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Home My WebLink AboutMN-CABLE-2006-03-20Cable Access Oversight Committee Minutes The Committee [AOC] met at the PEGASYS studio on Monday, March 20, 2006, 4:30 -6 pm. AOC Members present: Wayles Browne, Wies van Leuken, Will Burbank [chair], Elizabeth Bauchner, studio manager Lauren Stefanelli [ex officio]. Public: Kathy Hovis (freelance consultant to Ithaca City School District), Melina Carnicelli (Asst. to Superintendent of ICSD), Michael Pliss (Information Technology coordinator for ICSD) 1. Notetaker: W. Browne. 2. Representatives from ICSD: the District wants to telecast School Board meetings. They have met with Lauren. M.Pliss presents a memo outlining needs for equipment and training and envisioning two phases. (The memo is in the Appendix below.) The District will get a videographer, but that person may need some training. Lauren suggests: use the same Manpower temporary employees who tape the Common Council meetings at City Hall. M.Carnicelli: the pay scale for them is acceptable. Once the equipment is installed, other meetings could be telecast from the same room (workshops, receptions, student presentations, teachers' sabbatical presentations, etc.). Meetings are Tuesdays at 7 pm (usually the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays). In budget season - -the end of Feb. to mid - May - -there are additional meetings, and they'd want to televise all of these - -at least once a week. Voting meetings are twice a month, and in the remaining weeks there are "budget workshops ". Lauren: Educational access and government access can both use Channel 15 as well as Channel 16 (though not Channel 13). Meetings of City Council and County Legislature are now shown 6 times. Carnicelli: ICSD would want multiple showings too. W. Burbank: Contentious meetings with large audiences are sometimes held in the cafeteria or activities center. Carnicelli: Yes, but that happens only rarely. Lauren: New cameras would cost about $2000 each for two, plus about $1000 for other equipment. Or surplus cameras and equipment could be moved from other locations, and perhaps used in other parts of the buildings. M. Pliss: At Ithaca High School, Kulp Auditorium, the cafeteria, and the gym are all wired for broadcasting. Boynton School is also wired. Lauren: a Time Warner Cable engineer, Chris DiPrinzio, tested the lines last year to broadcast an IHS game. Burbank: historically AOC has budgeted $2000 /year for all educational uses; we haven't given anything to governmental uses. We're still collecting requests from other schools. Lauren: Fe Nunn (Boynton School) and Karl Madeo (Alternative Community School) intend to hand in requests this week. Burbank: If AOC can't give all the funds that ICSD needs, does ICSD have some usable funds in its own budget? Carnicelli: We have no item in the ICSD budget at present but if there was a need we would try to find some. Lauren: it can be done with bigger or smaller amounts. The meeting room is small, without much space for tripods, so ceiling- or wall- mounted cameras would be best. In Phase 2, one might put a control room in an adjacent space. Pliss: previous consultants found that it would be difficult to fit the room with microphones for audio. Lauren suggests using PZM (table -top microphones for multiple people speaking) to begin with. Burbank suggests that we might support ICSD telecasting in three phases - -spend less this year, more next year. ICSD representatives will ask TWC engineer DiPrinzio to look at premises. 3. Other public comment: none. 4. Minutes of the Feb. 28 meeting approved. Member Shane Seger arrives. Continuing the discussion on educational uses: Lauren believes AOC could reasonably grant $5000 for school board meetings, since we gave only a little to education last year. Burbank: we'll decide on educational requests at next month's meeting. 5. Seger has got some franchise -fee statements from the Ithaca City Chamberlain, Debra Parsons, and will share the information with AOC. 6. Studio Manager's report: capital reports for 2004 and 2005 are not complete because there is a long turn - around time for getting copies of invoices. All items that were on the draft budgets have been bought, except for computer items because TWC disapproved the vendor for these. She will continue to seek the invoices and can then write the reports. Wies van Leuken asks for a statement of the revenue from the 15- cent - per -month "PEG fee" item on cable bills. Lauren: I can provide that too. A few more fees have come in from studio users living in non - participating municipalities. Lauren counts six months for each user from the day he or she paid. The stated preference of TWC manager Doheny is that the money be used to pay staff. The studio is open 20 hours per week; this time includes classes, individual tutorials, opening and closing the premises, inquiries, and about 2 hours /day for setting up playback and schedules, so that only about 1 hour /day remains for maintaining equipment, talking to the engineer, meetings. It would be very difficult to keep the studio open 20 hours if Lauren worked less than 40 hours. 7. Van Leuken presents the draft yearly schedule of work and deadlines for the AOC. We reviewed it and it will be resubmitted at the next meeting. Burbank: Let's not schedule items for July or August meetings. We need to get proposals from Lauren for the yearly budget in April so that we can send them to municipalities in May. We should explicitly ask producers to come to some meetings and express their concerns. 8. Next AOC meeting: Tuesday, April 25, 4 pm at PEGASYS. Meeting adjourned at 6:00 pm. Respectfully submitted, Wayles Browne, AOC secretary. Appendix: memo from the School District. TO: Access Oversight Committee Members Lauren Stefanelli, PEGASYS Access Manager FROM: Melina Carnicelli, ICSD Assistant to the Superintendent RE: Public access broadcasting from ICSD Board Building, 400 Lake St. DATE: 20 March, 2006 ICSD is exploring the opportunity to broadcast meetings of the Board of Education on the educational channel of public access television. Should it be possible to move forward, the District seeks assistance - both financial and technical - from Time Warner. We envision two phases: Phase I: necessary equipment, personnel and procedures to begin broadcasting meetings by September 2006 Timeline: April - September, 2006 /planning & implementation July or August, 2006 /trial run broadcast Equipment needs: • Two new wall- mounted cameras • 4 -6 pressure zone microphones (the kind that pick up sound reverberating from the table) • 1 handheld microphone (for comments from the public) • Various used audio and video components assembled by Lauren in a rolling road case • Training by PEGASYS personnel for ICSD videographer • Assistance from Chris DiPrinzio to hook up the high school's I -Net connection to the board room. Total estimated cost: approximately $5000. Phase II: Upgrade this initial equipment to improve sound quality, establish permanent control room and equipment, purchase DVD recorder so that meetings can be recorded and kept for the public to access. We would seek funding from the city's Peg access funds for this portion. Timeline: 2006 - 2007 /completion by September 2007 Capital /budget /personnel needs: (budget to be developed) - consultant to advise District on audio and video needs for the control room - construction of control room -DVD recorder and other equipment ICSD to provide: - funding for personnel to operate equipment and transfer video to the cable access station - on -going programming for the station - expand beyond school board meetings to include other school - related events, committee meetings, etc.