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Home My WebLink About2017-05-18-CAC-min TOWN OF LEXINGTON COMMUNICATIONS ADVISORY COMMITTEE MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF MAY 17, 2017 Call to order. CAC Chair Ken Pogran called the meeting to order at 6:39 PM in the Production Studio at LexMedia, 1001 Main Campus Drive. Present:CAC Members: Ken Pogran, Chair; Nick Lauriat; Ben Moroze; Dave Becker; Dorinda Goodman; Rita Vachani; Steve Iverson; David Buczkowski; Smita Desai; Others: Joe Pato, Board of Selectmen; Jim Shaw, LexMedia; Coleen Smith, LexMedia; Susan Rockwell, LexMedia; Elaine Ashton Materials Distributed: Draft minutes of the April meeting DRAFT LexMedia 2017 Performance Evaluation Business and Capital Plan Lexington Community Media Center FY2017-2020 Comments regarding LexMedia received by the Selectmen's office, or at the Communications Advisory Committee's Town email address Agenda Items: 1.Approval of Previous Meeting Minutes a.Dave Becker moved that the minutes be approved, Steve Iverson seconded. Minutes were unanimously approved. 2.Service Provider Reports a.Per Ken, Tom Steel from RCN promised a report, but didn’t send it. Per Terry from LexMedia, the HD equipment has been dropped off, but not yet installed. Will be installed soon. b.Per Ken, the town has not yet received the Form 500’s from the service providers. The Commonwealth gets the data in their own proprietary format, and has provided it to Dave Becker, but that format is difficult to work with, and we prefer the “paper” version the providers are supposed to send to the Town. 3.Selectmen’s Report – Joe Pato a.Extended the LexMedia hearing until Monday night. b.Ribbon Cutting for Solar Facility on Hartwell Ave. That facility will provide electricity for 45% of Lexington’s municipal consumption. c.In addition, Lexington has signed a community aggregation agreement. Lexington residents on Basic Service from Eversource to get automatically moved over to the town’s aggregated rate, which will be ever-so-slightly lower than the default Basic Service rate. Residents who have chosen alternative providers will not be impacted. 4.Chairman’s Report a.Dorinda, Steve, Nick and Ben will all need to be re-nominated in September. Let Ken know if we do not want to be re-nominated. b.Nothing from Tom Steele on the hub relocation. c.Deferring discussion of the LexMedia Q3 report due to contract renewal. d.LexMedia contract renewal will be on the Selectmen’s agenda for June 5th. 5.LexMedia Update – Jim Shaw a.There has been fundraising progress due to graduation DVD sales and summer studio classes and rentals. b.There has been significant increase in requests for coverage of public meetings (estimated at 20%). There have been other initiatives, ranging from Prom to concerts, and they are short on staff. c.Hoping to add live capability to Community Center soon, and also the Depot. 6.Cable operator revenues and PEG finances status update (item #7 on the agenda) – Dave Becker, Rita Vachani a.Dave and Rita observed that while total number of subscribers are decreasing, the revenue per subscriber is increasing (and making up for the loss of subscribers). All three providers are losing subscribers. Ken observed that the peak number of subscribers was in 2013. b.Revenue is flattening out, but so far is not decreasing. c.The committee discussed whether provider transition to television over IP, and whether that would cause a precipitous drop in revenue since it might not be cable television revenue subject to the PEG 5%. d.Dave presented the PEG revenue versus LexMedia expenses. Revenue is currently above LexMedia expenses. With revenue above expenses for the last several years, a cushion has built up. There was a one year excursion due to the Cary Hall renovation. e.Per Ken, there’s a difference in budget between the 3-year budget plan in 2014 (and the budget plan for the next three years), and what’s written in the contract extension. LexMedia’s request is a step increase at the time of contract renewal (as there was in 2014). 7.LexMedia July 2017 contract extension (item #6 on the agenda) th a.Held a public hearing on April 27 (Ken pointed out the minutes say March th 27). Ken observed that, like three years ago, most folks had a LexMedia affiliation and talked about the value that LexMedia had offered. b.Ken observed that most comments were about the community events covered / organized by LexMedia, and only one comment (oral or written) even mentioned government meetings. Steve added the comments were overwhelmingly positive, and agreed that most comments were from people who were personally invested in LexMedia. c.LexMedia (Jim and Coleen) said while he didn’t have the figures on how many on-demand requests are for the government meetings versus community programming, he believed they could get that. They still don’t have any figures for live / rebroadcast streaming. d.Ken pointed out that this was our last renewal, and that two years from now we would be working on a RFP, and that would be an opportunity to change requirements in the contract. e.Steve reviewed the DRAFT LexMedia 2017 Performance Evaluation. He said that the conclusion was that performance was satisfactory (or better), and the recommendation to the Town is that LexMedia's contract be extended for an additional three-year period. f.Steve reviewed the small number of “blanks” in the Performance Evaluation. Steve asked LexMedia if they had continued to maintain the bulletin board as required by the contract, and they assured the committee they had. Steve asked LexMedia if they had continued to meet the requirement for rebroadcast of governmental programming. Steve found the policies and procedures on the website as required in real-time during our meeting (under Governing Documents). Steve asked if live meetings were streamed online. LexMedia indicated that since you could watch the channels on the website, the live meetings were streamed online. The committee agreed. g.Dave Buczkowski moved to approve the revised Performance Evaluation, Smita Desai seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved. h.The committee discussed the Business and Capital Plan. Rita observed that with a high water mark of operating budget of approximately $484k in the final year of the contract, and with an approximately annual capital expenditure of $65k, they’re still below the $600k the town is getting in PEG revenue today. Dorinda pointed out that needed upgrades to cameras in the Selectman’s meeting room isn’t in the LexMedia capital budget. Ken asserted that that was the town’s responsibility, not something that LexMedia should include in their capital budget. i.In the renewal from three years ago, there was $402k projected in the Operating Budget in the final year of the extension. As such, there is a significant increase (~15%) between the last year of the previous extension and the proposed first year of this extension. j.Dave Becker pointed out that they have a good reputation, and the good reputation will serve LexMedia well when / if the town has to approve its own funds (beyond PEG funds). k.Smita moved that the CAC recommend funding for LexMedia consistent with the request. Ben seconded. Ken, Dave Becker, Ben, Dorinda, Smita, Rita, Nick and Steve voted yes. Dave Buczkowski voted no. l.The committee discussed the overall “thinness” of the details behind the funding request, and the committee’s concern that the dollars are increasing at a significant rate. Ken stated that we do know the answer to whether we’ll have the money at the end of the contract. 8. Selectman’s Goal Setting a.Ken said he had received no input from Committee members, but was working on one idea of his own input to be discussed in June. 9. Wireless Services Update a.Ben and Nick recommended to the Zoning Board approve an application by AT&T for a new cell site in the Eversource right-of-way on the Lexington / Watham border. b.The results of the RFP will be announced tomorrow. 10. Town IT Update – Dorinda Goodman a.Deferred until next meeting. 14. Complaints a.Deferred until next meeting. Dave indicated that there were no complaints in May. 16. Adjournment Smita moved to adjourn, Dave Buczkowski seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 8:34 PM. Respectfully submitted, Nicholas A. Lauriat