TOWN OF BEDFORD
BCTV BOARD MEETING MINUTES
January 22, 2009
BEDFORD MEETING ROOM
Present were: Bill Dermody (TC Rep), Bob Thomas (Chairman), Mary Lou Wilson (Vice Chairman), Bill Jennings (Station Mgr), Coleen Richardson (Asst. Station Mgr), Mike Robinson, Lauren Horton, Chris Bandazian (TC Rep) and Mike Sills.
Chairman Thomas opened the meeting at 7 p.m.
Approval of Minutes –
MOTION made by Ms. Wilson to approve the minutes as presented. Seconded by Mr. Robinson. Vote taken – all in favor with Bill Dermody abstained. Minutes approved.
Chairman Thomas said let’s talk about the ACM-NE video awards, congratulations we had 8 awards would Bill or Coleen like to talk about this.
Mr. Jennings commented that he would love to talk about that a little. In my manager report this month you will notice it was only one page. Now, as Bob just mentioned we had 8 awards. We had a first place finish and this year they were recognizing 2nd and 3rd place finishes. I know a lot of Community Access TV Stations were pushing for that. They used to do it in the past and they actually saw the amount of entries go down just recognizing one individual out of a particular category. We had close to 28 entries from people who submitted their videos for judging. It is not a simple process, it is not only submitting the piece that they did, but we need to submit a write up and it goes in with three separate packages, part of the overall package for
evaluation and Lauren knows it can be time consuming. We talked to the producers and asked if they wanted to participate and what we do as a service for volunteers is that there is a charge for $25 and BCTV covers that cost so the produce can enter without feeling constraint because of any finance limitation that they may have. Our station how to I saw it, we guarded the most awards of any local access stations which was nice. One of the things that made us proud aside from the 8 producers that won awards is that we had a very highly visible non-profit organization in town, the NH Animal Rescue League finished first and was recognized in the Community Impact. Doug and his wife, Carol Boyd is the director and she is the CEO and they have their plaque in the lobby the ARL and we take that with pride. We had certificates which we did pass out and we will re-recognize them again when we have our formal recognition evening. When you walk down the
hallway you will see the 7 certificates and 1 plaque for our accomplishments. That is a big honor because this is the Alliance for Community Media for all of NE and it includes the State of New York. With them opening it up the way that they did, there was over 400 entries this time so to walk away with the awards does us proud, not only for the producers, but it gives recognition to the station and what you can get as a volunteer is the satisfaction of being able to provide something to the community and doing something that you would enjoy which is video production and producing a show.
Mr. Robinson asked Bill do you know how many other stations submitted the programs and what the other stations submitted? Mr. Jennings said I do not know, I know we put in 28. We wanted to make sure everyone of our producer feels they have the opportunity to participate. I do not have the number, I know it was packed. There had to be 250 people there for this recognition evening.
Ms. Wilson said great, congratulations.
Mr. Jennings said my congratulation goes to the volunteers who participated. In the Manager’s Report you will see the name of the shows and then in the annual report I think we mention the names as well.
Chairman Thomas said we will do a quick subcommittee updates with the holidays we can go quickly through. Awards Committee, Gene is out sick we wish you the best. We are going to have a meeting after this quickly after this meeting and we do have a criteria summarized about what we talked about.
Chairman Thomas asked, Viewership, Mary Lou and Mike. Mr. Sills said we are tooling for the spring nothing new has been shot. The concept still is to get excerpts of activities on the library screen or get a screen of our own. The other idea was in the supermarkets in terms of advertising BCTV programming and that is the status right now.
Chairman Thomas said Mary Lou you are making on some progress on the stuff I saw. Ms. Wilson said I am trying to, but putting the word out there that we will have the training programs for filming and editing, not a big response, but I am working at it. This is the first pass, I figure by the 8th or 9th they will be sick of me and may just volunteer to get me off their back.
