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TC 08-06-97 Telecommunications Commission Regular Meeting August 6, 1997 MINUTES CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order by Chairman Ernest Tsui at 7:03 p.m. ROLL CALL Commissioners present: Sai Alged, L.T. Guttadauro, Bill Mannion, Ernest Tsui, Mike Winch Staff: Donna Krey, Laura Newman De Anza College: Ron Fish TCI: Dave Walton Guests: Linda Grodt APPROVAL OF dUNE 4, 1997 MINUTES Mike Wincn made a motion to approve the minutes as written; Bill Mannlon seconded and the motion passed unanimously. COMMUNICATIONS Oral: Linda Orodt told the commissioners that the San Jose Mercury News had a small story in the "Living" section about the BACE Awards she recently won. Written: Krey gave Tsul and Ssi PAged invitations from TCI to attend the open home scheduled for Aug. 17. The other commissioners received their invitations at their homes. Krey also gave the information packet she received about the ~ Home project to Tsui for his review. Tsui said he would like this item placed on the agenda for the next meeting and requested extra packets for the other commissioners from Dave Walton. OLD BUS/NESS 1997 project timeline: Wincn said he did not have a date for a producers meeting as yet. Ron Fish told him he has scheduled a meeting for Aug. 27 at 6 p.m. Winch said he would make the additions to the timeline. Telecommunication Halson with other dries: Winch told the commission that he recently elaanged jobs and doesn't have the time to devote to this particular item as he previously envisioned. Krey suggested the commissioners might want to narrow the focus just to Foothill College and the city of Los Altos for this year. Winch said he will provide a copy of the Foothill College producer agreement to the other commissioners. Mannion called attention to an article in the packet entitled "FCC modifies indecency roles for access channels." Aeeordiug to this article, Fish does not have any authority over access programs. He went on to say that the eom. mission is made up of volunteer citizens of Cupertino, and there is a paragraph within the Producers Agreement titled community standards and he thinks the commission in a way reflects the community stand_~rds. Since the Supreme Court has said it is taking off all restraints, he feels the decision needs to be made whether this commission and the Los Altos commission and any other cable advisory commission who represent community standards should have a say in what goes on public access. Alged said he would like to see the liaison keep in contact with Foothill College/Los Altos for the present. Tsul made a motion to have the commissioner assigned as the telecommunication liaison continue as the liaison and establish a contact with Foothill College and City of Los Altos; paget/ seconded and the motion passed unanimously. Winch said he will get the dates for the Los Altos Cable Commission meeting and report back at the next meeting. Production of videotapes: Mannion said he would like the commission to be thinking about the format and content for the annual report for the next meeting. Wincn will provide a copy of last year's annual report to each commissioner via e-mail. Krey info~i~ed the commissioners that the grant sent to Marquita Byrd took awhile to reach her because she had moved. The grant was forwarded to her new address. Tsui said he will contact her and make a status report at the next meeting. Promotion/awareness of access channel: Algeri and Mannion discussed two programs, one sponsored by Thc Better Part, and another potential program about upcoming city elections, as good opportunities to promote the access channel. Algeri said the Courier picked up on the idea before they were able to report to the commission. Discussion on this item was held until later in the agenda. Krey said the commission had previously discussed hanging the banner across Stevens Creek Boulevard to promote Channel 26 and asked Fish to find out how much it would cost to do this again. Fish said he had not been able to find out the information but will try to provide it at the next meeting. Winen asked if the Cupertino Courier had been contacted about publicizing access channel info~iiiation for free. Linda Grodt said it has become more difficult to get publicity about her shows in the Courier in recent months. Krey said that since there is money available in the materials and supplies budget, the commission might want to consider putting in a small ad to advertise the channel. She will provide the Courier's ad rates to the commissioners. She will also bring some promotional catalogues to the next meeting for the commissioners to look through. Web Page Update: G-uttadauro told the commissioners he had talked to Steve Toler prior to his departure from Cupertino and Steve was able to put some infos-ssxation on the city's web site. Guttadauro also said he talked to Fish about putting the access channel's program guide on De Anza - College's web site. Guttadauro said he has seen the information on the De Anza College web site, which is current. He pointed out that Mannion is the vice-chair, not Wincn, and there are new e-mail addresses for both Guttadauro and Wincn. Guttadauro said a link could be established fix~m the city's Telecommunications Commission page to De Anza College's web page. He told Fish that the page looks good. Fish said he wants to add a hit counter to the site. Krey explained to the commissioners that the administrative services director is in charge of all of the MIS information and she has said that there will not be anything new put on the city's web page until a permanent employee has been hired. In the meantime, all that is being done is maintaining what is already on the site. A consulting firm has been hired to do a job search for the position and it will probably not be until October before anyone is hired. Tim Stone is currently the interim MIS manager. Special award for access producers: Krey distributed copies of the nomination form for the Cupertino Outstanding Producer Award (COPA). She said she has forwarded a bunch of the forms to Fish and also has some in her office. Publicity has included an article in July's Scene and there will be another one in the September issue. Press releases were also sent out to the local papers. She said it would be a good idea if someone from the commission could attend the next producers meeting and talk about the award. Update on maintenance of access facility: Fish told the commissioners that the emergency lights continue to function, and the flooding problem in Studio B is being repaired and should be completed by the end of this month. TCI educational program: Dave Walton provided some information about the Education, Training & Communications (ETC) program, which Guttadauro had come across on the Internet. He said the ETC project is a learning project in school, home, and workplace that TCI was involved in. TCI split the ETC division off from the main parent company and made it into a strategic business unit. Walton said the last time he contacted the ETC division he was sent the ~ Home infoiiiaation packet. The ETC division purchased CareerTraek last year which is now one of the workplace tools. Walton said ETC is still in a regrouping mode. He also said that TCI still has an interest in