ORDER-2014-152 : Requesting that the City post audio/video recordings w/ agendas of meetings of the Board of Aldermen on IQM2 portal on City's website, or, in the alternative, on YouTube with a link thereto on the city website.

Transcript (~19 min @ 45:22)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 45:21 John N. Tramontozzi: also my understanding and speaking with the mayor as well so thank you president khan so we'll move on to order number 2014-152 requesting that the city post audio video recordings with the genders of meetings of the board of aldermen on iqm2 portal on city website are in the alternative on youtube with a link there too on the city website well alderman wright i think this was your order or request to be placed on the agenda thank you

▶ 46:00 Francis X. Wright Jr.: mr chairman yes it was um and i'm familiar with both of these uh prospective ways of posting meetings by personal experience and we have the IQM to portal on our website already what that is able to provide and I think the clerk of committees is is able to show us through the link in the very top left corner of your web page is and if you look on the screen across from us behind you it's the city or town of I think it's Redding California there are several in Massachusetts that do this as well and what it allows you to do is it allows you to go to the agenda item of a meeting that has already happened click on the agenda item and you will immediately go to the discussion on the agenda item and you can click the bottom and enlarge it so it takes up the whole screen it's got volume the whole nine yards so you hear the discussion so it's fairly

▶ 47:22 Francis X. Wright Jr.: self-explanatory fairly easy to use I think very easy to use and I'm familiar with that on a day-to-day basis in my other life but also I know that the some of the state agencies or at least the Gaming Commission posts their meetings on YouTube and you can find agenda items I believe they list the the time on the recording of where you can find particular agenda items if I'm correct but at least they're on YouTube and they get posted rather quickly and this comes to mind because obviously while MMTV does a great job recording them recording our meetings and the school committee meetings if you are interested in seeing something, you cannot count on when you're going to see it. If somebody's really interested, and I know when we had the water hearings, Alderman Kahn was frustrated that based on the news industry as it is right now, we don't get the coverage in the papers that we might have in the past. And so if somebody wanted to watch that meeting and go back and look at it, they would have to go to MMTV and if they just happen to miss it and it was on a cycle you might have to wait six hours for it to come back around it's a great service MMTV provides for us but I just think it would be a lot more user friendly and be a benefit to our constituents if they can somehow access a discussion of a matter that they have an interest in much more rapidly either through the IQ m2 site or to a posting on YouTube I think both of them have a cost to the city my understanding is IQ m2 is and maybe the city clerk can help me on this $550 a month and I believe we were waiting to get word as to what it would cost for posting on YouTube but I think it's a good investment I think it's good for our constituents I think there's less and less coverage in newspapers generally and certainly of our meetings um and um you know i want to throw this out there for the members of this board uh to consider um and um see where it might go thank you other than right i

▶ 49:50 John N. Tramontozzi: just have a quick question um who would post on youtube how is that accomplished well if you know

▶ 50:01 Francis X. Wright Jr.: it's a good question mr chairman um i would assume it would be the clerk or the clerk of committees would work with it to get it posted my guess is clerk a committee tends to be a jack-of-all-trades and ultimately a lot of it would fall on her I don't want to speak for her so what do I want to volunteer would that be the need for an

▶ 50:19 John N. Tramontozzi: additional camera posted in the in this chamber well I think that's part of

▶ 50:23 Francis X. Wright Jr.: where it comes into you know the potential for cost and all that is both with posting it I don't know what deals would have to be made with them MTV I don't know the exact arrangements that exist with regards to use of that video so um we would have

▶ 50:43 Speaker 1: to work through that president yeah um i i think any way that we can um get our meetings and our deliberations out to more people to try to interest people is a good thing um i would like to know how much this would cost before we take a vote on it um you know i i have no idea whether this is hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars but i think it's a good idea if we can do it um i would like to see us hold this order until we get some kind of cost estimate back as to what this would cost but unless it's a prohibitive cost i would support this ozman forbes yeah i don't

▶ 51:21 Scott M. Forbes: even know if this is even an i.t question or something that you could answer because you're familiar with this but do we know what the turnaround time is from the time you have a meeting if it was to go on this type of software how long it would take for it to be loaded up

▶ 51:35 Francis X. Wright Jr.: with all due respect it takes as it's as quick as the clerk can get it done okay my experience is the next day and i know with the gaming commission it tends to be the next day also

