Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: REGULAR AGENDA (ACTION)
To: City Council
Subject: DISCUSSION ON CITY'S PUBLIC MEETING AUDIO-VISUAL SYSTEM
Date: January 23, 2024
Written by: Damien O'Bid, City Manager
Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council receive a staff report on the public meeting audio visual systems and provide direction to staff, if any.
Background
Before 2015, the City recorded meetings through a combination of audio recordings and meeting minutes. Public meeting agendas were created by each department individually creating meeting items, routing the Word and associated files for review and ultimately to the City Clerk to assemble the meeting packet, which was printed and posted on the City website. Live meeting participation required physical presence in the City Council chambers, except for the occasional telephonic attendance by a City Council member who was out of town.
In 2015, the City initially began web streaming public meetings from the City Council Chambers. This happened concurrently with the City beginning to use an electronic legislative management system, which allowed for greater standardization, electronic routing and approval, and a largely automated meeting packet and publishing process for the City Clerk. The electronic legislative management system included a “Boardroom“ module, allowing for basic meeting management, such as speaker timers, upcoming agenda view and pushed the live meeting video out to the meeting portal through an ”encoder”. The encoder reduced the resolution of the video and converted it into the proper format for the portal. The initial system installed in 2015 is the foundation of the system we use today, including the in-chamber cameras, some audio components and some of the AV equipment housed in the server room.
The initial system required the City Clerk to start and operate the system in the Council Chambers and a camera operator in the server room to switch the camera angles as needed and superimpose a lower third banner on the screen indicating the agenda item. This initial system was installed by PCD, located in Santa Rosa, while Petaluma Community Access (PCA) operated the camera operations.
Aside from periodically replacing failed equipment, this system did not significantly change until COVID. Initially during COVID, public meetings were simply run on Zoom, with no physical meetings. In preparation for the return to live meetings, there was a general desire to retain the good parts of Zoom and allow for remote participation once the meetings were back in the Council Chambers. The City was concurrently working with Comcast to bring public access TV feeds into City Hall to broadcast public meetings on Channel 28.
To make the needed upgrades to accomplish three simultaneous video feeds (webstream, Zoom and Channel 28), the City retained CodaTech to install and maintain the needed (extensive) upgrades to the video and sound systems, as well as other more visible changes, such as removing the projector and replacing it with a large format TV in the City Council Chambers.
Given the large number of moving pieces to run a meeting with these changes, the system now takes the City Clerk and Administrative Assistant, as well as the camera operator to run a meeting.
This new system architecture is essentially an AV system sitting on top of the City’s network.
The output is primarily produced from equipment in the City Hall server room. Remote to this is the audio equipment, a device controller computer, a Zoom computer and related switches, located behind the dias. Conceptually, it‘s three nodes: the production equipment in the server room, audio/zoom/controllers behind the dias, and the equipment in the City Council Chamber.
All three nodes communicate to each other in both directions, partially on point-to-point ethernet and partially on the City‘s network operated by KLH.
Around 2021, the City transitioned the business internet connection to a direct fiber optic connection. This increased video bandwidth and reliability during power outages. Prior to this, the City also set up tertiary internet connections to address some of the lessons learned from the fires. Today, the City has a primary fiber internet connection, a secondary terrestrial microwave connection, and a tertiary satellite internet connection to allow for multiple failovers while keeping communications intact.
In 2023, the City was notified that the legislative management system was being phased out by the vendor and no longer supported in the next two years. Additionally, the encoder continually had issues affecting the web stream component. Therefore, the City transitioned to a new legislative management software system with a new type of encoder.
Analysis/Discussion
Prior to every meeting, staff test all equipment to confirm that it is operating properly.
Generally, these tests are successful, and any issues are resolved prior to the meeting. Before the AV system updates, the web streaming system's primary failure mode was a failure of the encoder. The previous encoder was simply a web connected PC, which periodically received automatic software updates that would knock it out of service until staff could get it up and running again. This was resolved when the City moved to a new legislative management system which used a firmware encoder, which is much less complicated and prone to unrelated software issues than a PC. During COVID, while meetings were conducted over Zoom exclusively, the primary mode of failure was restrictions in bandwidth by Comcast at 6 pm when many other people were turning on their video streaming services. This was resolved by the addition of a dedicated fiber optic internet connection to City Hall. However, since the build out of the system during COVID, there has not been any single mode of failure. In most cases, the failures are with the web stream or Channel 28, not with Zoom. The only Zoom failure was a failure of the internet connection to City Hall. The project to eliminate the single point of failure that occurred in that case was already well underway prior to the temporary failure that impacted a portion of the January 9, 2024 City Council meeting. The failures of the webstream and Channel 28 have nearly always been new and unique. In staff‘s opinion, this can be attributed to a system built on top of an earlier system that is overly complex and tried to leverage portions of the pre-existing system to meet the needs of a new hybrid system. This new system is prone to numerous single points of failure that cannot be predicted.
Financial Considerations
It is recommended that the City move forward with a ”clean sheet” design of a new system that achieves the goal of a hybrid system allowing remote participation, web streaming and public access TV broadcasts. This would allow for simplification of the system, creating redundancies, and removing equipment that is not needed. Ideally, the system would also be simple enough for the City Clerk to operate it without assistance in the Council Chamber. If the staff moved forward with a new system design soon, the goal would be to install the equipment during the summer during the normal meeting cancellation. When investigating options for a portable AV system in 2023, the City received a quote from CodaTech or approximately $90,000. While the system would function differently in the Chamber, much of the equipment needed would be similar. It is expected that a new system would likely cost around $100,000.
Environmental Issues
This action is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it is not a project which has a potential for resulting in either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, pursuant to CEQA Guideline section 15378.