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Home My WebLink AboutMN-CABLE-2017-03-06 1 City of Ithaca Access Oversight Committee (AOC) Meeting Minutes MONDAY, March 6, 2017 at 5 PM (as approved April 4, 2017) Meeting Room, PEGASYS Access Center, 519 West Green Street, Ithaca, NY Present: Chair Rich DePaolo, Vice-chair Wies van Leuken, AOC members Wayles Browne, later Common Council liaison Ducson Nguyen; studio manager Lauren Stefanelli. Absent: Sue Perlgut (excused). 01. Call to Order by DePaolo at 5:05 pm. 02. Agenda Additions and/or Deletions: none. 03. Public Comments: none. 04. The minutes of the Feb. 6, 2017 meeting were approved as distributed, 3 to 0. 05. Access Studio Coordinator Report: submitted in writing (attached). a. Annual Equipment Purchase Report Re: previous year's purchases. No report was submitted by Spectrum TV. Spectrum paid the bill for the 2016 budget items, but they have not been installed yet. b. Usage Fees Report for 2016 showing receipts, uses & final balance: no report. Spectrum has not provided Stefanelli with an account to deposit usage fees and therefore she has not collected them. For next meeting. c. Studio Upgrade - update: - Re doors: Spectrum will replace the leaking and unsecure studio doors as part of a project to replace all doors in the three buildings of its Ithaca facility. No date has been given. - Re studio upgrade: the vendor Com Tech, Inc. will install the upgrade soon on a Wednesday to the following Tuesday schedule to accommodate Tuesday evening's shows that are recorded in the Studio. d. Quality of PEG Channels after transition to All-Digital - update: no report. See also 6d below. 06. Member Reports a. AOC's Annual Equipment Purchase Report to City: See 05a. This report was not provided by Spectrum. See Item 5a. b. Report Publicity and Outreach Ad-Hoc Committee. Committee Chair Perlgut submitted her report by e-mail. She and Tony Ingraham will host a Facebook training for producers on March 16 at the studio from 5:30 to 6:15 to help producers post their programs on the Pegasys Facebook. An open house will be hosted after the new HD studio has been installed. The next outreach committee meeting is March 22, at 1 PM. c. Fourth Quarter 2016 Franchise Fee Report from City, Town and Village: Nguyen has asked the City Controller Steve Thayer for the City’s Q4 Franchise Fee Worksheet. The Town has not received theirs. The Village has not received either their Q3 nor Q4 worksheet but did receive the Town’s Q3. d. Communications RE quality of PEG cablecasts, faulty entrance door and release of 2016/2017 Budget funds: Chris Mueller, the new Director of Government Relations CNY Division, Northeast, phoned to acknowledge receipt of DePaolo's letter of December. DePaolo will write to him again. 2 07. Old Business a. Franchise Agreement. DePaolo: no reports. b. Spectrum - update: no report. We note that the TWC App is now named Spectrum App. c. PEGASYS' Access Rules – report City Attorney: Stefanelli will give Van Leuken all the documents that are in active use in the studio. A longer document may in fact not be needed. 08. New Business. Browne noted that the feed on Channel 15 with notices from the City has dates referring to 2015. Nguyen will discuss this with the City Clerk. 09. Next meeting: Monday, April 3, 5:00 pm. [Later changed to Tuesday, April 4.] 10. Adjournment at 6:04. Contact information for AOC members: City of Ithaca: Wayles Browne, secretary <ewb2@cornell.edu>. City of Ithaca: Ducson Nguyen, Common Council liaison 2016-17 <dnguyen@cityofithaca.org>. City of Ithaca: member Sue Perlgut <scperl@verizon.net>. 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@charter.com> 3 March 2017 Access Studio Coordinator Report  Equipment Fund: Studio Upgrade to HD Our vender has received payment and ordered the equipment for our studio upgrade. When it arrives, they will create a timetable for installation. Our studio will be down for about a week.  PEGASYS Facility Maintenance Both furnaces in our building have been replaced with new units. One furnace serves the studio; the other services the office area. Both seem to be operating well. An electric heating system has been installed inside our gutters and downspouts to keep them from freezing and causing drainage problems in the future.  PEGASYS Equipment Maintenance and Repair Replacement edit laptop [#5, see last month’s report for details about how/why it was replaced] works, but couldn’t import mp4 files, the type our cameras record. Jim Blizzard fixed this problem by downloading a patch from Adobe. The other edit laptop [#4] had power problems last year, resolved by replacing its battery. It was fine for 6 months, but recently has begun having intermittent hard shutdowns while the unit is running and plugged in. We have no diagnosis yet.  2017 PEGASYS Awards Our 2017 PEGASYS Awards is in progress Judging was completed last week. The awards presentation program will be on Friday March 24, starting at 8pm, with dish-to-pass refreshments starting at 7pm. All AOC members are cordially invited to attend.  New Local Series on Channel 13 TC3 Spanish teacher Miguel Piery has a new series “Conversemos! Cocinemos! Comamos!” It is a Spanish language –cooking how-to show. It runs Thursdays at 4:30pm and Saturday at 1pm weekly. He has completed 3 episodes so far. Reporter Josh Brokaw has started a news show called “Truthsayers.” He has also completed 3 episodes so far, covering the Tompkins County Housing Summit, Ithaca reactions to Trump’s inauguration, and Ithaca and Tompkins County’s measures to become immigrant sanctuary areas. It runs Fridays at 6:30pm and Saturdays at 10:30am. He is currently working on episode 4, about the Cayuga Medical Center nurses battle to unionize.  Organizational Involvement with PEGASYS I have done studio interviews or covered events including talks by reps from the local groups: Civic Ensemble, Cornell Cinema, IPEI, the History Center, Circus Ithaca, Rosie, Ursa Systems, Wegmans, Ithaca Generator, Kensa Group, Cornell REV Startup, The Computing Center, Tompkins Connect, Ithaca Physics Bus. I acquired news dept. video from an MLK Day talk given at BJM School on prison reform, and edited that for the public access channel. I did an orientation for the staff of Lifelong, to discuss a variety of ways in which they could use PEGASYS services to help promote and document their events and classes.  Public Relations I attended the AOC’s committee on PR on February 22. Recognizing that many producers need helping using Facebook, they set up a “Facebook Phobia” meeting to teach producers to use Facebook for program promotion. It is scheduled for Thursday, March 16, at 5:30pm.