The approval comes after two attempts to live-stream meetings during separate hearings on proposed regulation of a wind farm in the eastern part of the county. The majority of an overflow audience was unable to hear a significant portion of one meeting and the other meeting was extended for more than an hour trying to get the system to work.
After last week's commission meeting, during which the board took public comment on whether to impose a moratorium on wind development in the county, Information Technology Director Mike Matthews attempted to make changes to the existing meeting broadcast system by going back to a previous service provider.
That, however, resulted in an inability this week to record the commission meetings at all.
Matthews plans to purchase a new system similar to what the Hutchinson City Commission uses to stream and record its meetings.
The county previously had a system provided by a company called Granicus. When it last upgraded, however, the county switched to one developed by Civic Ready, Matthews said.
"As you may know we've had numerous problems with that system," he said. "It finally got to the point I thought 'this is not going to work,' and switched back to Granicus."
That company, meanwhile, upgraded its equipment from analog to all digital, so it's not compatible with the county's existing equipment.
Matthews said he went to the city's IT department to learn about its system. The county's will be similar to what the city uses, with high definition video, though on a much smaller scale than the city's system.
"There are several advantages to the Tricaster system," Matthews said. "It will work with our current encoding equipment. It also improves the ability to produce a meeting. You can split screens or do picture-in-picture. I believe it will be able, if you're having a presentation, to show that presentation. It can stream three different sources at any one time."
The commission would also be able to stream on YouTube or Facebook.
The Human Resources Department could use the system to record training on benefits enrollment, for example, and new employees who come on later could watch the video for their training.
Besides upgrading the recording system in the commission chambers to a system from DAV Studios in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Matthews wants to add two television screens in the Veteran's Room in the courthouse basement, which has more seating capacity than the commission chambers. That will also require adding Chromecast devices to the TVs, buying TV stands and cabling.
Matthews advised the commission Tuesday that he realized in the middle of the night Monday he also needs to upgrade the audio system connections, which he estimated at $600, on top of his initial $23,016 estimate.
"It's expensive, but if you want to do it, you have to make an investment somehow," he said.
Commissioner Dan Deming asked if, with the new equipment, the commission would be able to stream its meeting to a screen in the courthouse lobby, as it attempted last week.
It would, Matthews said, as well as be able to livestream via the Internet if there were problems with the software.
"You can patch and patch and patch, but maybe we need to do new," said Commission Chairman Ron Hirst. "I don't like spending money, but we need to do this. We need to take enough time to where we're satisfied and have a company rep be able to be here."
Hirst asked that Matthews, however, to get prices on the television sets from vendors, rather than going to Wal-Mart, as listed in his proposal.
"What we have now is not acceptable," Commissioner Bob Bush said. "In this day and age of open meetings, we want the public to know what we're talking about. The ability to get on Facebook is huge."
Bush warned, however, that the city's system had a lot of bugs that needed to be worked out when it was first new.
"There were problems the first four or five or six meetings till we were up and running," he said. "I support the proposal, but it won't be done without growing pains."
Deming asked if the system could be in place for next week's commission meeting, but Bush said he didn't want to rush to get a new system in place and suggested the county not go live again "until its ready and going to work."
©2018 The Hutchinson News (Hutchinson, Kan.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
