ECIRPD’S Second Board Meeting of 2024 Recap

The ECI Regional Planning District convened for its second board meeting of 2024 on Tuesday, May 21st, to address organizational changes, upcoming plans, and more.

The meeting started with a presentation from Charles Zimmers to discuss new high-tech crimes and the undergoing building expansion of the High-Tech Crimes Unit. Cybercrime is a growing problem all across the world. Anyone can experience cyberattacks with people often falling victim to scams. With how accessible digital devices are in this modern time, they can often be used in crimes of all kinds. The Ball Brothers Foundation helped the Delaware County Prosecutor’s Office to successfully compete with counties all across the state to be selected to house one of ten “High Tech Crimes Units” which were established in 2022. The Crimes Unit has already completed phase 1 of the building expansion and is now looking at moving into their new building in July of this year.

Another presentation given was by Jeremy Burton who works on the BEAD Program with Comcast. During his presentation, he talked about how Indiana will receive $868,109,929.29 through the BEAD Program to ensure every Indiana resident has access to reliable, high-quality internet. From March 4th to April 17th they completed the challenge phase. During a challenge phase, eligible participants submitted challenges to Internet Service Providers with supporting evidence. The service providers being challenged received the challenges to prepare their rebuttals. The challenge review was from April 18th to May 1st. They are now in the rebuttal phase which will last until June 1st. After that, the last step is the final determinations which will be held June 2nd-July 1st. 

Throughout the meeting, several grants were discussed such as the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program which is a 30-month-long grant that has just started fully taking effect across the 4 counties that make up the ECI Regional Planning District. 

If you want to be a part of the next board meeting, it will be taking place on August 13th, 2024 at the Innovation Connector at 3:00 PM. We hope to see you there!