Travis County Commissioners Court

April 24, 2012 - Item A2
Agenda

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A2, Consider and take appropriate action for Records Management Department for additional audio, visual and broadcast equipment at 700 Lavaca and the necessary funding.

>> good afternoon, judge, and Commissioners, I am director of management records resource and I have with me al jackson, the manager of media services.
I am here to discuss space equipment functionality and budget issues for the first floor of 700 lavaca its ramifications to media services and Commissioners court, specifically the Commissioners court, courtroom media space and control room.
there have been developments that we recommend the court be made aware.
we have been working closely with the project manager, the construction manager, and have been mightily pleased with the designs and recommendations for the equipment for that space.
but now we are bumping our heads against some budget issues, the results of which are that the contractor is unable to supply the original specifications for the equipment that was -- or the equipment that is now on the list is not part of the original specifications.
it is fairly long and multi-facetted explanation as to why the budget has been reduced and that's all in your back-up.
we are not really here to throw anybody under the bus but to try to find some solutions and look at some other financing options.
the important thing for media services and I think for Commissioners court is to discuss the -- discuss the resulting loss of functionality and determine your wishes as to how we restore this functionality, and, again, in your back-up, you are going to see a long list of equipment items that either have been eliminated or substituted from the original specified items. There is a total of 15 items under discussion.
many of the items are technical enough to make our collective eyes glaze over.
so what we have done is prepare a few snapshots we are going to show here on the items in question on our priority order and while we are prepared to discuss each item, in the interest of the court's time, it may be necessary to just examine the first few.
I will -- I am going to describe the first item here.
what you are looking at is a photo of city council chambers, and we are always fortunate when we can learn from other -- other people's mistakes, and in this way, we have learned from the build-out of the city hall.
since it was in the recent past we are able to learn what worked, what didn't, and what changes they would recommend.
we worked pretty closely with them.
this is the space that, overall, it works very well, and as a result -- and as a result of al's work, the contractor's work, we were able to design our space that meets the same functionality of the city space at half the cost.
it is really pretty remarkable achievement, I think, and the collaborative effort of all of those people.
go ahead.
next.
and next.
one of the smartest things the city did was to provide recording and broadcast capabilities in their meeting rooms, and the new space at 700 has a multi-function meeting space room that can be divided into three different rooms and one of the things that was in the original plan that is no longer there is the capability to broadcast and record from those rooms, and that's the -- that's if major thing that we want to bring to your attention today.
we have some others on the list here that I think al is going to cover.

>> okay.
what you are looking at, something about too much, broadcast automation, the way tvs run these days, is on the computers.
everything is stored on the hard drives.
the original system we had was probably about twice as much but essentially we want a system that will be able to broadcast, record, interface all of the media that is the video and audio, with all of the edit rooms, with what we -- from Commissioners court studio and hopefully a multi-purpose room as well and all of these items you are looking at are interfaced together.
what you are looking at is some remote cameras that basically do the same thing these are that are integrated into one unit with pan-tilt units and microphone, microphone mixing systems which makes it simpler for all things to be run with one or two people from all three rooms. We can either do it the -- record simultaneously and broadcast one or any mixture of theirs and one thing -- another thing that was taken out completely is the cameras for field productions.
we have standard digital stuff.
our facility is going to be hard def, because they don't make standard definition things anymore, everything has moved up and all of our cameras are standard definition.
all of the field production stuff, again, was taken off the list because of budget constraints.
what you are looking at is some of the standard def stuff.
this is one of the characteristic generators that put graphics up.
we had to reduce to one that is basically a card and a pc and doesn't allow us to do things live on the air.
we have to send it from the pc over to the switcher and wait for a second for it to happen, as opposed to being able to do it live on the air and these are things on the studio, pedestals where the diget cameras were taken out and teleprompter was taken out and once we has to reduce the budget, get Commissioners court up to running and make sure we can broadcast and record Commissioners court and the stuff we had already and hopefully be able to get the other things on board after talking to you guys later about what's going to...

>> I should point out that allen miller is here from planning and budget and we had a good discussion with him this morning and as it -- as it turns out, there is actually a little more money in budget or there is an earmark that we did not know that was there and it ends up being $80,000 so for total of 255,000 we are looking at here, there is $80,000 that the Commissioners could approve that would apply towards this.
also in the interest of full disclosure, I need to point out that many of the items on this list could be deferred to next year's budget, in other words, especially the most of the later things you saw on the list, the studio stuff.
there is not a whole lot of things on this list that it's highly recommended we buy at the front end, but there are some of these items that should be integrated into the entire universe of this media world at the front end.
it's going to cost us more money.
it's going to be more intrusive, so it's our recommendation that we do this as soon as possible.

>> does the 80,000 cover the front-end items that need to really be in the initial package.

>> we think -- as it turns out, we think it might.
and those two things are this: the -- yes, the automation side of it but we can build the infrastructure so that you can have recording and cable casting in those meeting rooms. In other words, they can do that during the -- during the construction phase and if that were approved, the rest of the items, cameras, et cetera, et cetera, were approved for next year's budget, I think it would work.

>> that would be 1 and 2?

>> I think that's 1 and 4, judge.

>> okay.
so in terms of priority, 1 and 4?

>> yes, sir.

>> are at the top.
the others we think we can put in later without great additional cost in.

>> yes, sir.
and they were included in the budget we submitted yesterday.
all of these items shift shift were included in the off chance.

>> the stuff we want to put in now need to be put in while we are shifting the building.
we want to do it while they are still putting on the walls and ceilings and after that you can bring in the equipment and connect it.

>> that's 1 and 4?

>> yes, sir.

>> yes.

>> and there is $89,000 available?

>> there is earmark reserved for 80,000 for audio-visual for records management that was added in mark up last year.

>> in that case I move we approve 1 and 4 and pay for them out of the earmark.

>> second.

>> second by Commissioner Gomez first.
discussion, court members?
we need to get through the construction.

>> fy '13 bring it through that process.

>> any more discussion?
and those will total $49,000?

>> $50,000 for item 1 will cover the infrastructure and 30,000 for the approved automation system.

>> okay.

>> so sorry, judge.
we aring looing at the wrong --

>> okay.
it's 2 -- it's 1.

>> one and 2, actually.

>> okay.

>> one and part of 2.

>> one and part of 2.

>> [laughter]

>> yes, one and half of two.

>> we need 130,000?

>> one and half of 2.

>> 50,000.

>> half of 2.

>> okay.

>> that's my motion.

>> two works for the multi-function rooms, pulling out the equipment and putting it in the infrastructure, we will ask for the equipment during the budget process.

>> okay.

>> that will eat up that 80,000 earmark?

>> yes, sir.
and what we were generally looking for is direction from the court, this is the direction that you wanted to go related to the multi-purpose rooms, as well?

>> let's see then.
all in favor of the motion?
that's the direction.
passes by unanimous vote.
thank you.

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