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TC 03-04-98 Telecommunications Commission Regular Meeting March 4, 1998 MINUTES CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chah-ii,an Bill Mannion at 6:35 p.m. ROLL CALL Commissioners present: Bill Mannion, Sal Algeri, Ernest Tsui, L.T. Guttadauro Commissioners absent: Mike Wincn Staff: Donna Krey, Linda Lagergren TCI: Dave Walton De Anza College: Ron Fish Guests: Linda G-rodt APPROVAL OF FEB. 5, 1998 MINUTES Guttadauro made a motion to approve the minutes as written; Algeri seconded and the motion passed unanimously. Guttadauro asked if Krey had checked with Mayor Chang on the list of available cultural diversity videos. Krey mentioned that Mayor Chang had been out of the country and she would check with him now that he had returned. Guttadauro asked if any progress had been made with putting the annual report video on the Government or Public Access channel. Krey said the City Channel had a copy of the video and would review it. Fish indicated the program will nm on Public Access. COMMUNICATIONS Oral: none (Commission agreed to take this item out of order) NEW BUSINESS Consideration of a grant request from Hema Kundargi - Hema Kundargi requested a $250 grant to produce an Indian Vegetarian Gourmet cooking show on Public Access. Algeri said items that are expendable would be suitable, to pay for, but he questioned items that are not expendable and paid for through grant funds. Fish stated that the items Kund~gi had on her application are items that she needs for her show that cannot be supplied. Public Access doesn't have a studio with a kitchen. Krey said grant funds have always paid for props, however, the props should be made available for other access users. The city also pays for publicity and promotion. Guttadauro also questioned some of the budget items. Mannion said he thought the requests were reasonable. Algeri made a motion to approve the grant application for the full amount, Tsui seconded and the motion passed unanimously. Guttadauro mentioned that the grant application was an old version and needed to be updated. Krey will send Fish the new revised grant applications. Krey mentioned the grant application will go to the next city council meeting on March 17, for council's approval and then if approved, a check will be released in two weeks. Reports from: TCI: After reviewing the TCI monthly report, Tsui questioned the trend of increased customer concerns. Krey mentioned that there were quite a few technical problems in December with the weather. Walton mentioned in December and January there are always more technical problems. City of Cupertino: Krey called commission's attention to the information in the packet that dealt with the customer satisfaction survey. The survey was completed in January and one fact that Krey brought to commissions attention was 79% of the entire city has Internet access. This survey was done to gauge the importance level and the satisfaction level of certain services. It's difficult when you are comparing cable services to critical services such as police and fire. Critical services always get a very high rating compared to luxury services such as the public access channel. A press release was included in the packets that summarized the survey. Krey said that the city received a check from Marquita Byrd. Krey also stated that she and Linch met with the web master and from the meeting it was decided that Linch and City Clerl~ Kim Smith will serve as the liaisons to the contractors the city has hired to maintain our web page. The MIS person will be involved in all network services. The web page may be expanded. Our link to De Anza will not be a problem as well as putting on digitized photos of the commissioners. The next step is to figure out what the commission wants on the web site. This item will be discussed at the next meeting. Krey announced the CREST awards ceremony will be coming up on May 14. Commission chairs will be invited to judge the nominations for outstanding community volunteers. De Anzs College: Run Fish stated Febrnory was a rather slow month. De Anza started building a new web page and it is about half done. Fish distributed the usage report for last month and this month. Ron Fish announced that after April 30 he would be taking a six-month leave of absence due to some family matters. Bob Haber will be stepping in for the six months and he will be at the next commission meeting. An assistant will be hired to help Bob. Fish anticipated that he would be returning on November 1. AD JO MENT i~ Guttachuro made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 7:28 p.m. to TCI; Tsui seconded and the motion passed unanimously. ATTEST: APPROVED: City Chairperson OLD BUSINESS Promote Commission as a resource - Schools - survey - Krey distributed the Telecommunications Services Survey that Algeri and Tsui created. The survey will go to a list of educators in both school districts who are interested in technology. Guttadauro asked if they are offering a wide variety of potential services listed in block #8. Algeri said that this block is going to be used to assess this community, and then based upon the results, the commission will make a decision about whether or not to support it. The commission would select the areas that had the most responses and then put together information for the school community. Krey said that the idea is for the commission to act as a resource for the schools and facilitate communication with companies or people that would provide services. Commission agreed to reword block #8 to read - "Would you be interested in the Cupertino Telecommunications Commission providing information sources for the following: (check all that apply)" Tsul said he