Chairman Thomas said my group with the web survey and that. Basically we have not done a lot, but have done a lot of thought and this will be for discussion at the next board meeting and Town Manager, Town Council and Bill’s approval of course. I want to try to work towards a media group inside of BCTV not only TV stuff, but also with the internet the web and possibly a mailing list. We have all of this capability at our hands, currently I think it would be overwhelming to have Brian Davis to do it all himself, but maybe there are ways that we can start feeling into the internet and tying the internet into the shows. We had some web base questions that we came up with and as soon as we did that we thought about man power and all other things we can do. The first thing that came out to
me was like the mailing list, for the quarterly newspaper. There is probably a very good way of tying this all in and getting any emergency information out including emergency alerts and doing other stuff out. Of course people would have to approve to get this stuff and there is a technical process and I think it would be wise to create a group here and expand it into the Town and how that all fits as we grow. It could be a very nice communication tool.
Mr. Jennings said the important thing to note and we will get into this a little bit more in terms of some of the things we are going to be doing with the Police Dept and Safety complex. If we start to look at this beyond just being a TV Station. You have heard me use the expression Communication Media Center. If there is ever a reason to get people to start thinking that we have a responsibility to distribute information, entertaining, informative and educational, but again, anything we can do to continue to get information out. Whatever the meeting may be. If you look at streaming video and video on demand, TV is just one way to distribute information. Now we are going to the internet. We take a look at our website and one of the things we just heard is that we always talked about
working on the website which we want to, but our site is very simple. One of the things that came out of the Economic Development Team said keep it simple. Don’t make it a busy home page. I looked and said we do not have a busy home page. Here is what is on this week in terms of live government program and click left go in and there is the information. Anything that we can do on that site to catch the data. We have to build a data base. We are distributing information parallel what may be going out of the Town, but information can be distributed by us as well. I want people to get use to the fact that if they need emergency information government or school perspective, they say I will check into Channel 16 or channel 22. I like the idea. I think what we have been challenged with as you just mentioned Bob is the resource. On an hourly contractual arrangement working with a representative here in Town and we can get
some deals and we now would have an individual who can do some of this stuff that you are suggesting Bob in our budget given obviously approval can cover some of those costs to make it happen. That is important for Coleen and I to have a third party saying give me your application requirements and that is what we will have to sit down and do. What is real and what is not and what can we address right off the bat. I like the idea of getting people in the community.
Chairman Thomas said I am big, I have to fund it with dollars and people, so I am still working on that before I present to everybody.
Mr. Dermody said a lot of people have given a lot of praise to the school emergency notification system which I guess is a cell phone system, but if there is some way we can add on to that as far as through the TV for notification for emergencies or just providing the phone numbers for people to get a hold of the Town emergency personnel. I guess the Fire and Police will report to the Town Council at this next meeting about their overall findings of the Ice Storm and that might be educational to us from BCTV standpoint to see how we can assist in the overall ability of the Town to react to emergency such as that.
Chairman Thomas said my concept is to mimic that, but not to that expense. Mr. Dermody said some percentages of this Town are without kids and we are not in that notification system.
Chairman Thomas said not only no kids, but not Comcast people and this would help get to those people with Direct TV and rabbit ears. We need to get to them to give them that same information. Hopefully by the April meeting I will have more information.
Mr. Bandazian asked do we host our own website? Mr. Jennings said no ours is separate and we manage it, we use front page to update it, but we have looked into different contact management systems. There are so many things we want to do, but we said time where you have a producer up there. Mike Robinson produces “Warriors Defenders of Freedom” you can click on and MCAM has a good program where you click on the producer and see the producer’s website if he has one or you can see what programs are out there. So if you miss that one with Paul Bordeleau you can click that on and down load it. There are so many things to do..
Mr. Bandazian said I don’t know if our current hosting service gives us the ability to do an RSS feed, but that would be a way to push out emergency information. Mr. Jennings said our tightrope system allows RSS feeds. I do not know if you saw, it but when we had the weather situation after the ice storm we can post up weather alerts which we did. We had it on the bulletin board system and Russ Marcoux said get that out to everyone. With our bulletin board system we can do crawls. With the other system with Police & Fire we can run crawls that will go over any program. If you looked at the Historical Commission Meeting a few weeks ago we were running while it was going out live emergency information about the storm and I put the date down. Chris that is a good suggestion as we
do have RSS feed capability.
