Tuesday night the Wake Forest commissioners agreed the town will build a 19-mile high-speed fiber network to connect 12 town-owned sites (parks, police offices, community houses, the operations center and the electric substations) at an estimated $2.75 million. The project is forecast to take 18 months for completion. On Oct. 3 during the board’s work session, IT Director Tom LaBarge said he already had the detailed engineering design.
The town will contract with CTC Technology, the consulting firm which did the initial survey of the feasibility and then prepared the business case for the network, to do all the preliminary work for $150,000 plus travel. CTC will negotiate a fee with the town if it wants CTC to supervise the construction contract bidding process and then have oversight over the construction.
The resolution authorizing the fiber network had been on the consent agenda – items which are generally routine and can be passed without discussion – but Commissioner Jim Thompson asked it be removed from that and added to the general agenda because “Its such a big deal.” After two comments – Mayor Vivian Jones said she was “very proud of this” and Commissioner Brian Pate called it “absolutely fantastic” – the vote was unanimous.
(See the article in the Oct. 4 issue of the Gazette for more details. Either scroll through News or search using the word “fiber.”)
The commissioners also approved a $449,477 contract with Integrity Services Group for the Phase II renovations of the Wake Forest Renaissance Centre, renovations which will close the center for 120 days, four months, beginning Dec. 14.
The town has received a grant of $348,530 from Wake County for the renovations to the main hall, Phase II, and the annex, Phase I, which is complete.
Facilities Director Mickey Rochelle said Integrity Services “is very familiar with the building.” They did the original renovations for the center and have just completed the annex renovations.
In other actions, the board approved all three planning requests: changing Richland Creek Community Church’s designation to institutional campus development, rezoning 6.77 acres on Gateway Commons Circle to residential mixed use for the construction of 72 townhouses, and rezoning the Reginald Forte property, 1.21 acres, to residential mixed use.
Ira Richman asked that two large trees on the Gateway property, an elm and a pine, be saved. “Trees can’t speak for themselves,” he said, but Stephen Gurganus, speaking for the developer, said the trees were “not subject to being saved” because the land will be completely cleared.
At the beginning of the meeting, Ken Christie, vice president of the Heritage Spring HOA, and a large contingent of the Heritage Spring residents, asked the board to solve a problem. Their two streets, Heritage Spring Circle and Golden Poppy Court, are used as public streets but are and have been private streets.
The developer told the first residents of the homes and townhouses that the town would accept them as public streets but the town never did. For the 75 residents now, all over 65, it means they have to pay for street maintenance ($193 per year per resident), street lights ($138 per year per resident), snow removal and yard waste pickup. Also, the police do not monitor the streets.
Christie noted that they are paying the same taxes as other Wake Forest residents but without all the services. The town allowed the developer to build the two private streets that were later connected to public streets as the development slowly grew from 2007 to 2015, when it was complete.
The residents paid $4,200 for their application to the City of Raleigh for acceptance of the water and sewer system under the two streets. Last month the city issued a letter of acceptance for the legal easement access to Wildflower properties and residences.
The residents are asking the town to accept the two streets into the town-maintained street system and free them from the financial burdens caused when the town allowed the developer to build the streets without meeting town standards.
Mayor Jones told them the board will consider their plea.
4 Responses
Great to see progress on the fiber network. 18 months just for the initial town network is long, but hopefully they can complete it in sections and already attract residential providers to roll out their offering in parallel.
$2.75M for city use only fiber network and we cant even get decent street lights????
Sounds like a refund might be due to the residents. Of course it won’t happen, even though that would be the right thing to do.
The developers promise the world and get off scot-free. The town needs to be tougher on developers and more fair to residents. Look at the mess with Heritage Middle and Elementary Schools where the developer set aside land for the schools that was too small to put in effective roads. Who thought using one lane in and out of two con-joined schools would work?