wanted to add to block #7 "parents" after the line De Anza TV Center. Guttadauro made a motion to approve the survey with changes, Tsui seconded and the motion passed unanimously. Kxey said the next step would be to contact the two school districts and get a list of teachers, make the changes to the survey and then mail it out. Commission had questions regarding scholarships. Walton mentioned that in April the TCI corporation lets him know when grants are available. Krey mentioned if we already have a list of educators from the survey who are interested in technology, then that would be a good some. Project timeline: Chair Mannion asked if Commission had any changes to the timeline. Guttadauro mentioned that he noticed the construction notification section was added. Community education event (1998): Commission asked Walton when TCI would like to present infoLa~ation to Rotary for a community education event. Krey said it might be good to have this forum in the middle of the rebuild. Commission and Walton felt that September would be a good month for this event. Chair Mannion will act as the contact person to Rotary. Krey said the city of Cupertino/TCI Cable TV franchise agreement matrix created by Winch is a good tool for the city as well as TCI. Krey said she would make copies for the Public Works Department so they can follow the construction schedule. She said she mentioned to Walton there was already something on the matrix we needed to discuss and that was the noise study. Walton said there is a requirement for a noise study to be done 180 days prior to commencement of construction, however, TCI believes it is a moot point since TCI is not going to use the power supplies that the noise study was act~ally referring to. Algeri asked if TCI could provide some documentation stating this step had been completed. Krey suggested TCI provide a letter stating the findings. Tsui had a comment on perfotrr~ance specifications. Krey said it might need to be a separate document. Tsui asked if the commission should try working with TCI on perfo~rtumce specifications. Krey said there aren't any requirements in the franchise agreement that call for testing as soon as it is installed. Walton said that TCI is responsible for making sure that the system works. Krey stated that there are re-openers every three years and the first will come up at the end of this year. At that time, the city will look at where the system is and this will actually be a performance rating. Algeri said we should look at what TCI's testing standards are and let them know if we see some deficiency. Krey suggested after the first phase of the rebuild that we invite the TCI engineers in to give us a report. Walton and Krey said they would check to see iftbe FCC has standards for digital technology. Integrate student programming in pubic access: Chair Mannion mentioned that he knows one or two teachers that would like to get into integrating student programming in public access. · Mansion requested from Fish half-hour time slots for student-produced shows. Telecommunicstions Commission Regular Meeting February 5, 1998 MINUTES CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chairman Bill Mannion at 7:05 p.m. ROLL CALL Commissioners present: Bill Mannion, Sal Algeri, Mike Winch, L.T. Guttadanro and Ernest Tsai Staff: Donna Krey, Linda Lagergren Guests: Linda Grodt APPROVAL OF JAN. 7, 1998 MINUTES Guttadauro made a motion to approve the minutes as written; Algeri seconded and the motion passed unanimously. COMMUNICATIONS Oral: none Written: Krey distributed an article from the Multi-Channel News and a copy of the new TCI billing statement. Krey mentioned TCI changed the wording from "franchise fee" to "taxes and fees" with the dollar amount next to it. OLD BUSINESS 1997 project timeline: Wincn added items 37, 38 and 39 to the timeline (TCI Rebuild progress). Krey requested a presentation date for the Public Access Award Program and also the forum date, May 1998, from the workplan be added to the timeline. Production of videotapes: Krey said the city has a committee of its own called the 5Cs that is the cultural diversity arm of the city. Don Brown, city manager, suggested that there might be someone from that group willing to take on the cultural diversity video project and mn with it. Maunion got a list of potential volunteer crew members who are interested in working on this project. Krey mentioned once we fred if there is anyone interested from the 5Cs group, we can set up a meeting with Ron Fish. Tsui and Guttadauro said they would go to the 5Cs meeting to answer any questions. Guttadauro mentioned that Dorothy Stevens might be interested in hosting a Better Part show regarding senior issues and cultural diversity. Linda Grodt might also be interested in a children's show with cultural issues. Tsul said that Michael Chang had professional videos on the topic of cultural diversity that could possibly be mn on the government channel. Krey said that she would check with Michael Chang for the list of videos. The completed annual report video was viewed at the meeting. Commission will give five copies of the annual report video to the city councilmembers and agreed they wanted to do a video again next year. Winch wants to put a copy of the video on the web site, but would like to get feedback on council's opinion of the video before doing so. It was suggested ail commissions be included in a video. It was agreed by commission to get feedback from council on the annual report video and then ask Run Fish to mn it on public access. Community education event (1998): Commissioners agreed when TCI is close to completion with the rebuild, they will have TCI present to an audience, such as the Rotary Club, information about the rebuild