▶ 51:49 Francis X. Wright Jr.: okay all right thank you did you have a further comment before i go well with regards to the iqm2 it's five hundred and fifty dollars a month okay other than back to my goal is

▶ 51:57 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: thank you actually MMTV has just started to stream the Board of Aldermen and school committee meetings on our website they are not searchable and it's pretty much just the last two site the last two meetings we don't have the bandwidth or capacity at this point to archive all of the meetings online but we're kind of in the in the pilot phase of that and hope in the fall to be able to maybe expand it it typically is about 24 hours later the way that it works now is we have to get the the disk if you will back from City Hall and then load it into the server so you can find the last couple of meetings of both boards on our website mmtv3 but and it's so you can watch it whenever you want but it is not like searchable like by order number which is a feature that IQ m2 would do and whether or not that is something down the road that mmtv could provide you'd have to check with the executive director who does the programming but i do know that we've just started doing that as a kind of feature in between times anyways for people to be able to to look at it whenever they want so and there's no cost at the moment there's no cost to the city for

▶ 53:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that alderman wright just if i may ask the clerk of committees did do we have a cost is there a I thought there was a cost related to YouTube postings when I spoke with the

▶ 53:37 Speaker 5: IT director he indicated that it would cost upwards of 800 a month for for us to for the city to do that via YouTube that's not you mentioned it that's I do

▶ 53:50 Francis X. Wright Jr.: recall that so the IQ m2 would be actually cheaper it would be less

▶ 53:55 Speaker 5: expensive it would also integrate what we already use so you go to one website you could see the agenda the minutes the video right there I mr. chairman I know

▶ 54:10 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that we're speaking for the third time but I think it's a good investment I think it's an opportunity for the public to again view a matter that may be of interest to them that everyone works crazy schedules now people have commitments with the children and their families etc jobs there's no there's very little nine-to-five world anymore but if they do have an interest they can they can go online it shows that we're you know staying current with technology here in Melrose I'd rather be at or ahead of the curve than behind it so if this board sees fit I'm inclined to vote in favor of this and I hope that the other members of this committee will support it thank you I think one of the

▶ 54:57 John N. Tramontozzi: other things that IQM2 offers is that you know how they produce the agenda and the meeting schedules and then they put it you can have an icon next to each meeting posted you click on the icon and up comes the video I mean something like that would be I think something IQM2's capabilities I would think not being a computer whiz but Alderman Medeiros thank you some of

▶ 55:29 Monica C. Medeiros: Alderman Wright interaction with our clerk committees did answer some of my question but I think this is a is a good idea I do think that this is a significant cost we're hearing tonight that you know I'd like to get more concrete numbers before I voted on that and make sure the funds are actually

▶ 55:56 Monica C. Medeiros: available what I'm I'm wondering when the clerk committees had said that it would be $800 a month to post this on YouTube is this the cost that YouTube incurs or is it something that it would fit the staff person to do I think it's

▶ 56:10 Speaker 5: a server cost I think the city would have to either either rent server space

▶ 56:24 Speaker 5: or by server space to hold this much data I believe is what is what the IT

▶ 56:38 Monica C. Medeiros: director said it was just verbal okay thank you that that's all I I wouldn't

▶ 56:42 John N. Tramontozzi: be ready to make a decision on this tonight thank you very much mr. mr.

▶ 56:44 Gail Infurna: chairman I also agree that I think we need a little bit more information the thought is good and I certainly would like to you know research a little bit more and just as a question and I'm not quite sure if through you mr. chairman to alderman right do you know if this or maybe even a city clerk committees could do it do you know if there's a way to tell how many hits that it's getting would it count the number of hits I'm just curious if we did it for a year in a trial and you know to look at how many hits you got if there a way to do that well i'm sure there is yeah that seems you know it may be something that maybe we could trial for a year to if that's if depending on the investment and whether it's a permanent type of investment worth it or what anyways i'm looking to probably have a little bit more

▶ 57:36 John N. Tramontozzi: information um just alderman wright you might have a response yeah thank you mr chairman i

▶ 57:39 Francis X. Wright Jr.: we can confirm that if we're going to hold this in committee we can confirm that you can see how many hits there those are good questions I think our numbers are accurate with regards to the cost but you know to the extent people want to look at it more you know they want may want to go on and check out some other cities and towns that have it and actually use it and that's understandable but like you said you know you can go on an old agenda and click on the agenda item see the discussion now that's that's that's one of the things you can do but we can look and check with regards to hits and see if we can count those as well thank you

▶ 58:20 Peter D. Mortimer: all the more to marry you um if you go on the site there's on the left-hand menu if you go on the IQ m2 site right here on our tablets it says request pricing and they also have you can schedule a demo request info they have an 800 number here they have sales at IQ m2 comm so all this information is pretty readily available to us for our next meeting when we discuss this we can find out a lot of this information so they'd be happy to tell us but to try it's right here on the their own website we can find out very good thank you

▶ 59:01 John N. Tramontozzi: Alderman Lemmerman, I think, you're up next.

