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Home My WebLink AboutMN-CABLE-2014-04-07Access Oversight Committee (AOC) minutes Monday, April 7, 2014, 4:15 PM Meeting Room, PEGASYS Access Center, 519 West Green Street, Ithaca, NY (as approved May 5, 2014) Present: AOC members Wayles Browne, chair Rich DePaolo, vice -chair Wies van Leuken, and (from 5:00 on) Michael Brutvan; studio manager Lauren Stefanelli. Liaison from Common Council (City of Ithaca) J.R. Clairborne excused (sent word of a family emergency). 01. Call to Order by R. de Paolo 4:20. 02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: none. 03. Public Comments: none. 04. Approval Minutes of the March 3, 2014 meeting and March 13, 2014 Special Meeting: approved with small changes and addition of an attachment to March 13 Minutes. 05. Access Studio Coordinator Report a. TWC's recommendations for next year's Budget: due at this meeting but none were submitted. b. Annual Subscriber Fee Report from TWC ($0.15 /subscriber /month revenues): Not submitted. c. Status of 2013 Budget's purchases: Also see attached Report. Items from the 2013 Budget have not been purchased because TWC did not set up an account to allow doing so until recently. Now an account has been set up under the category of "operating account ". Purchases from such an account can be made throughout the year and are no longer subject to review at the Annual TWC Budget Meeting in July. DePaolo: a reminder that the 2003 Franchise Agreement (Sec. 15.12) still requires the AOC to submit budget recommendations for the next calendar year to the participating municipalities for their June meetings. AOC members inquire: can we use funds now set up as "operating funds" for live- streaming of programs and /or archiving for on- demand service? DePaolo: archiving is even more important. I will get in touch with TWC government relations person David Whalen and discuss the way forward. d. Report on "RFP to Educational Institutions ": none received this year. e. Capital Purchase Report from TWC (TWC's Annual Report on the previous year's provision of equipment & the funds provided by participating municipalities): due at the March meeting; none received. 06. Member Reports a. Publicity: for next meeting. b. Public Comment Session of 3/3/14 Meeting - Follow -Up: for next meeting. c. Status of 2013 Budget's purchases - Municipalities' Response: see attached letters from DePaolo and the Mayor of Cayuga Heights. d. Draft PEGASYS' Policies and Procedures Manual: for next meeting. 2 e. Review and award of funding to educational institutions. These requests were due at this meeting. No requests for equipment were received for this funding round. f. ADC's Capital Purchase Report to City: AOC did not receive required information for this report from TWC at this meeting. See Item 5 -e. 07. Old Business a. Franchise Agreement: no new information this month. b. Equipment Recipients' reports: none. c. Migration PEG channels: no new information. d. Repairs to PEGASYS' entrance: as in last month's report. 08. New Business: none. 09. Next meeting: Monday, May 5, 4:30. 10. Adjournment at 5:25. Notes by W. Browne as AOC secretary. Contact information for AOC members: City of Ithaca: Wayles Browne, secretary <ewb2 @comell.edu> City of Ithaca: Michael Brutvan <mbrutvan @me.com> City of Ithaca: J. R. Clairborne, Common Council liaison 2014 <jclairbo @cityofithaca.org> Town of Ithaca: Rich DePaolo, chair <rd @richdepaolo.com> Village of Cayuga Heights: Wies van Leuken, vice chair <pmv4 @comell.edu> Web site for the PEGASYS studio, with program schedules: http://pegasys.webstarts.com/index.html studio location: 612 West Green Street, Ithaca, New York mailing address: 519 West State Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 phone (607) 272 -7272 fax (607) 277 -5404 PEGASYS staff. studio manager Lauren Stefanelli <lauren.stefanelli @twcable.com> 3 April 7, 2014 Access Studio Coordinator Report - Educational and Governmental Access News Classes were held in February and March for 2 schools who had not participated in PEGASYS services before: Cascadilla School had groups go through both studio and field production training, and has a talent show scheduled to shoot in the studio in late April. New Roots School's video class is currently doing a studio training class at PEGASYS, with the intent of doing a news -style program. They received a grant from a private donor for a good — quality field camera, and 4 of the students have laptops with editing software. So they will be shooting and editing field stories at their school, and using the PEGASYS studio as the news anchor set. Steve Cass of Ithaca City School District has told me he will be purchasing an UltraNEXUS