City IT has worked closely with Scott County and Logis to plan and  coordinate a secondary fiber data line from 1001 Vierling Drive West(Fire Station #2) to Fuller Street South. This secondary fiber connection will allow the city to have a redundant external connection through our current internet provider Logis and the State of Minnesota from our secondary data center in the case of a fiber cut in our current line.

Our primary line was cut last summer during a road construction project and it created an extended outage that impacted the ability for the city to connect to the internet until it was repaired. This will allow for a secondary pathway to help increase redundancy and improve business continuity in situations where fiber is cut. 

From the Vierling/Fuller intersection the new fiber line will connect into existing fiber runs that will take us to a state internet connection point in Savage. 

This project has been prepping for several years and is finally ready with resources to complete. We are requesting to approve the lower bid from EPS for $56,363 plus 10% for any contingencies during the build out. A second bid is attached.

This is slightly higher than the estimated budget of $50,000 proposed during the 2023 budget cycle due to the quickly increasing material costs to get this completed. The project estimates for this fiber run have increased $5-10K per year since we first started preparing for this line due to external labor and material increases.

Funding for this project will come from the existing IT Fund. This project was planned as part of the 2023 budget process.