Good morning all:
My name is David Twigg and I’m an I.T. Support Specialist for the City of
Lincoln City on the coast. I am a new member of OAGITM and I look forward to
participating in the group.
In Lincoln City, the I.T. department is responsible for the A / V room. We
record and stream City Council and Planning Commission meetings. Most of our
technology is incredibly dated, but my colleagues and I have worked hard to
keep it functioning.
We received approval to upgrade the A / V equipment this fiscal year. I have
been researching solutions and am ready to start purchasing equipment.
In Lincoln City, we have a Government Access channel in SD through Spectrum
(it’s Channel 4 in this area). We currently use a Leightronix Nexus to control
live broadcasting and scheduling of that channel.
The new equipment we purchase will all be HD. As such, we would need to
purchase new equipment to broadcast to our cable channel in HD. This equipment
will cost around $10,000. In addition, we would need to negotiate with Spectrum
to get an HD channel to broadcast to, or we will need to use converters to
downgrade our signal to SD.
Lincoln City has an older population than most cities in Oregon, and we believe
that our community values being able to watch government meetings on Spectrum
cable. However, the cost and negotiations required to feed an HD cable channel
just don’t seem worth it to us. It seems that focusing on high-quality
streaming is the way to go.
I’d really appreciate hearing from OAGITM folks about your thoughts on local
government access TV. In particular, I have the following questions:
1. Does your government agency have a PEG channel?
2. Is it important to your community to have PEG access? If so, why?
3. What kind of programming do you offer on your PEG channel?
4. Do you plan to maintain your PEG channel into the future?
5. Do you feel streaming videos are more important than PEG broadcasts?
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this email and, hopefully,
answer my questions. It’s a very tough decision for us to make and your input
will help us support a recommendation.
Have a good day, David
[LC-CircularLogo-Color-email]
David Twigg
I.T. Support Specialist
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City of Lincoln City | Information Technology
801 SW Hwy 101 | PO Box 50 | Lincoln City, OR
P: 541.557.1123 | Cell: 541.921.3562
E: dtwigg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:dtwigg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> | W: LincolnCity.org