HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-AOC-2024-09-03 1
MINUTES as approved Oct. 15, 2024
Access Oversight Committee (AOC)
September 3, 2024 at 5 PM
The AOC held its meeting by ZOOM Conferencing.
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; Sean Ryan (Supervisor of Public Access, Charter
Communications).
01. Call to Order by DePaolo, 5:07.
02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: none.
03. Public Comments: none.
04. Comments by AOC members. Van Leuken: 1) Ithaca College has hired a new
Manager of Television & Radio Operations, Rhys Finch. The Outreach Committee will
arrange a meeting with him.
2) The amended (July 2, 2024) PEGASYS Manual was e-mailed to the Studio
Coordinator on July 7.
05. Approval of Minutes of the July 2, 2024 Meeting. Moved by DePaolo, seconded by
Fabrizio. Approved 5-0-0 with two small corrections.
06. Access Studio Coordinator Report (attached). A new off-white curtain was installed
in the main studio on July 9. Van Leuken and Wiers have seen it and approve of it.
a. Ithaca Annual Report, April 30, 2024 - follow-up. DePaolo e-mailed Lauren Kelley
(Director of Government Affairs – Fingerlakes Region, Charter Communications),
asking for clarification on items "Equipment Repairs" and "Other Capital". These
seem to be Charter's responsibility; will follow up with her again. Fabrizio wonders
about "Snow Removal" and "Exterior Renovations"; DePaolo will ask Kelly about
these too. Van Leuken points out that the heading was "Est. 2025 Expenses" - not a
report of items spent. DePaolo asks Ryan if he can clarify items; Ryan: must defer
to Kelly.
DePaolo: does not think a report of this sort is called for in the Franchise. Asks van
Leuken to provide report on reporting responsibilities and equipment repair listed in
the Franchise Agreement.
b. I-Net locations - follow-up. DePaolo and Wiers visited Alan Karasin (Acting
Director of Public Information & Technology/City Clerk) on July 8, saw a list of one-
time I-Net locations. Nothing is known about whether they could function now.
(During the meeting, Wiers forwarded an e-mail about these to AOC members.)
07. Member Reports
a. Municipal Approvals for 2025 Budget - Report. Van Leuken: DePaolo needs to e-
mail Kelly confirming when the City approved it. Fabrizio: it was approved at the June
Council meeting; will send the date.
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b. Common Council meetings on Government Channel 15 - Report. DePaolo and
Wiers met with Karasin, inspected equipment in City Hall. Wiers: equip. is familiar to
me; next step is testing the signal. If the test is smooth, no more hurdles to telecasting
meetings. Somebody would need to man the equip. at City Hall and the same at ISP =
the hub where local signals come together, incl. the City Hall feed (ISP is in building
next to PEG). To Fabrizio: the broadcast would be live on the channel in real time,
simultaneous with City's YouTube. Probably the City Hall equip. just needs to be turned
on, not monitored continuously. Fabrizio: the Deputy Clerk sits in meetings and runs
YouTube.
Ryan: While testing, we need to verify that ISP is receiving good audio and good video.
Fabrizio: how can I help to make this happen sooner rather than later?
Ryan: We have no access to that building. It is the responsibility of a different
department.
DePaolo asks Ryan to reach out to the Charter department that runs ISP to agree on a
time for a test.
Fabrizio: could Wiers suggest a time & date to Karasin? Wiers asks for Karasin to
contact him. Fabrizio will ask Karasin to contact Alex with a date for the test.
c. PEGASYS Operations
A. Reporting Outages. Van Leuken: there were several outages on the PEG
channels since the last meeting: Channel 13 was black for a while at the end of
July, Channels 15 and 16 had no audio from 7/26 to 8/1 and Channel 16 was black
from 8/7 to 8/11. I Emailed PEGASYS and got Emails back from Ryan that work
was being done and when channels were back on line. When this happens again, I
would like for the AOC to be notified at beginning and at end, and to get more
information on what the problem is what is being done to fix it. Wiers: is able to
monitor channels 13, 15, and 16. All three recent outages were problems with an
encoder further along the path coming from our studio, so out of my hands.
Different ones took different lengths of time to restore. Ryan: the channel 16 signal
might have been a problem at Ithaca College that somehow affected the encoder
during outage #3. The encoder is in the head-end building. Van Leuken: I
understand that the equipment there is old and managed with a Windows XP
operating system; might it fail again? Should it be replaced?
DePaolo asks Ryan: shall I contact Kelly? Ryan: I will. I will get back to you on that.
Wiers will give AOC a heads-up when outages happen in the future.
B. Use of current Reservation Forms. Van Leuken gathers that Wiers has to use
older version of forms, even after AOC simplified them in the manual last year.
Wiers: not totally able to use manual, has to use same forms that have been
approved by Charter's legal dept. DePaolo asks Ryan: in your bailiwick? Ryan:
please reach out to Kelly.
d. Communications with City Attorney. DePaolo: 1 e-mail received from City
Attorney re a letter that AOC wishes to send to Charter. Fabrizio has asked Mayor
to expedite this; DePaolo will bring it up with Mayor and City Manager. DePaolo:
one item in the future letter is the lack of channels 13, 15 and 16 on the Spectrum
app.
e. Outreach Committee - Report. Van Leuken: Comittee has continued work: 16
studio interviews of past and present PEGASYS producers that are now being
edited for cablecast, still looking for "early movers and shakers." Committee will
meet next on September 9 and on the 2nd Monday of month from now on.
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08. Old Business
a. Streaming Channel 13. DePaolo: we had a volunteer who was interested, but
he's left town. I'm interested to know what equip. and what human participation would
be required. Maybe broadcasting the City meetings would be useful for this item; let's
keep it on the agenda.
09. New Business: none.
10. Next meeting: October 15.
11. Adjournment 6:23.
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
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