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Home My WebLink AboutMN-AOC-2024-05-07 1 MINUTES (as approved June 4, 2024) Access Oversight Committee (AOC) Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 5 PM Present: chair Rich DePaolo, secretary Wayles Browne, vice chair Wies van Leuken, member Paul Smith, City of Ithaca Common Council liaison Margherita Fabrizio; Access Coordinator Alex Wiers. The AOC held its meeting by ZOOM Conferencing 01. Call to Order by DePaolo 5:03. 02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: none. 03. Public Comments: none. 04. Comments by AOC members: none. 05. Approval of Minutes of the April 2, 2024 Meeting. Moved by DePaolo, seconded by van Leuken. Approved without change 5-0. 06. Access Studio Coordinator Report. Wiers: I gave a tour for a person who had previously taken part in programs. Van Leuken refers to a report from Wiers he mailed on April 30 that included recent equipment purchases that lists more equipment than was approved. Wiers explained that that was the original list, not the one later approved by AOC. Van Leuken also asks about the "2024 annual report" included in the April 30 report; does "Personnel expenses" include staff like janitorial services, and what is "Headend/System"? Wiers: it was put together by Charter. DePaolo: will ask Charter's Karen Heck or Lauren Kelly to come to the next meeting, we'll then ask Charter to distinguish PEG's from Charter's expenses. Van Leuken: also notes that the Construction/Capital Fund Summary (should be renamed "equipment fund") in the report does not include the $2000 for the 2023 portion of the playback system (total should be $43K rather than $41K). a. 2024 Budget Equipment Purchases - Update. Wiers: purchases in process, haven't come yet. Most will be installed by me, but the curtain will be put up by vendors. 07. Member Reports a. Municipal Approvals for 2025 Budget - report. DePaolo: the Town of Ithaca approved it April 22. Van Leuken: the Village of Cayuga Heights approved it April 17. Fabrizio: for City of Ithaca, goes to Committee next week and to full Council early June. b. Common Council meetings on Government Channel 15 - report. Fabrizio: City's Acting Dir. of Public Information and Acting City Clerk Alan Karasin says staffers would be needed in order to stream meetings; he doesn't know if there is a possibility of streaming from YouTube channel. She does not know of public interest in telecasts of meetings, but can ask all Council members. DePaolo: the Franchise §15.10 says that the Franchisee "shall direct access staff to cablecast the monthly Common Council meeting and three other standing committee meetings of the City" and "the City shall...pay $3400" for telecasting at $15 per hour, increasing 4% per year"; that would make it $35/hour at present. DePaolo will write Wiers an e-mail asking officially about the possibility of simulcasting from YouTube without a staffer. Fabrizio will connect 2 Wiers with Karasin to check on equipment. Van Leuken recalls that the control room equipment was installed in City Council chambers with PEG funds remaining from previous franchise, circa $103,000. DePaolo to Smith: Channels 13, 15 and 16 are on the basic tier and Charter should make them available to all viewers without extra charge, but Charter is charging for set- top boxes and not making these channels available on its app. DePaolo and Fabrizio will ask the Acting City Attorney again to consider an official letter to Charter about this. AOC made the request 2 years ago (May 13, 2022). c. Surplus equipment list #2 - Resolution and Report. Smith reviewed the equipment of List #2 and made recommendations. Smith: the list in this Resolution is the same as in the Access Studio Coordinator's report except for the last column, which recommends keeping many of the items. Van Leuken will distribute information on the to be donated items to PEG producers. A resolution of approval was moved by Smith and seconded by Fabrizio. WHEREAS the Charter Communications ("Charter") has identified equipment that is no longer needed for the PEGASYS Community Media Center (“PEGASYS”); and WHEREAS, Section 15.3 - 2 of the Franchise Agreement states that the Access Oversight Committee (AOC) shall approve the use of Public, Educational and Governmental (“PEG”) access equipment; and WHEREAS, the AOC reviewed the list of surplus equipment and made recommendations, which are part of this resolution; now therefore be it RESOLVED that the Access Oversight Committee (AOC) approves the disposition of the surplus equipment to be carried out pursuant to the attached list; and be it further RESOLVED that the AOC directs the studio coordinator and Charter to keep the equipment identified on the list as "keep for PEGASYS"; and be it further RESOLVED that the AOC directs and authorizes the studio coordinator and Charter to dispose of the equipment identified as "recycle" by donating it to the Reuse Center; and be it further RESOLVED that the AOC directs that equipment identified as "donate" should be donated to PEGASYS producers, after the results of the AOC's solicitation of current producers. PEGASYS cast-off equipment “LIST 2”, 2024-04-17 item model quantity category condition comments recommendation JBL speakers J2050 2 audio good analog speakers keep for PEGASYS Sony video monitor PVM-8020 6 video good standard definition donate JVC 10” monitor TM-A101G 2 video fair standard definition recycle Dell computer monitor 1908FPt 3 video good keep for PEGASYS 3 ViewSonic LCD monitor VS11618 1 video good donate Sony LCD monitor LMD01410 1 video