EDIE ZUVANICH Special to the Press
City to discuss dissolution of emergency task force After the challenges of Ice Storm Yuri in 2021, the city developed an Emergency Preparedness Task Force. The task force was comprised of volunteers who focused primarily on communication technologies. Since the task force charter expired in July, there has been discussion of whether the group was still necessary.
The city promoted Bill Zito Jr. to Director of Emergency Management in August. He had served as the Emergency Management Coordinator since January.
On Nov. 16, Zito presented City Council a plan to transition the task force into an Emergency Preparedness and Response Support Group.
“This will start the process of building what we call a ‘community emergency response team’. We don’t want to do that just yet, this is just laying the foundation,” Zito said.
He listed a need for certification training, budget and equipment as reasons to not jump directly into creating a response team.
“Ultimately, we want to take the most dedicated of what we’re building now and start going in that direction. That’s the varsity level for community support. We’ll get to that, but this is the start,” he said.
Zito said the group will focus on “neighbors taking care of neighbors.”
“They’ll receive guidance and support from the emergency management office. It will be informal, there’s no chairman. I’m not dictating, I’m giving them the parameters of what the plans are and what we should be doing to make those plans interlock and become more robust for our community,” he said.
The city will begin by looking for volunteers who are willing and able to donate time and energy to be a part of disaster operations, including tasks like checking on people who have registered with a state program for emergency assistance and help with shelter operations and emergency operations center support, among other tasks.
City Council directed staff and legal counsel to put an item on a future agenda to discuss legally dissolving the Emergency Preparedness Task Force, creating the Emergency Preparedness and Response Support Group and proceeding with Zito’s plans.
Skybox Datacenters ahead of schedule Haynes Strader, chief development officer of Skybox Datacenters, said the giant data center project being built at the Hutto Megasite is well underway, with the first and second buildings scheduled for 2025 completion and the third of the six data center buildings expected to be completed in 2026.
“I think we will be meaningfully ahead of schedule with the overall project from what was originally presented, and we will meet or exceed what we had initially pontificated on what the project is meant to do,” Strader said.
The Skybox representative said the first of the buildings is already off the market, though he was not allowed to say any more than that. He cited multiple non-disclosure agreements restricting the amount of information he could provide.
Skybox is also developing a project in Pf lugerville that precedes the Hutto development. The Pf lugerville complex will only have two data center buildings, but they are also already off the market, he said.
“We’ll be building a robust fiber network to (the Hutto) campus that will bring dozens of fiber providers to the area in a way that’s basically subsidized by business, not the government. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity for businesses and residents here to access not one or two or three providers but to have the potential to access dozens,” Strader said.
He added that Skybox was going to continue investing in the area.
“We appreciate the trust you had in us from the beginning and we’re here to deliver,” he said.
