county, $225 per month (it wasn’t stated what just the phone charges would be).
“I don’t think we should change our telephone, and I think we should go through ComElec for internet, and I’ll make that a motion,” Pickett said at the council meeting. Alder Dave Roelli seconded the motion, which passed 5-1. Alder Ray Spellman voted no.
In other business:
● Ordinance Committee discussed snow shoveling and if residents or businesses don’t shovel their sidewalk what would be the fee for the city doing the shoveling.
The city has never charged a resident or business for shoveling or clearing snow from a sidewalk.
● New codes will be developed for food trucks, airbnb (short term rentals), zoning changes, homelessness, etc.
● Approved reorganized the code book and a new table of contents.
● Advice from the company employed to organize and publish the new code book, is to stop going through the chapter-by-chapter review of the current code book.
● Darlington Chamber is looking to redesign a logo that will represent the city.
● A notice of Spring Election for April 2, 2024. Circulating nomination papers for Mayor and Alders that are up for reelection may begin on Dec. 1, 2023 and must be filed Jan. 2, 2024.
● Approved Oct. 2023 financial statements for the City, Water Dept. and Sewer Dept.