the project but is not funding it. Guttadaur0 said he thinks the information should be made available to the school districts. Krey will make copies of the information provided by Walton and forward it to the school district representatives for their information. Mannion suggested that the commission invite one of the teachers from the local school district who attended the "Cable in the Classroom" project at Sparkman, Colorado, to provide a verbal report at a future meeting. Walton said he would see if he could find a teacher from Cupertino who went through the program. NEW BUSINESS Consideration to amend De Anza producer agreement to include disclaimer requirement and appropriate timing of shows: This item was placed on the agenda for discussion by the commission in response to complaints about a particular access show. C-uttadauro made a motion that the committee, upon receiving a complaint from the community about a particular program, may opt to put a disclaimer on the program and to ask the access director to reschedule the program to a later time; Mannion seconded and the motion passed ur~onimously. Fish will advise the commission if and when he receives any complaints. Proposal for Candidates Forum: Mannion distributed copies of a pwposal for a Candidates Forum. He said he and Alger/met with Mike DeGive, editor of the Cupertino Courier, to discuss interest in a live call-in show. He thought it would be something the commission might wish to co- sponsor with the Courier. Winch asked Krey what the City Channel covered during an election. Krey told the commissioners that the government channel covers the League of Women Voters Candidates' Forum and the Chamber of Commerce's Candidates' Forum, and runs them on the government channel. For the past two elections, the government channel has covered a "Meet the Media" event, where the candidates meet two members of the local press who ask them questions. There is no editorial control over the questions. Every year, there is a major election-programming package that is offered. The government channel also covers Election Night returns. This involves people in the control room who receive up-to-the-r~inute returns, and there are people, such as the city clerk, who stop by the control room and talk about the voting process. She said it has been difficult in the past to get the candidates to participate in a lot of different events b~cause most of them work full- time. In addition, the City Chan~el also airs two-minute platform speeches from each candidate. Wincn expressed some concern that if a program such as the one proposed by Mannion is produced for the access channel, and there are other similar programs offered on the government channel, the proposed program will get lost. There was some discussion about producing a different type of show for public access, such as one about the voting process, or registering to vote, geared for newly naturalized citizens. C-uttadauro made a motion that the commission not sponsor the proposed call-in show as a mechanism to publicize and promote Chanr~el 26, but to look at some future programming geared to the voting process; Algeri seconded, and the motion passed unanimously. Guttadauro thanked Marmion and Algeri for their hard work and effort. Discussion of separate work session: Tsui told the other commissioners that he felt some meetings may not be productive because there isn't enough time to discuss specific work plans. He suggested either a separate meeting or beginning a meeting 30 minutes early W talk about the commission's 1997 goals. Guttadauro said he would consider attending a separate meeting to focus on one item from the cowmlssion's goals. Wincn suggested that the commission might want to consider focusing on only one or two achievable goals, not four or five. Guttadauro suggested that there could be a meeting to review the commission's timeline and goals, with a report by thc commissioner assigned to a particular item, and discussion on what action the commission wants to take. Tsui made a motion to have the commission meet 30 minutes prior to its next regularly scheduled meeting to reevaluate the work plan and to try and focus on a few goals that would be achievable this year; Winch seconded and the motion passed unanimously. The commission will meet at 6:30 p.m. on September 3, 1997. TCI: Walton said the telephone answering times within 30 seconds are at 75 pcmcnt for May and 82 percent for June. They should be at 90 percent. The reason behind the lower level of answering times was due to increased calls because of the rate increase notification and lower staff levels. Improvements are being made. He also said TCI is having an open house on Aug. 17 at its new location on 10m Street near Tully in San Jose. The studio is located there, as well as the cable store, the administrative office, the draffing and design departments, the training department, the warehouse and field department. The phones are still answered at the Gish Road site and will continue to be answered there for about another year, at which time the lease will be up. Walton also announced that TCI is working with Pacific Bell to manage the transition of San Jose customers back to TCI. There are about 8,000 customers affected by Pac Bell's pullout. City of Cupertino: Krey announced that the Far West conference is scheduled for Oct. 23 through 25 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She said she doesn't have all of the registration information at this time but if any commissioner who wants to attend should let her know at the next meeting. Krey said she has been trying to contact Kathi Noe at TCI to get an update on the rebuild, however, Noe has been very busy working on negotiating franchises for other cities. Originally, she had said she wanted to set up a meeting with herself, Valerie Castellano, Don Brown and Krey to talk about the rebuild. According to the most recent message from Noe, TCI has created a separate company that is going to be doing the constructing and handling all of the rebuilds that are required by their franchise agreements. Noe said this separate company would be responsible for everything, but the rebuild itself would be managed locally. Krey said she gave meeting dates and is now waiting for confirmation of the meeting. Krey informed the commission that the U.S. Court of Appeals has come out with the final verdict in the Baltimore case, and has decided in favor of the cities, stating that cable franchise fees are part ora cable company's gross revenues. De Anza College: Fish reported that between the hours of 1 and 4 p.m., Mon. through Fri., there is Stanford programming on the public access channel. He said there will be 27 entries for the annual WAVE Awards. He also said he has ordered a SVHS editing VCR for edit room "B" which will enable producers to use this room with the same capabilities as edit room "A". Fish also said he would be on vacation for the month of October. He told the commission he~ll be looking at converting to a DVD format in the future and is now researching equipment. ADJOURNMENT Winen made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 9:25 p.m.; Mannion seconded and the motion passed unanimously. The next meeting will be Wednesday, September 3, 1997 at 6:30 p.m. ATTEST: APPROVED: City Clerk(,/' Chairperson