Ernie Staten

Deputy Director of Public Service
City of Fairlawn Department of Public Service

Ernie Staten, Deputy Director of Public Service, has been working in local government for more than twenty three years at the City of Fairlawn located in Northeastern Ohio. He is responsible for the City’s infrastructure; including but not exclusively, it’s engineering, design, construction and maintenance. Ernie is the liaison for all utilities: storm water, sanitary sewer, public water, and electric, gas, phone and cable.

The City has 4 parks all of which are designed, maintained and serviced by the department. There are 55 miles of roadways in the municipal. With an average snowfall of 62 inches through the season, providing safe driving conditions is a top priority. The City of Fairlawn has 7,500 residents and hosts over 30,000 visitors daily in commercial activity.

The city has a compactor service available to all of its residents of which 82% participate. The compactor allows the resident to recycle paper, plastic, glass, oil, cardboard and yard waste at no charge.

Staten has been instrumental in the development and planning of the brand name FairlawnGig – a municipal broadband community. The City of Fairlawn will be the first true gigabit city in the State of Ohio due to the unique engineering of Fujitsu Network Communications. The City of Fairlawn is investing in the ‘last mile’ network required to bring state of the art internet access services to Fairlawn, its residents, businesses, and visitors as well as the adjacent Akron-Fairlawn-Bath Township Joint Economic Development District (“JEDD”). The FairlawnGig is a one gigabit, fiber to the home project with a carrier grade wireless component. This municipal broadband service will advance the following purposes:

• Make world-class, broadband internet services available to all residents, businesses and visitors in the City of Fairlawn and the JEDD at reasonable prices
• Create a competitive advantage for attracting businesses, resident and visitors to the City of Fairlawn and the JEDD
• Promote commercial and residential growth and stimulate economic development in the City of Fairlawn and the JEDD.
• Provide a carrier-grade wireless network that would improve the Fairlawn experience for approximately 30,000 daily visitors.
• Encourage competition by making the fiber optic network open and available for use by other internet service providers.
• Improve city services and public safety communications, awareness and responsiveness.
  

Staten is propelling the City of Fairlawn to a highly competitive, technologically advanced municipality with an eye to the future.