Mr. Bandazian said maybe a long the way 2 years from now. Chairman Thomas said except if cable is down they cannot get it. Mr. Bandazian said when everyone gets a new cell phone two years from now we will be more e-mail connected, again it will leave out a segment of the community, but I think we will be able to push out emergency information on to peoples cell phones. This might be something to keep in mind as we look forward.
Chairman Thomas asked Mary Lou is there anything else. Ms. Wilson said no.
Chairman Thomas asked Lauren regarding Training and workshops any update? Ms. Horton said no update.
Chairman Thomas asked Mike what about Political Coverage. Mr. Robinson said no breaking news, but I do want to welcome President Obama and welcome him as new commander in chief.
Chairman Thomas said one thing we were going to do was to pick a night for volunteer recognition night and we will have the criteria finalized by tonight. Is there a night Coleen that you want to recommend. The next meeting is April so it should be before April, but what about Feb or March. Our next meeting is April 3rd. We could handle this over an e-mail if the room is available.
Ms. Richardson said she did not copy the calendars for Feb or March for this room.
Mr. Robinson said the next meeting is April 3rd, that is Friday? Chairman Thomas said no I grabbed the 2008 calendar. It is April 2nd.
Ms. Wilson said is March a good time. February is not as you have school vacation and weather issues all the time. I am thinking of people.
Chairman Thomas said it has only been 3 yrs. Ms. Richardson said maybe March after the election would be when I would pick it. February like Mary Lou said with vacations it would be difficult. After the election and the middle of March or end of March. I will look at dates and send them out. Thursday nights would be night to.
Mr. Jennings said I would like to have every body here, the last time we did it we went out live.
Mr. Robinson said I have a suggestion do it the next of the Bd of Directions meeting on the 2nd quick meeting here and tune into what we do and then do the recognition the same time. Mr. Dermody said there might be public opinion. Mr. Jennings said the last time we did this we filled the room. Look at the Word of Light they have 8 people in their program. I just thought about it what about the school theater. It is something to think about. Do the school and go live out of there, something to think about. Here might be a little tight. We invite their families there were kids there.
Mr. Bandazian asked at the HS Theater can we show a clip of their productions, but the best of. Mr. Jennings said that is a lot of work. Ms. Wilson said you open the door to a problem why wasn’t mine.
Ms. Richardson said the way we did it here is the best choice because you want them to come to BCTV see the editing suites and get them in the door and have a tour and see what the station is all about. To have it off site is kind of. It is nice to give a tour at the same time. That is what we did the last time and we had refreshments. That is my suggestion.
Mr. Robinson said yes that is a great idea and I remember that. Ms. Richardson said it is a way to show the family the studio. Mr. Robinson said great point.
Mr. Jennings said when people come in this room they say Wow, this has some official, this is where the action is. I think people who are associated with the producers or want to get involved, yeah I agree with you now that I think about it, let’s show off our home rather than the high school.
Ms. Wilson said the BHS auditorium is huge you can have people and it doesn’t look like many, if you have this here it is packed and it gives people a whole idea that our place is really busy. Ms. Richardson said we would have more freedom as far as refreshments and different things like that.
Ms. Wilson said can we have the camera running and people can get in front of the camera and do whatever they want. Ms. Richardson said we did that the last time. Ms. Wilson said you can give those 2 seconds of fame. That would be a charming thing for people to get on TV.
Ms. Horton said I did like the idea of clips of the shows and I would be willing to put together the clips. Make this a TV show to. I think it is a great idea to show the people who are involved. When you are watching on TV you say I know that person and then you see the person, the producer and the video product and it is a nice thing.
Mr. Jennings said if you would like to do it great, but it is time consuming. You have the stack of shows. You probably have 100 shows. Ms. Richardson said last time we gave out 100 certificates so that it is a little time consuming. People are getting a live look at the producers and volunteer. Ms. Horton what if we did the video award winners?
Mr. Bandazian said how about the video festival award winners. Mr. Jennings said that is a good idea and a great suggestion. That is a real manageable number. We do not want anyone’s nose out of joint. The way you edit it, grab a minute so you pop and pop and you can put it on the loop, but I like the idea of just concentrating on the ones submitted.
