City Council Advances Telecommunications Center

The last-minute request sounded like something out of a Tom Clancy novel.

There was talk of a “Navy project” and a “Malaysian connection.” The visiting bureaucrats were curiously short on details. It was all supposedly very high-tech. And the Thousand Oaks City Council needed to act immediately.

The mysterious proposal was actually part of a long-awaited Caltrans telecommunications center planned for the Civic Arts Plaza, which, after three years of delays, finally appears to be getting underway.

The Navy project? It’s a regional telecommunications alliance among the military, Ventura County and local cities to electronically share information and resources.

The Malaysian connection? It’s a proposal by the Malaysian government to establish a telecommunications link with Ventura County.

These and many other experiments may take place at the fledgling center, which is billed by the California Department of Transportation as a bold step that will eventually turn Thousand Oaks into a “smart community” where ideas, video images and information will travel at lightning speeds while residents stay home.

The motive, basically, is to get people on the information superhighway and off the asphalt.

The City Council voted 3 to 1 Tuesday to amend Thousand Oaks’ original 1993 agreement with Caltrans and move forward with a feasibility study for the updated two-year, $1.32-million project, which will be funded almost entirely with state and federal money. Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski cast the lone “no” vote, saying she believed Thousand Oaks needed more time to review changes in the complex proposal.

But Mayor Andy Fox said the idea sounded fine. He noted that the city has no financial obligation, aside from the $114,000 that Thousand Oaks has already spent readying a 2,000-square-foot section of the Civic Arts Plaza for Caltrans.

With $325,000 from Caltrans, Thousand Oaks will now look for a technology consultant to shepherd the futuristic endeavor, focusing on “wired” communities such as the Blacksburg Electronic Village in Virginia; the GTE Cerritos Experiment; the Cupertino CityNet; TeleEducation in New Brunswick, Canada; and Caltrans’ already existing smart communities of Davis and Chula Vista.

Once a consultant is in place, the City Council will appoint an advisory committee of local business leaders, educators, residents and government officials to review the consultant’s suggestions and determine what uses would be best for Thousand Oaks. Caltrans will then review the final findings and decide what ideas it considers worthwhile.

The Caltrans project has been long in coming, due in part to bureaucratic miscommunication--and because of technology’s rapidly evolving nature.

In 1993, Thousand Oaks officials were approached by Caltrans, which wanted to team up with the city for special telecommunications research. The City Council agreed to take part in a test project--then billed as the first such undertaking in the state.

But the plan hit a huge bureaucratic snag on the Caltrans end: The entire project, money and all, had apparently been approved by a mid-level staff person without the support--or knowledge--of his superiors.

Caltrans officials who reviewed the project determined that it did not meet the federal guidelines for such ventures and was too vague. Moreover, by that point, Caltrans had learned from its projects in Davis, Compton and Chula Vista that some of its concepts were behind the times and needed to be updated.

Under the amended plan, the center will include:

* A federal interagency telecommuting center linked to other telecenters so family members and business people could talk and see each other.

* A one-stop venue for city, county and federal services.

* A link to a nearby business incubator project, possibly the Thousand Oaks Environmental Business Cluster.

* A citywide video and data network where the city of Thousand Oaks, residents and local community organizations can share information.

* A telecommunications exploratorium to showcase advanced hardware and software to demonstrate the potential for a “city of the future.”

* A “mobility management center” that would provide bilingual, 24-hour information on all forms of transport, including the movement of people, goods, services and information.

* A “distance training” center where companies can reinvigorate their workers through videoconferencing instead of sending them to another city for more advanced education.