The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink AboutMN-CABLE-2016-07-11City of Ithaca Cable Access Oversight Committee (AOC) Meeting Minutes TUESDAY, July 11, 2016, 4:30 PM Meeting Room, PEGASYS Access Center, 519 West Green Street, Ithaca, NY Present: Vice-chair Wies van Leuken, AOC members Wayles Browne and Common Council liaison Ducson Nguyen; studio manager Lauren Stefanelli. Absent (excused): Chair Rich DePaolo. Member of the public: Sue Perlgut. 01. Call to Order 4:45 by Vice-chair Wies van Leuken. 02. a. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: addition/correction: 2b, “Public Comments”. b. Public Comments. Sue Perlgut asked questions about publicity, outreach and participating municipalities. AOC members gave her a short overview. AOC agreed that it would be useful to get other municipalities on board beyond the present three. 03. Approval Minutes of the May 31, 2016 Meeting: approved 3-0 without changes. 04. Access Studio Coordinator Report: submitted in writing. a. TWC Semi-Annual Usage Fees - $200 was collected during the first half of 2016 – see attached report. b. Studio Upgrade - update. A second bid, from Audio Video Corp, was received for the project. This bid came in over budget at $57,000.00. A requested revised bid observing the $50,000.00 budget limit had not been received by the time of the meeting. TWC’s engineer Jens Christiansen will review both bids and give his report to Stefanelli. The AOC will make a final decision at their next meeting. c. Nexus Upgrade - report: this Upgrade will be included in the 2018 budget. d. Quality of PEG Channels after TWC’s transition to All-Digital: no answer from Time Warner Cable yet. Chris Mueller, the new Director of Government Relations CNY Division, Northeast (successor to David Whalen), has spoken with engineers but still needs to consult with attorneys before replying. e. Annual Report on PEGASYS’ Accomplishments – Stefanelli submitted a first draft (attached). AOC offered comments and encouragement. Stefanelli will bring a second draft to the next meeting. f. Faulty entrance door and misuse of PEGASYS phone number. On the door: chair DePaolo will be asked to contact Chris Mueller, the Governmental Affairs contact. Re the phone listing: new phone directories come out only once yearly. 05. Member Reports a. Budget Resolutions by Participating Municipalities – report. The Town of Ithaca has passed its Resolution and so has the Village of Cayuga Heights. Nguyen: the City missed the deadline for consideration in June; it'll be on the August agenda. b. Quarterly Franchise Fee Report from City, Town and Village: Reports from the Town and Village have been submitted; the City’s is past due. Nguyen will contact the City’s comptroller. c. Vacancies and Term Expirations - update. Van Leuken has been reappointed to serve as the Village of Cayuga Heights rep on the AOC. Common Council approved the appointment at their July meeting. d. Home Page – discussion. Would a Facebook page be useful? More discussion at next meeting. 06. Old Business a. Franchise Agreement: no report on negotiations. For next meeting. b. Spectrum - update. Spectrum is the name of the merged TWC + Charter Communications companies. No further reports. c. PEGASYS' Access Rules: no opinion received yet from City Attorney Ari Lavine. 07. New Business: The AOC noted that the County's Bulletin Board on Channel 15 is out of date, playing announcements that refer to 2015 and that some of the City's Bulletin Board announcements are dated as well. These Bulletin Boards are the responsibility of the County Clerk and City Clerk respectively. The AOC’s chair will be asked to contact the Clerks. 08. Next meeting: Monday, August 29, 4:30 pm, PEGASYS Access Center, 519 West Green Street, Ithaca, NY. 09. Adjournment 5:55. Notes by W. Browne as AOC secretary. ===== Contact information for AOC members: City of Ithaca: Wayles Browne, secretary <ewb2@cornell.edu>. City of Ithaca: Ducson Nguyen, Common Council liaison 2016 <dnguyen@cityofithaca.org>. City of Ithaca: member TBA. Town of Ithaca: Rich DePaolo, chair <rd@richdepaolo.com>. Village of Cayuga Heights: Wies van Leuken, vice chair <pmv4@cornell.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> July 2016 Access Studio Coordinator Report Equipment Maintenance and Repair: New On June 30, our studio Ross SEG/video switcher died. Last month, a part broke that caused moving horizontal hum bars on the program image. Our engineer found a part to fix it. This time, after working perfectly the day before, it froze and would not power on. Our engineer is unable to fix this. We requested that Audio/Video Corp. check into the possibility of servicing the unit, and they are looking into it. However, it is a 25 year old unit, and a repair is not likely. Fortunately, I was able to patch in a field SEG and everything is actually working with it. Producers have adapted to the change with no problems and no studio shows were dropped. This temporary video switcher [the black box bottom center of the photo] will keep our studio operating normally until we make our decision about the Ross video switcher’s replacement. But it does make clear that it is time to do this project this year. Last Friday afternoon, a leak started through the ceiling directly overhead from our new edit computer. Fortunately, I was here when it started and was able to disassemble the computer and move it to another room. A heating/cooling tech was here today who said he believes the tube sending water from AC system condensation into a drainage system had become dislodged. He believes the problem is fixed now. 2016 Equipment Fund: Studio Upgrade to HD Our first vender, Com Tech, delivered their bid for a turn-key replacement studio system [video components only]. Our second vender has still not delivered their bid. They gave us a preliminary bid which exceeded our budget, and were asked to rework it. Usage Fees January – June 2016 5 users paid $40 each, or $200 total. TWC Contacts The new contact for Governmental Affairs for Time Warner Cable/Charter is Chris Mueller. His email is; chris.mueller@twcable.com Annual Report / Brochure Below is a draft of a public report format. Comments welcome. 2016 Activity Report PEGASYS, the Public, Educational and Governmental Access System, offers the community a means of producing television programs and sharing them with the community. Free or low-cost video training plus access * to 2 video studios, digital field cameras and editors are available to Tompkins County residents. In 2016, 767 new shows produced by local residents premiered on channel 13. All Ithaca Common Council, Tompkins Legislature and Ithaca School Board meetings were cablecast live and rerun on channel 15. On channel 16, Ithaca College cablecast about 800 hours of new news, sports and entertainment shows from their studios at the Park School of Communication. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick appears on “What Matters at the Round Table.” PEGASYS offers community members a choice of 10 digital field cameras for use in making community programs. 592 camera sign-out days were used by community producers in 2016. PEGASYS also offers 5 editing systems featuring Adobe Premiere editing software. In 2016, community producers used 7,845 hours of editing time on PEGASYS editors. Check out our program schedule for channel 13 and find links to series programs that are archived on the web at: http://pegasys.webstarts.com/. Location: 612 W. Green St., Ithaca, NY Hours: Mon, Tues and Thurs, 5:30-9:30pm; Wed. 1-5pm. * Usage is free for residents of the City of Ithaca, Town of Ithaca and Village of Cayuga Heights. Usage is $40 per 6 month membership for other Tompkins County residents.