Agenda Packets - 2008/01/14 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Item No: 8G Meeting Date: Jan 14, 2008 Type of Business: Consent Administrator Review : _______ City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Honorable Mayor and City Council From: James Ericson, Interim City Administrator Item Title/Subject: Resolution 7209 Approving Agreements for Programming Services and Webcasting Services Introduction: The North Suburban Access Corporation has been providing the City with Webcasting services of City meetings broadcast on Cable TV Channel 16 since 2006. Before payment would be made for the services provided in 2007, the City requested an agreement be prepared that would articulate all relevant terms and responsibilities. Staff has communicated with Cor Wilson, Executive Director for NSCC/CTV, who responded with the two attached agreements—the first for programming services, the second for webcasting meetings. Discussion: Former Administrator Ulrich updated the City Council on February 2, 2007 regarding the webstreaming services that NSAC had been providing up to that point. Mr. Ulrich indicated the following in his staff report: Currently, the North Suburban Cable Commission (NSCC) has been provided the City with the service of live web-streaming of meetings and archived video files of meetings for view by the public. This service has been provided to the City at an introductory rate of $165 per month for much of 2006. The City has been generally satisfied with the web-streaming service and it has greatly improved over the last two years. This introductory service has allowed the City to test the product, and has allowed NSCC to add additional features of storage and bandwidth capacity to the system. NSCC has given preliminary notice to cities that the cost of the service will be increasing to $250 per month, starting March 1, 2007, subject to approval by their board. According to NSCC, this represents a significant subsidy of the actual costs, but they are mindful of passing a full cost allocation to cities in the middle of a budget year. If this increase goes ahead, the additional cost to the City for 2007 will be $765, allocated to the Cable Fund. Attached to this report is a spreadsheet which provides usage information for the webcasting services for a three month period beginning September 11, 2007. Altogether, including all meetings available via webstreaming, there were 310 “visits” to the webcasts. To be sure, some of these visits include Mounds View staff and recording secretaries with Timesaver. Regardless, staff believes the webcasts offer an important service to residents and allows staff and consultants to be substantially more efficient.