CAIRO — The City of Cairo’s CNS Committee met Monday to discuss forming a recommendation to be presented to the Cairo City Council regarding a short-term CNS action and improvement plan.

The end result of the meeting was that City Manager William Whitson, using comments from the committee members, will draft a recommendation to be presented and discussed at the council’s meeting Monday.

“The recommendation is to move forward with Phase One of the CNS Performance Improvement Plan,” said Whitson on Wednesday. “The main change from the draft we discussed Monday is that the channel production staffing be delayed to a future phase, likely Phase Three.”

The plan outlines four phases: Phase I (120 days); Phase II (180 days); Phase III (360 days); and, Phase IV (365-420 days).

Phase I includes: evaluating and setting new CNS service delivery standards; organizing staff plans and developing equipment specifications necessary to achieve goals for new positions; identifying and developing targeted training efforts to support team efforts; initiating efforts to evaluate the economic impacts of CNS with a university; and, initiate various community outreach efforts to positively promote CNS.

Phase II includes: evaluating and estimating the cost of system build out; performing analysis and evaluation of new marketing tools; evaluating and testing implementation of new services; applying for a public service channel license; developing and soliciting a customer service survey; and, announcing results of an economic impact review of CNS in the community.

Phase III: evaluating and obtaining recommendations regarding existing billing system; developing specific success measures; and, implementing any new services, programs and local call center.

Phase IV is evaluation and review of the plan and its impact.

Cairo City Council members Lannis Thornton, Ernest Cloud and Mayor Richard VanLandingham make up the CNS Committee.

Also present to discuss the plan were: Rod Prince, energy services director for Cairo, Chris Reneau, broadband supervisor for CNS, Cecil Rash, city finance director, and Whitson.

The majority of Monday’s discussion centered around whether or not all the new positions were necessary at this time.

Thornton, at the start of the meeting, said he was concerned with having too many positions, specifically regarding hiring a new office manager (it is an existing position but is currently unfilled because of a retirement).

He inquired if the position was necessary at this time.

Other committee members and officials cautioned against doing away with the position.

“We need someone there to run the office,” said Prince. “We need someone in the office who is going to be able to help customers with problems and is capable of meeting their needs.”

Cloud’s main concern was the creation of a channel production manager position. This person would gather and work with a team to produce local programming to broadcast on the city’s local channel.

“I think we should put that on hold until we see where we are headed,” he said.

The committee also discussed having adequate staffing to take care of cable installation and maintenance needs, a local “banner person” to promote CNS and how fast the committee wants to move forward with introducing and implementing the plan.

“In general, we have approximately 2,400 CNS customers in six years,” said VanLandingham. “We haven’t really grown more than 10 percent in the last two years. We’re going to keep throwing away money unless we invest the time, effort and money to improve the program. If we vote to stay the same, it will have the same result. We’ve got to do something different.”

The committee agreed to propose a start to implementing the plan to the council and include in the recommendation the advertising for a new office manager, a communications director and a part-time production specialist for the local programming channel.

Whitson said the committee was reviewing the recommendation draft on Wednesday afternoon. He expected to have it ready for Monday’s council meeting.

“I was very pleased with the committee meeting,” he said. “I thought we made positive progress.”