Mr. Sills said I like that idea of the actual shows and one way to do it on demand and I would volunteer for this is to capture the show and do it as a power point presentation and have it rotate for all the shows, but if it is not on demand. If we had a list. Mr. Jennings said you do not want to go through that whole process it is really really time consuming. It is easier to take the DVD dump it and then have just one DVD. Mr. Sills said I was thinking of the other shows that are not in the awards. Ms Richardson said when would you show and how long would the clips be?
Mr. Bandazian said can we have it running in the background. Mr. Jennings said we can format the day. We have had Open Houses in the past and we have had it playing in the background as they come in. You would have to set this up, ladies and gentleman we are ready to start the show. These are the shows produced by your neighbors and that I why we are here to get people volunteers. There is some merit to that. To have it running when people are talking in the background, I don’t know.
Ms. Wilson said the last time we did it it was not that well organized, people are in and out of the room and up and down. It is not an actual program.
Mr. Jennings said it is a different type of program. It is recognition and it is long. If everyone shows up and if you get Paul Bordeleau and he is 85 years old and he is an entertainer. Ms. Richardson said let the producers speak to their shows. Mr. Jennings said we present it at the beginning as part of the opening ceremony. At the video festival they paid someone to take all these, like Joey Law and have a 30 second clip get the picture up and then they sat down. Again that added some effect to get people clapping. Ms. Richardson said then they couldn’t say anything no comments they cut that out.
Mr. Jennings said maybe a clip of the 28 entries. Ms. Wilson asked Lauren are you going to do the work or Mike. Ms. Horton said I will do the AV side. Mr. Sills said I was talking about a still picture? Ms. Horton said we can put something together a quick view of the people with the awards and a quick loop with music and make it look nice, we can talk off line. I will talk with you guys and I will do it. Mr. Jennings said you will have to search through and drop 2-3 minutes in and then cutting it. I would like to keep the DVD here, they are the only copy. Ms. Horton said different tracks for each. Mr. Jennings said focus on the 28 that we submitted. We could also throw a TC meeting in there. Mr. Dermody said that would add the exciting part of the program.
Chairman Thomas said I do want to inform the board, I have my first college game that day. I will get there by 7 p.m. April 2nd. Ms. Richardson said do you want another night? Mr. Robinson said it would be a simple and short board meeting one. Mr. Jennings said people are coming in for a celebration and then they see we are going to have a Board meeting, I don’t know about that..
Chairman Thomas said the meeting will not be as powerful, but the room will have a lot of people.
Ms. Wilson said we have a 15 minute meeting because if someone tells me there is a meeting first I wouldn’t come. Mr. Robinson said I agree with that. Mr. Jennings said we did not do that the last time. Mr. Robinson said we sit here with nobody every meeting.
Ms. Wilson said what about a welcome as a board, but to say we have a meeting and then a celebration that would not thrill me. Chairman Thomas said we would be rushing through that meeting and especially the April meeting just before the summer and we get everything done in that meeting.
Ms. Richardson said if you feel that the meeting can be done in 15 minutes? Ms. Wilson said I would rather do a second night. Chairman Thomas said we should do a second meeting. Ms. Wilson commented if you are having a celebration to thank them and we say to them wait a minute listen to us do a Board meeting first, I don’t think that is right.
Mr. Dermody said the Board could read a proclamation for the recipients. Ms. Wilson said the board can hand out the recognition from here. Bob as Chairman can hand out and shake everyone’s hand and the Board members can be back here and call off the names. We have to get a routine so people are not bored. We want to have this quickly.
Ms. Horton said can we start the meeting earlier for the recognition? Ms. Wilson said the recognition last year was long it was 9:30 or 10 p.m.
Chairman Thomas said let’s find another date and Coleen will look for one. Ms. Wilson said what about March 26th. Mr. Sills said is a Thursdays the only dates available? Mr. Jennings said there are other meetings going on in this room so Thursday is the best time.
Mr. Jennings said we will advertise it in the papers and on the bulletin board. Ms. Richardson said she will check the availability of the room and I will send that out tomorrow.