and a presentation of their services. Commission requested that an article be put in the Scene each month stating the status of the rebuild. Commission will ask Walton at next month's meeting when TCI would like to present information to Rotary. NEW BUSINESS Promote Commission as a resource: Schools - survey - forum Algeri and Tsui will develop a survey to be distributed to Cupertino Union School District and Fremont Union High School District educators interested in technology. They will then collect input, select a date and conduct the forum. Algeri and Tsui will have a draft of the survey for the next packet. Consideration of date to visit TCI: Commission discussed visiting TCI to view the digital and ~J-Iome services. After discussion of a possible date, Wincn moved to begin the regular commission meeting of March' 4th at 6:30 p.m., hold a short business meeting, adjourn at 7:15 p.m. to the TCI facility to view the digital and ~Home services. Guttadauro seconded and the motion passed unanimously. TCI rebuild issues: Krey said the city had a meetings with TCI regarding TCI's request for a six-month extension on the rebuild. In the course of the meeting a couple of councilmembers felt TCI should pay for getting the six-month extension. The city was wrangling with ideas of what kind of compensation could be attained. Educational equipment was suggested. TCI said they got criticized for contributing to schools because their subscribers tell them they don't have children in schools and should not be paying for this. The city then mentioned its new expanded library project. TCI said in other communities they have contributed quite freely to technicai services in new libraries. The city suggested they come up with a proposal on how much they could give for the new library. The city said they thought six months was worth at least $100,000 because that is what TCI would pay in penalties. The city aiso said that if TCI doesn't get the two systems integrated at the same time, the company's additionai five years on the franchise term would be in jeopardy. The city asked TCI to come up with a dollar amount on how much the five years was worth. Krey asked the City Channel staff to put together a proposal of a studio for the library for the city to use as reference to compare with TCI's proposai. TCI came back with a proposai that included just about everything in the city's proposal in the amount of $205,000. TCI and the city agreed TCI would give the city three equal payments totaling $205,000, with the first payment in Jan. 1999. Krey asked for a volunteer from the commission to go through the TCI franchise agreement and develop a malxix that had dates and deadlines that the city could use as a reminder during the -- rebuild project. Wincn volunteered to review the agreement and create a matrix. Tsui mentioned that it might be nice to stipulate compliance and state the quaiifier and how it could be done. Krey said she had a call into Dave Walton to find out if he could give a starting date and where they are going to start with the rebuild so she could put it into the March Scene. Krey said she was also going to put in the Scene an article regarding sunspots, solar interference with cable TV. Reports from: De Anza College: No report - Ron Fish was not in attendance at the meeting. Commission emphasized expecting a quarterly producers meeting and suggested Fish get a college intern to do a quarterly newsletter. Marmion mentioned wanting a copy of De Anza's annual budget. City of Cupertino: Krey reminded everyone of the commissioner's dinner on Feb. 6. Krey said she received a call from Karen Bumett at Fremont Union High School District. She wanted the commission to know that the channel at the high school has a part-time clerical person who also works for the Sunnyvale education channel. This person is in charge of running the tapes and she is very responsible. They also had a student contest for a logo design. They chose one and they are going to be known as KTNO. Krey talked to the city attorney regarding parents purchasing tapes produced by the students from the schools who received grant money and he stated that it was allowed as long as the money was going back into the program. Krey spoke with Marquita Byrd and she is sending the check back to the city. Krey said council accepted the written annual report. Krey said Councilmember Statton brought up an issue regarding the provision in the franchise that says when the rebuild is completed, the city will get two more access channels. Statton wants to make sure that we have a plan for those two channels. The way the franchise is written now, if the city isn't using them, then TCI can use them until the city needs them and then TCI will give them back. Krey said she spoke to the city manager about this and they thought the best way to approach this is get together all the users of access channels (De Anza education channel, high school channel, elementary school, public access and government access) and find out who has the greatest need. De Anza College is in the forefront on distance learning and is desperate for more channel space. Krey mentioned we might want to get one or two representatives from the Telecommunication Commission to help form some recommendations for the use of the extra two channels. Mannion said he was interested in being a representative on this group. TCI: No report - TCI representative was not present. After commission reviewed TCI's report, a question of signal quality was raised. Commission will ask TCI next month about this question. ADJOURNMENT Wincn made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 8:46 p.m.; Guttadauro seconded and the motion passed unanimously. ATTEST: APPROVED: City Cl~k~~ ' Chairperson