good keep for PEGASYS Videotek ADA VDA-16 6 playback good distribution amplifiers recycle Tascam DVD player DV-D6500 1 video fair keep for PEGASYS JVC VHS/Mini-DVD player HR-DVS3U 1 video fair keep for PEGASYS Magnavox DVD recorder ZC350MS8 1 video good keep for PEGASYS JVC S-VHS recorder HR-S3600U 1 video good keep for PEGASYS LG video monitor L1942TT 1 video good keep for PEGASYS Logitech speakers S-0152A1 2 audio good keep for PEGASYS Altec desk speakers ACS90 2 audio good keep for PEGASYS Passed 5-0. d. Outreach Committee - report. Van Leuken: "the Committee met April 3 and will meet again on May 8. We are collecting names and contact information from PEGASYS studio staff and users, past and present. We are doing interviews and writing a summary of PEGASYS' history. Information gathered so far points to 1977 as the start of PEG. Information on the early years is muddled. Unfortunately, Gossa Tsegaye's history of PEGASYS was discarded after Stefanelli retired. Digitizing VHS tapes is an ongoing project, finding storage for the PEG archive is another. The History Center has some PEGASYS programs at <https://thehistorycenter.net/Blog/13320420>". Fabrizio: Alan Karasin has put some Common Council minutes and info from the years 1976 and 1977 up on the public portal. https://lfweb.tompkins- co.org/WebLink/Browse.aspx?id=1115027&dbid=13&repo=CityOfIthaca Smith: Whether it first started in 1975 or 1977, the 50th anniversary of PEG is coming and we should prepare to mark it in a fitting fashion. e. PEGASYS Operations. Wiers: the studio now has equipment to digitize SVHS tapes. I can train producers to do this. The tape has to play in "real time," so it's a slow process. The Outreach Committee will work with Wiers to draft guidelines and a reservation form. Smith has worked on a number of studio productions in the control room and drafted a set of recommendations to improve its workings: " • The studio audio chain has never been wired correctly. Fortunately, I don’t think we need any additional equipment to fix this. • The studio cameras need to be rearranged. Again, we don’t need any new equipment to do this. I propose that we hire the same technicians who installed the current studio to do this work." (Installation was by Com Tech, Inc, May 17, 2017 @ $49,999.43). He explains: long ago, all circuits in the studio were analog and were wired. Now, pictures go into a computer memory, requiring .28 of a second before being recorded. This interferes with lipsynching. To fix it, one could introduce a delay of .28 sec., but it can happen that the audio recorder mixes the real-time audio signal and the delayed audio signal together. Somebody who knows the wiring needs to fix this. 4 DePaolo: as a long-experienced audio recordist, will meet with Smith and Wiers and investigate. Smith on cameras: camera 1 is on the wall, different from the normal numbering that students are taught (1, 2, 3 on the floor). Wiers: recalls that we have only 3 cameras at the moment. Smith and DePaolo: will investigate, renumber cameras if possible. Van Leuken recalls a past practice of producers paying $15 per year for insurance covering breaking equipment (with $250 deductible). Can we reinstate this insurance? Does Charter have insurance that covers equipment? Can we buy our own? DePaolo suggests asking producers if they'd be interested in insurance of this sort. f. PEGASYS Policies and Procedures Manual - Resolution. The new language for the "Release and Acknowledgement of Liability" form, approved by the City, is OK with Charter. Van Leuken still has questions: should we omit mention of "educational programming" from the manual? If e.g. the School Board wants to broadcast a program, the manual should tell them what the procedure would be. DePaolo: but Charter hasn't provided an answer. Smith proposes that AOC decide that educational institutions have the right to ask Charter to run programs. DePaolo: channels 15 (government) and 16 (educational) are listed in the Franchise. We need to figure out who runs them before we can modify the Manual. Let's postpone consideration of the Manual till next month. For now, put "governmental and educational" back in the text of section 1.4. Van Leuken: we should also put the provision for "minors from 14 to 18 years" back in 1.5. 08. Old Business a. Streaming Channel 13. No report. 09. New Business a. Tour of PEGASYS: suggested for members during next meeting. 10. Next meeting: 5 pm if possible for Wiers, otherwise 5:30, at studio. Rich will bring Laptop so that Public can participate via Zoom. 11. Adjournment 6:48. ================ Authority: City of Ithaca code Chapter 18, "Cable Access Oversight Committee". Adopted by the Common Council of the City of Ithaca 11-5-2003 by Ord. No. 2003-17. Available at https://ecode360.com/8386207. Page on the City website: https://www.cityofithaca.org/369/Cable-Access-Oversight-Committee Contact information for AOC members: City of Ithaca: Wayles Browne, secretary <ewb2@cornell.edu>. City of Ithaca: Common Council liaison 2024- Margaret (Margherita) Fabrizio, mfabrizio@cityofithaca.org. City of Ithaca: Paul Smith <smithcommapaul@hotmail.com>. Town of Ithaca: Rich DePaolo, chair <RDePaolo@town.ithaca.ny.us>. Village of Cayuga Heights: Wies van Leuken, vice chair <pmv4@cornell.edu>. Web site for the PEGASYS Community Media Center studio, with program schedules: https://pegasys.webstarts.com/index.html or https://pegasys.yourwebsitespace.com/ studio location: 612 West Green Street, Ithaca, New York mailing address: 519 West State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 5 6