Chairman Thomas said the last thing to discuss is an update of the renovations of the studio room. I think it looks fabulous and I have been out of Town and I have seen the clips on the TV and it looks better on TV than in person.
Mr. Jennings said we are getting down towards the end they are finishing the closet and then the transcription area. What we have added is a microphone for the transcriptionist with dialogue when Town Managers Executive Assistant and that will be available. There will be an extension in that general area that will complete that façade the furniture. Going around the top you will have crown molding and a few small things to be taken care of and then we will be complete. It is amazing the details behind the scene. The floor is off and the ceiling is off, some of these things are customized. Ms. Wilson said the seal looks great.
Chairman Thomas said the background is so much more professional. Mr. Robinson said he worked with someone to design that.
Mr. Jennings said we have a small one so when we do the Town Budget Meeting we will take that with us. So we got a smaller one to take with us.
Chairman Thomas asked Bill does the Planning Bd use the monitors? Mr. Jennings said yes now they just look at the displays from their seat.
Chairman Thomas said do they just use the outlet strips and it connection the lap tops? Mr. Jennings said there are four connections and he can plug into the VGA talking to his peers, talking to the audience and it would connect with all displays. Rick Sawyer presents from there and so does Cynthia May.
Mr. Dermody said at the Economic Development meeting yesterday they used it and it was very effective.
Mr. Jennings said we are wireless here and the Councilors with the lap top can search the internet. Chairman Thomas said excellent job.
Mr. Jennings said we have to thank the BCTV Board and the Town. We could see what the whole picture looked like and I appreciate everyone’s patience.
Chairman Thomas said it is hard to believe there were fire trucks parked here at one time.
Chairman Thomas asked is there any new business, Bill we got the Manager Report.
Mr. Jennings said there are a couple of things to go over. First of all what we did the last couple of days and again what you will hear me talk about, is how we are responding to the emergency here in Town and I think any agency who needed to distribution information to the residents, looked at how we can be better. One of the things today and yesterday we trained the police and fire personnel, John Powers who handles safety for the buildings and Capt Murray. The emphasis is on how to use our system to emergency information. We have crawls through one part to have quick information distributed, Ice storm coming up, roads are blocked. There is also adding general information creating crawls so they can provide general information, not of an emergency nature, but informative, general bulletins. What we did during the emergency after 2 days when we got the power and the conduit Coleen manned the command post and was receiving information from Chief Wiggin and we put up emergency
crawls in both areas and alert bulletins. Standard information and we kept those slides up for a while. We needed to get information to those people who had power with the hope that they were giving the information to those who did not have power. That worked well, but if you want to do something really quick. We also had the Library in and the Town Clerk. Allow people access to get information on the air quickly not from an emergency, but if something should happen they could post that information.
Chairman Thomas asked from the safety complex? Mr. Jennings said no from their home. We gave an over view and so Coleen will go to each department and work with them. Tim Mays does this for school cancellations, he also uses it for slides for the bulletin. How to get in contact with anyone from SAU, then a slide with school bd members their name, telephone number and e-mail address. We realized that information that goes out has to go out quickly and the only way we can do this effectively and 24/7 we need to put a live drop at the Safety Complex. Everyone is on board with that and one of the nice things we discovered with Brian Davis our Information Systems there is fiber and I would love to have fiber throughout the whole Town, but we couldn’t get it. We are going to save
some money in that respect. We are going to put in some infrastructure we need to get a location and we will have a camera and audio and we will be able to flip a switch. They have a generator down there, but we don’t have one up here. We are working with some guys in Town and getting quotes we have to think of this as an Emergency Ctr and we are looking at generators. We are committed to get this done this year. When you have an emergency and it is still fresh in your mind and as Bill mentioned Police & Fire are coming in for an action report. I have met with Brian Davis and this can be done and when we have a situation like this again we are lit up the service and the community 24/7 and down there they can post up the alert bulletins or better yet said this is Chief Wiggins and put the camera on. We want to tie up the loose ends and try to make sure information is getting out there accurately. BCTV is not just a TV
station it is an overall emergency operations.
