On Tuesday night, the Champaign, Ill., City Council will...

council approve a second amended intergovernmental agreement between the city of Champaign, the city of Urbana and the University of Illinois. It would create the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband Consortium, and a policy committee of six stakeholders pulled from the consortium’s members. The parties formed an agreement to craft the fiber network known as UC2B in 2009. The new agreement would transition the management of the network to this private nonprofit entity effective Sept. 30, pending approval from NTIA, which had awarded the project a stimulus grant. The document lays out how the new nonprofit structure would work, while offering caveats that some sections are still under discussion. In a Friday memo, Champaign City Manager Dorothy Ann David recommended on behalf of the city administration that the council approve the proposal. The changes “are now necessary to authorize the parties to transition UC2B as an intergovernmental Consortium that is heavily funded with local public revenues and Federal grant funds to a private, not-for-profit entity that is not reliant upon public subsidy and City staff support,” David said. UC2B member entities will still own the infrastructure, which will be leased to the nonprofit the resolution proposes to create, she said. To receive federal approval from NTIA by Sept. 30, the application to transfer the assets to the nonprofit will need to be submitted by Aug. 15, she said. One concern that arose at a July 24 UC2B policy committee meeting was that the network would, under proposed changes, no longer be under control of the public despite being built with public funds, a meeting summary memo attached to the document said.