New internet, phone systems being considered for courthouse
The Ozark County Courthouse will soon be upgrading its current Centurylink DSL internet service to fiber service provided through Marshfield-area business Show Me Technologies.
Ozark County Clerk Brian Wise said the choice to stay with Centurylink or switch to Show Me Missouri for the fiber internet was an easy one.
“Centurylink wanted to charge $2,400 a month for internet for the courthouse,” Wise said during the Feb. 22 commissioners weekly meeting. “I already had a quote from Show Me for $800 a month. Also, if we went with Centurylink, we would have to pay to get 3,000 feet of fiber [optic cable] to the courthouse because the line has to be their specific fiber. So, on top of the $2,400 a month, we’d have to pay them to get 3,000 feet of fiber to the courthouse. The guy said he’d send a surveyor down, and I told him he didn’t have to do that. I said, ‘I got a bid that’s 150 percent cheaper than what you’ve said, and without construction. So, please don’t send him. You’d be wasting your time.’”
Eastern District Commissioner Gary Collins said he agreed with the choice.
“It just makes all the sense to go with them,” Collins said. Western District Commissioner Layne Nance agreed. Presiding Commissioner John Turner was on vacation and wasn’t present at the meeting but had expressed a positive opinion about Show Me Technologies at previous commissioners meetings.
“It just saves us money immediately. The very first month. And it’s way better,” Wise said. “And Show Me is local. Centurylink is not. I think that’s where the difference lies.”
Wise said Show Me Technologies can use the fiber lines that have been run to the courthouse for the 44th Judicial District Court system, slashing the cost of what the installation would otherwise be.
A phone upgrade also likely
Wise said after the internet upgrade is squared away, the courthouse plans to also switch its current phones through Centurylink to West Plains business Grennan Communication.
The county clerk and commissioners say there have been numerous issues with Centurylink during their time working with the company.
“Our check is printed every month, and the stub below tells that this invoice number is for this amount,” Wise said. “But they add a late fee every single month, saying we hadn’t sent payment. So we have to say, ‘Hey, Christy [Thompson, county treasurer], can you give us the canceled check where they’ve cashed our check?’ And then we have to send that to them. The next month? We do it all again. We can’t be the only company that sends a check that covers 12 or 15 lines.”
The commissioners said they’ve had trouble with the way the company has run phone lines through the county, sometimes installed in ways that let the lines be easily damaged.
“I like to get along with everyone, but you get a short fuse on a stick of dynamite and after awhile, it’s going to go off,” Collins said. “I mean, let’s be real here. If they bury them down where they’re supposed to be, we’d be fine. I don’t care if they put them on the backslope out of everybody’s way, but they’ll either put them right down at the end of a tile or cut them right through a tile. If they have a section of line to fix, rather than dig it in, I’ve seen them come out of a pedestal, go 3 foot down the ditch and run the line though a culvert. I can show you several of those out here in the county. I’ve had them go in and dig under my slab, undermine the slab, to put it in. What’s that do to the slab? It’s just aggravating.”
Nance said he’d also had trouble with the lines.
“I’ve got a line that’s been cut four times that was cut again in the snow,” he said. “That’s how shallow it is. I had it covered up in base rock, and then he pushed the snow off of it Thursday, and I got a call, ‘Our phones are out.’ So, I told them to call the phone company.”
A needed network of phones
Another telephone issue is that, currently, the courthouse does not have a connected phone system. Each office has its own dedicated line. The new system being considered would instead have one connected system in which calls could be transferred easily between offices.
“Right now, whenever you Google ‘court in Ozark County,’ it pulls up our number,” Wise said. The county clerk’s office, which is responsible for elections and other administrative duties of the county, has no involvement with the court system.
“So, a [trial] day like today or last week [with the winter weather], we get probably 50 calls a day from people looking for the courts. Defendants, lawyers, even judges’ offices. . . . We can’t redirect them, so we just have to give out the circuit clerk’s number each time. Sometimes that same person calls our office right back, and we have to give the correct number again,” Wise said.
The commissioners say their office, as well as many others in the courthouse, receive a high volume of calls meant for other offices when residents aren’t sure which office to call for what business.
“And the good thing about Grennan is that they’re going to have the ability to come and run fiber. They’re going to have all drops to each office. Where we would have to pay someone else to do that, Grennan has the ability to run it all and just give us our phone system and phones. Then, it’s just one bill,” Wise said.