By Alice Waugh
Selectman Noah Eckhouse took a swipe at a recent Lincoln Journal column criticizing the absence of Wi-Fi in the recently refurbished town office building, saying the implied allegations are “just plain wrong.”
In his column posted on the Journal’s website on September 22 about the work of the School Building Advisory Committee, Feinberg noted what he called “a cautionary tale about the vagaries and pitfalls of public construction in Lincoln” in reference to the town office building.
“It turns out one little thing was left out. Well, maybe more than one thing is missing, but the one I’m thinking about is Wi-Fi. That’s right, we just spent seven million buckaroos on a building that lacks the latest in Internet technology,” Feinberg wrote.
“How did this happen? Well, if you ask one selectmen you’ll be told it was left out because of network security concerns,” Feinberg wrote. “If you ask another selectman you’ll be told that the project suffered from cost overruns and the only way to stay within budget was to drop some things… like Wi-Fi. Whichever you believe, expect to see a pricey Wi-Fi item on the upcoming Town Meeting warrant.”
“It’s frustrating when people write things in the newspaper that don’t tell the whole story,” Eckhouse said at the September 26 Board of Selectmen meeting. The town office building is in fact prewired for Wi-Fi, but the expenditure for additional equipment needed to get the service running was rejected by the Capital Planning Committee last year, he said. Selectmen will resubmit the request in the next budget cycle, he added.
“Suggestions that we forgot about it are just ludicrous, they’re wrong, and they’re misinformed,” Eckhouse said.
Before the renovation, the town office building had Wi-Fi “in a very ad hoc way” that did in fact run on the same network as the town’s financial system, Eckhouse said. The new equipment will allow a single separate Wi-Fi network to operate throughout the building, which also adds a level of complexity because the refurbished structure is built around metal studs rather than wooden two-by-fours, he added.
“It’s important to note that the equipment intended to be installed is commercial-enterprise-level equipment, not the $25 routers we have in our houses from Staples,” Eckhouse said. “We’re upping our game with a professionalized IT approach to this.”
There are plans for an interim system that will eventually be replaced by a permanent solution that can be used by town staff as well as visitors, Eckhouse said.
The renovation project was finished on budget, and while some changes were necessary as construction proceeded, “to imply that we cut out things that were really required because of budget concerns is just plain wrong,” Eckhouse said.
First Selectman Peter Braun welcomed Eckhouse’s remarks, joining his colleague in criticizing “articles that don’t have any facts behind them.”