playback server for the high school, that will be installed and ready by September. Currently, the High School does reruns of BOE meetings on SVHS tapes delivered to PEGASYS. It delivers its student - produced show "Red Eye" on DVD. When this system is ready, Steve says the High School will be ready to do its own playback from its UltraNEXUS. His concern now is the upgrade of their INET line to fiber. Lehman Alternative Community School requested equipment for their Mid -East Debates again this year. Last year they did not submit any programming after borrowing PEGASYS equipment. Their problem in doing programming from their new wired -for- video auditorium is lack of a video tech for events. They conscripted a maintenance person last year with no success: their Mid -East Debate show was stuck on a hard drive with no one able to get it off. This year, they have a para - professional who helps a disabled student get from room to room, and has down time during classes, as their chosen video tech. He seems able to edit their material, and the Mid -East Debates are scheduled to premiere in May. - Access Equipment Fund The 2013 access capital fund requisition been approved for expenditure! We should be hearing shortly that a purchase order has been sent out to our vender by our buyer. Jim Blizzard appeared before the AOC on behalf of the County to request a character generator for his live meeting coverage. I suggested that he look over our character generators and talk to Audio /Video Corp's sales staff for suggestions, and asked him to come up with a specific make and model he preferred. He has yet to do that. - Equipment Repair Camera 47 was returned with reports of operational problems. It has been sent out for repair. El Status of 2013 Budget's purchases — Municipalities' Responses. On Mar 7, 2014, at 12:49 PM, Kate Supron wrote [to AOC member Wies van Leuken]: Hi Wies. I just emailed Mr. Whalen asking him to contact me, copying our Village Attorney and Clerk & Treasurer. We will see what result this brings but I will discuss with our attorney the process of formally notifying them that we consider they are in breach of contract. Would you like me to try to coordinate with the City and Town? With thanks for all you do in this increasingly frustrating position. Best, Kate Begin forwarded message: From: Rich DePaolo <RDePaolo @town.ithaca.ny.us> Date: March 6, 2014 12:03:43 PM EST To: Svante Myrick <mayormyrick @cityofithaca.org >, Herb Engman <HEngman @town.ithaca.ny.us >, Kate Supron <katesupron @gmail.com> Cc: Aaron Lavine <alavine @cityofithaca.org >, E Wayles Browne <ewb2 @cornell.edu >, J.R. Clairborne <jclairbo @cityofithaca.org >, Mike Brutvan <noidea @lightlink.com >, Paul van Leuken <pmv4 @cornell.edu> Subject: $61 K Capital Equipment PEG funds withheld by Time Warner Cable Reply -To: Rich DePaolo <RDePaolo @town.ithaca.ny.us> Greetings - I am contacting you today on behalf of the Cable Access Oversight Committee (AOC). Please be advised that, due to internal accounting irregularities, Time Warner Cable has not made our capital equipment money available for 2013 and 2014. As you might recall, this money is derived from a monthly 15 cent fee assessed on subscribers in the three participating PEG municipalities (City of Ithaca, Town of Ithaca, Village of Cayuga Heights). The budgeted amounts, approved by our legislative bodies in June 2012 and June 2013, are $31,000 and $30,000 respectively. The PEG facility was to have upgraded its entire camera fleet over a year ago with this money. There are other pressing needs at the access studio, as well. I have made several attempts to break this logjam with the government relations contact at Time Warner, David Whalen (607 -584- 0612). Mr. Whalen has assured me that Time Warner acknowledges that the money exists and is to be used for its intended purpose, but, due to internal accounting structural abnormalities, there is no current conduit through which the money can flow. Of course, this is of little concern to AOC, and appears to be in direct violation of franchise terms. Considering that Time Warner Cable is a 40 billion dollar corporation we presume that they could front the $61K from their general fund and figure out internally how to reimburse that. As an aside, this problem would have been averted, had we had a requirement in the franchise agreement for a dedicated capital equipment account (something we have written into the draft agreement). Since there appears to be little forward motion toward resolving this issue, the AOC thought it best to contact you and copy the City Attorney. We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions regarding this concern. With regards, Rich DePaolo Chair, AOC