The Champaign City Council will vote on whether to accept a professional agreement with Columbia Telecommunications Corporation at its regular meeting Tuesday. If hired, the female-owned consulting firm will assist the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband project in exploring potential expansion options.  

The UC2B project is an intergovernmental consortium of the University and the cities of Champaign and Urbana and is “organized to construct and operate a fiber optic network” for several homes and businesses within the community, according to a city press release. 

CTC, a Female Business Enterprise that is registered with the state of Illinois, has already been involved with the UC2B project in the past, said Karen Foster, council member at-large.

“We are just hiring them for a little bit more work,” Foster said. “I think that this ties in with what our study session was last week, (when we were) trying to hire or use more minority- and woman-owned firms for large projects.”

The added work, which could cost the city up to $100,000 and require about 600 hours of labor, will allow CTC to “initiate discussions with parties interested in expanding the UC2B network,” according to the city’s memo. The goal of the collaboration is to provide guidance and eventually connect UC2B with a network expansion partner and move toward being a “stand-alone nonprofit corporation.”