▶ 59:03 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you. I am curious about whether IQM2 and their service has a comments feature for their videos. I'm thinking of YouTube, you know, they do have comments and just sort of that's just a dynamic to consider in terms of, you know, it could foster some dialogue, but it also you sometimes get spammers and we would probably need to make decisions around whether there would be someone moderating those and commenting questions right here too you

▶ 59:33 Peter D. Mortimer: can send them a comment or a question right now I mean more on the videos can

▶ 59:37 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: know their commenters yeah yeah and and if just sort of consideration as we

▶ 59:46 John N. Tramontozzi: think of the two surfaces I think I think Alderman Lemmerman was thinking about the public's use of the website to make comments on about our meetings and in general yeah very good I just my experience is no they don't have a

▶ 1:00:06 Speaker 4: comments maybe that's good I don't know but there are as we all know there are

▶ 1:00:09 Francis X. Wright Jr.: other places where people can comment but to my my experience is not on the

▶ 1:00:19 John N. Tramontozzi: IQ I'm too so I think there may be some control issues on what goes up in comments that's why there's limitations on that probably any other discussion

▶ 1:00:32 John N. Tramontozzi: seeing none we have a motion do I hold it motion to hold in all the committee

▶ 1:00:37 Francis X. Wright Jr.: we just just so I understand what the questions are going forward I don't I'm not sure I understand because I think we have numbers and like other than whether they count hits are we looking for anything specific are we looking for anyone specific if this is coming back at the next meeting to the extent people looking at me for answers I want to make sure we address it president Kahn has a

▶ 1:01:02 Speaker 1: thought yeah um I'd like to know whether we whether we're going to use one or

▶ 1:01:11 Speaker 1: both of these options I'd like to think about the cost and I don't really have

▶ 1:01:23 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: specific questions other than that I would just be interested in knowing what the technical like do they provide a camera is there wiring involved any of that kind of stuff do they use what is already existing here yeah I mean if I

▶ 1:01:39 Francis X. Wright Jr.: can mr. chairman my experience is no they use the existing feed so you know the clerk of committees knows anything differently how she can weigh in but they just use the

▶ 1:01:58 John N. Tramontozzi: existing feed correct yeah so they would tap into that well then do they have to get licensing from the mmtv because it is there you know that's an issue i don't know through right through the

▶ 1:02:06 Speaker 10: chair to i believe it's a public document it's maybe yeah yeah i don't yeah i would be interested

▶ 1:02:12 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: in knowing how that gets from one place to the next and what the timeline is on that. Interesting.

▶ 1:02:24 Monica C. Medeiros: Alderman Medeiros. Thank you. I would like to see a written quote from IQM2 included in our packet. And also I know the clerk committees had indicated that there was a verbal conversation with our internal IT director on the server cost being $800 a month. And it was kind of my understanding that YouTube, you know, sort of they operate and hold the videos and not necessarily the user who's watching it. And if we could provide things like links, I feel like we could probably possibly avoid some of that server cost, but I'm not quite an expert on that. But I'd like to explore that more outside of this meeting room and, you know, get some kind of written memo as to what the cost might be there. I would assume it will take some time to, you know, watch the videos and mark what time obviously if whoever is taking minutes is marking the time in the meetings that certain discussions happen then that may be easier to mark in the videos themselves but you know perhaps we could look at getting some volunteers to do some of this in the in the short term if and I would also like to confirm that there are funds available from the city auditor before we move forward with the decision those are the kinds of things that I would like to see before it all

▶ 1:04:08 Francis X. Wright Jr.: right I think that's very good last one last comment with regards to one of all them in Collins questions I did not intend through this order that it be posted on both all right good so what's the will of the committee do we have a

▶ 1:04:29 Scott M. Forbes: motion file the order until the next committee meeting motion holding