Chairman Thomas said they will have a live feed and they will be able to do broadcasting? Mr. Jennings said you will not interrupt a program it will be just lit up. From a procedural perspective we have not set anything up. If they feel in their minds this is information that should be constantly getting out there. Maybe they have a crawl going every 15 minutes they are updating or just talking to the community. When you think about just the people with generators. I can see the Chief say if you are hooking up a generator do ABC or call us and we can advise. MCTV has married up with their emergency center as well and they can broadcast live out of there as well. Mr. Robinson said when is that going to happen? Mr. Jennings said I am getting quotes right now.
Mr. Robinson asked how big a generator? Mr. Jennings said it depends what we want to have lit up is the control room and the heat and have some lighting, do you want to keep the kitchen area open if someone is here 24/7.
Chairman Thomas said what about a heat wave in the summer. Mr. Robinson said you can get units that power the whole building. Mr. Jennings said some of the information they have asked us is what do you want to lit up?
Mr. Jennings said the DPW has one. Ms. Richardson said the Safety Complex is run by generator and they can advise us.
Mr. Robinson asked whose budget? Mr. Jennings said our budget.
Mr. Jennings said I want to let you know that Councilor Scanlon proposed unless things are in Capital Improvement Plan if I do not have that allocated that way and something comes up, say I spent all my money and the cameras go down I cannot get a new one because it is not in the budget. Councilor Scanlon presented to Town Council to ask if can we set up some type of account that would allow BCTV to have funds from our fund balance and have it sitting in there without having to go into appropriations account. There was dialogue about it and where we have a significant amount of capital, even with this room for your own information we got our $20,000 check from Comcast early from our contract and we were suppose to get it Jan 2009, we got it in Dec 2008. When you look at the additional $20,000 we
accumulated from Comcast pricing we have more in our reserve fund. His suggestion was take apiece of their money and stick it out there, so if something unexpected comes along they can cover their cost. We are an enterprise fund.
Ms. Richardson said it is similar to the Land Trust. If the Council finds an opportunity to purchase land. It only gets used if the purpose comes up the funds would be available.
Mr. Jennings said we would have had to exhaust our other funding. We have never spent more than we have allocated. If there is a fire sale out there brand new equipment 5 chip cameras, but we did not allocate it. The other example is where this happened and we could use this and go to our appropriations account and then go to the TC and we would have to come before the Council to ask permission for this project or that project. Crystal and the TM said discretionary spending, but we could not use any of that money until we get approval from the Council.
Chairman Thomas said emergency fund. Mr. Jennings said yes. We are an enterprise fund, but it does not make a difference.
Chairman Thomas said that is a great idea. Mr. Jennings said all the Councilors agreed to that with the stipulation.
Chairman Thomas said what are goals are for that year. Ms. Richardson said reallocation of fund balance. Chairman Thomas said emergency funding, I like the way it is setup through the Town Council and it is an emergency fund to do what we need to do to keep operating.
Mr. Robinson asked so you still have to go back to the Town Council for approval? What is the difference then.
Mr. Bandazian said you would not be able to tap into it. There are other ways to shift money around in the Town.
Mr. Jennings said it was great and we had the support from the Town Council pending the recommendation from the Finance Director at the review next Wednesday.
Mr. Jennings said a couple of other things Gene Mackie cannot be here, but he wanted to let us know he is writing article on WWII Veterans for the Union Leader and he is going to write one on Mike Robinson and we are providing him with four programs on some residents. One of the ones that I know touched Mike is Betty Quinn who passed away a year and a half ago and the only way to get the write up is through Mike’s Show.
Mr. Robinson said yes I think it is great. Most of these guys are still here in the Manchester area and they are in their 80s, keeping the word out about these great Americans and recognize them.
Chairman Thomas said the meeting dates for 2009 are April 2nd, July 9th and October 1st and if anyone has any subcommittee meetings send out an E-mail and we will publicize it. Any other discussion, seeing none can I get a motion.
MOTION made by Mr. Sills to adjourn. Seconded by Mr. Robinson.
Vote taken – all in favor.
Meeting adjourned 8:10 p.m.
Submitted by Jane O’Brien
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