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Home My WebLink AboutMN-AOC-2024-10-15 1 MINUTES (as approved November 12, 2024) Access Oversight Committee (AOC) Tuesday, October 15, 2024 at 5 PM The AOC held its meeting by ZOOM Conferencing. Present: Present: chair Rich DePaolo, secretary Wayles Browne, vice chair Wies van Leuken, member Paul Smith; Sean Ryan (Supervisor of Public Access, Charter Communications); member of the public: producer Tony Ingraham. Excused: City of Ithaca Common Council liaison Margherita Fabrizio. 01. Call to Order by DePaolo 5:02. 02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: none. 03. Public Comments. Ingraham: understands former Access Coordinator Alex Wiers can fill in at studio on an hourly basis if necessary. Concerned at report of bedbug infestation; after exterminators, will they re-infest? Am staying out of mini-studio and editing room for now. Ryan: Facilities were vacuumed and fumigated by a professional company on September 27. (PEGASYS was closed September 25 and 26 for this reason.) Studio should be usable again. 3 producers (apart from Ingraham) now using mini-studio, 1 using editing room. In the ensuing discussion it was mentioned that cockroaches were found in returned equipment and that Wiers banned a producer from further checking out equipment for that reason. 04. Comments by AOC members. DePaolo: unclear situation; he will research prevention of bedbugs. Browne: Cooperative Extension has information on their website. Ryan: if it happens again, I'll let AOC know. DePaolo asks Ryan for a report before the next meeting. Van Leuken: concerned that problems and disciplinary actions regarding cockroaches found in returned equipment were not reported to the AOC. She proposes adding a few lines of guidelines to the PEGASYS manual. 05. Approval of Minutes of the September 3, 2024 Meeting. Moved by DePaolo, seconded by van Leuken, approved 4-0 with one change. 06. Access Studio Coordinator Report (attached). Ryan: the Studio Coordinator job is posted; I'm helping out in the studio along with another Charter employee from Rochester (Tim Irving). Hours of operation remain as before. a. Ithaca Annual Report, April 30, 2024 - follow-up. None. b. I-net locations - follow-up. Wiers had got a map from the City of Ithaca dated 11/12/'04. DePaolo: Are we trying to determine if any of the numerous locations are still usable? Van Leuken: thinks that the map tells us which I-net connections were in place when the current Franchise was signed. It appears that only the Ithaca College, City Hall, and County Legislature sites are currently in use. 07. Member Report a. Studio Coordinator. See 6. 2 b. Common Council meetings on Government Channel 15 - Report. DePaolo asks Ryan about the test of City Hall's equipment. Ryan: I was there; it works. DePaolo asks about creating a simulcast (YouTube to TV broadcast): can it be done remotely or must someone be in the booth in City Council Chambers? Ryan: Council would have to have someone present there to feed the signal. DePaolo: Or could the line be open all the time? Ryan: we'd have to coordinate with ISP (= the headend, in a separate building from PEG which PEG staff can't get into). DePaolo: will ask Kelly to follow up on that. Van Leuken asks if the people who will make the connection are in Ithaca. Ryan: yes but hard to reach. c. Communications with City Attorney - Report. DePaolo wrote, Attorney Kessler replied (copied to AOC): an assistant attorney is being hired in the office. d. Outreach Committee - Report. Van Leuken: at the request of the AOC the committee researched how to make the Clip Art and Music Libraries more accessible. It was found that both are uploaded on all PEG computers and laptops. I propose that this availability should be mentioned in the PEGSYS manual. It is not possible to post either one on the PEG Server. Smith and I met with staff of the Ithaca College studios: Rhys Finch (replacing Jeremy Menard, Manager of TV and Radio Operations at Ithaca College), Paul Stanion (Media Production Facilities Manager, Technical Operations, IC), Connor Smith (ICTV Station Manager) and Nick Polisi (a TV and digital production major). Stanion has been with IC the longest and has the institutional memory; Smith was the person I was in touch with after Menard left. We discussed the anniversary of PEG (1977 or 1978, so the 50th is coming up) and IC's connection with public access. It was in 1977 that public access was first mentioned in an official document, the City's Franchise Agreement, and in 1978 there is the first record of actual video production by volunteer community members with a channel to show their work. But there are indications that before that, IC students were using a channel which later became the educational access channel as we know it now. Rhys will check the library's archive for information. As requested by AOC, we asked about 3/4-inch tape decks: they have one and they are using it. We discussed reviving the Peggy awards ("the PEGASYS Awards for Cablecasting Excellence") for best public-access programs. The last ones held were the 2020 Awards (virtually, due to Covid) and jointly presented by Lauren Stefanelli and Jeremy Menard. We agreed on a basic plan to get us started: Ithaca College will host the Awards. We will have a speaker. We will allow entries for the years that we had no awards: 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. We will have a 90-minute program. We will aim for Valentine's Day. The Outreach Committee will work out the logistics of applications, entry guidelines, submission categories, cost of trophies, selecting judges, etc. The cable company used to fund trophies and entry fees for the national Hometown Media Awards for the 2 highest scoring entries of PEGASYS and ICTV each, but then stopped. IC helped for a few years; they might be able to help again. Can AOC fund trophies? (Up to $250 from Usage Fee Funds was approved by resolution #44 in 2020) We'll need to go to a new trophy-maker, the old one went out of business. Smith: we'll need the money mid-January. AOC: agrees to take $250 from the Fund when necessary. Van Leuken: I will present a resolution at the next meeting. She asked if any of the Peggy Awards paperwork was on the PEGASYS staff computer. 3 Ryan: there is nothing remaining on the studio computer. Van Leuken: We'll have to reconstitute all of it from scratch. e. PEGASYS Operations - Studio curtain with image of Dan Burgevin's mural. Van Leuken: last year the Outreach Committee hung up a curtain in the main studio that producer Tom Stern had had printed from Dan Burgevin's mural of the Commons (at their own expense). When the old "white" curtain was replaced recently, this curtain was taken down. We are asking if Charter could hang it back up. DePaolo offers to help re-hang it. Smith: some hardware will be needed to hang it permanently (curtain has 36 grommets); I'll show you my drawing. He will be in the studio on October 25. - Low volume of PEG channels. Van Leuken: Audio on channel 13 is weak occasionally; channel 15 can hardly be heard; 16 has slightly lower volume than other channels. Ryan: knows about the channel 15 issue; the ISP should be working on that. Didn't know about 13 and 16. Van Leuken: Ch. 13 is low or normal seemingly dependent on the particular program. DePaolo will contact Robert Henry at the County regarding Channel 15. f. PEGASYS Policies and Procedures Manual - Use of current Reservation Forms. DePaolo: old reservation forms are still being used in the PEG studio; will write to Lauren Kelly (Director of Government Affairs – Fingerlakes Region, Charter Communications) re approval of new reservation forms (as revised in the Pegasys Policies and Procedures Manual, Resolution #82, November 7, 2023). 08. Old Business a. Streaming Channel 13. No report. 09. New Business. None. 10. Next meeting: Tuesday, November 12 at 5 pm. 11. Adjournment 6:20. 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 4