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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2024-05-16-CAC-min TOWN OF LEXINGTON COMMUNICATIONS ADVISORY COMMITTEE MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF MAY 16, 2024 CONDUCTED BY HYBRID PARTICIPATION 1. Call to Order and Roll Call Communications Advisory Committee (CAC) Chair Ken Pogran called the meeting to order at 6:36 PM and conducted roll call. The meeting was conducted in the Parker Room of the Town Office Building and via Zoom. CAC Members in Person: Ken Pogran, Chair; Bob Avallone, David Buczkowski, Smita Desai, Nick Lauriat CAC Members Remote: Rita Vachani, PK Shiu, Dave Becker, Dorinda Goodman CAC Members Absent: Steve Kaufman, Shabbir Bagasrawala Others Attending Remotely: Florence DelSanto, LexMedia; Kerry Morris, Comcast Quorum: A quorum of members was present. Materials Referenced: Draft minutes of April 18, 2024 meeting. Correspondence with David von Moritz of Astound regarding IP channels and PEG. Astound TV Massachusetts Channel Lineup. LexMedia Q3 report. Draft CAC response to LexMedia Q3 report 2. Review and Approval of Minutes of the April 18 Meeting -Dave Buczkowski Minutes of the April 18, 2024, meeting were approved by the committee by roll call. PK Shiu and Nick Lauriat abstained because they did not attend the April meeting. 3. Select Board Report -Mark Sandeen No report, as Mr. Sandeen was absent. 4. Service Provider Reports —Kerry Morris (Comcast) Ms. Morris indicates there is nothing new to report and look forward to discussing the renewal license later on the agenda. Ms. Desai asked whether solar flare activity would have any effect of audio drop out on Comcast cable service. A short discussion within the committee and with Ms. Morris ended without any conclusive result. 5. Chair's Report—Ken Pogran Mr. Pogran reported that he has received an email from Jonas Miller, the town's communication director. Mr. Miller has asked the committee to review the correctness of the CAC related pages on the town's website. The CAC has been waiting for the new redesign of the website to be completed to progress with the review. Mr. Pogran asked for volunteers. Ms. Desai and Mr. Avallone volunteered to perform the review. There is no deadline but the volunteers will review the existing pages in the next four weeks and submit feedback to the Chair. 6. Astound IP channel offerings and PEG impact—David von Moritz (Astound) The Chair reported that our Astound representative have not been at a CAC meeting for over a year. The committee is questioning how the PEG channels are offered on their Internet based TV service IPTV, and how the IPTV product is delivered, what is available on their mobile App. The Chair reported that Mr. von Moritz was going to attend tonight's meeting but a last minute change prevented him to attend. Mr. von Moritz will try to attend the June CAC meeting to discuss the issues. 7. Comcast license renewal update—Dave Becker Dave Buczkowski, Nick Lauriat, Ken Pogran The Chair recapped the major issues close to resolved as follows: Regarding upgrading the existing PEG channels from SD to HD,the town will have two options: 1) Upgrade the existing three SD channels to digital interface SD channels, SDI, for better quality but remaining in standard definition. 2) Two channels upgraded to SDI, one channel upgraded to full HD. There are about 80 subscribers that do not have HD capable equipment. If the town chose to upgrade one of the three PEG channels to full HD, those subscribers will not have access to that one channel. The town has three years to submit the requests to Comcast and Comcast will have two years to implement the change. There will be a cost to the town to perform either upgrade options. The cost will be capped at 30K. The PEG capital grant will be 20K per year, same as what we receive from Verizon, and close to the old "in lieu of INET" fee of 17K from Comcast from previous years. Finally, Comcast has removed the language in the contract to require a customer service store to be in Burlington or equally convenient to Lexington. The new language just says the customer service center be reasonably convenient to Lexington without explicitly defining "reasonably convenient". The process is at the end stage of finalizing wordings. The final draft will be ready by the next CAC meeting in June. The committee can then vote on sending the draft to the select board for approval. There can be a public hearing in July, with the current contract expiring in August. Mr. Becker congratulated the licensing team and Ms. Morris for their work to date. 8. LexMedia Update—Florence DelSanto (LexMedia) Ms. DelSanto reported that the renovated Kitchen Studio is open for business. Cooking shows will start again. Coming up is a busy season for LexMedia with a lot of school graduation related events. Ms. DelSanto listed some of the major events covered in town. Ms. Delsanto reported that the LexMedia studio is available for rental and GBH Nova has been renting the studio a few times. 9. LexMedia Q3 Report -Bob Avallone, Smita Desai, Rita Vachani Ms. Vachani reported that everything looks on track from LexMedia. She is glad that the fund- raising effort has been successful. The reports are available on the LexMedia website as of today. The committee unanimously voted to approve the Q3 report and the amended response. 10. LexMedia Contract Extension Update-Rita Vachani The next action is for LexMedia to schedule a meeting with the Selectboard to give an update. We are in the last two-year term of the six- year contract with LexMedia. The current budget for LexMedia stretches their staff too thin, operating in a much-expanded service and programming capacity. The Town will have to decide whether to ask LexMedia to reduce their services back to the initial level four years ago, or increase their budget to continue to offer the current level of service. 11. Wireless services working group update—Steve Kaufman Mr. Kaufman was absent. The Chair reported Mr. Kaufman is in the process of collecting contact information from all our wireless service providers so that we can start discussing service levels with them. 12. Town IT Update—Dorinda Goodman Ms. Goodman reported that the Select Board has approved funding for public Wi-Fi service at thec town center, Lincoln fields, and center field areas. Funding will be provided for three years of service, to evaluate the result. The committee discussed the areas to be covered by the service. The downtown service is targeting visitors and shoppers. The service can also provide some potential related cost savings by then using wireless scoreboards at the sports fields, and smart lights at the center. Ms. Goodman has clarified that the service is not for the high school nor municipal buildings. There will be controls in the service to avoid misuse of the bandwidth. The implementation details are to be determined. 12. Complaints No service provider complaints were received. Mr. Buczkowski is the complaints person for June and Mr. Avallone for July. 13.Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 7:50 P.M. Respectfully submitted, PK Shiu Recording Secretary