By Jim Bloch
If you want to watch the recording of the regular meeting of the Port Huron City Council meeting on Nov. 13, you have to watch the moving images without sound. The city posted the audio recording of the meeting separately from the video recording, so you can listen to the meeting without seeing the video. Good luck syncing the two on two devices, such as your phone and laptop.
There was also no audio for the telecast of the regular meeting on Oct. 23.
Those problems should be remedied by March or April.
The city council voted unanimously at its regular meeting Dec. 11 to spend $60,713 to upgrade the audiovisual capabilities of the public meeting room in city hall.
Advanced Lighting & Sound, of Troy, will perform the upgrades, installing new audio, visual and lighting components in the meeting room.
“So it’s pretty much replacing everything,” said City Manager James Freed, as heard on the recording of the meeting posted on YouTube. As Freed noted: “We have sound tonight on YouTube, so a miracle.”
“I think we’re all very anxious to have this done,” said Mayor Pauline Repp.
“As I’ve said before, the equipment here has been cobbled together,” said Freed. “It’s ancient. It doesn’t meet current standards.”
Advanced Lighting and Sound, Inc. was the sole bidder on the work.
“They have done the new system in the Marysville City Hall that they built two or three years ago,” said Freed. “Madison Heights, a comparable community to ours, they did all the technology there. This will allow us to not only broadcast on Comcast, but it comes with a tri-cast (capacity) so we can broadcast directly to YouTube as well as we’ll begin to broadcast our meetings live to Thumb Coast TV in the coming months.”
The company will replace the current projector and screen in the council chambers. It will install a Tricaster TC Mini 4K in place of the current video mixer, allowing “for switching, graphics, recording, streaming and virtual green screen capabilities.” ALS will replace three existing PTZ cameras with NDI cameras. It will install a QSC Core 110 v2 audio processor to replace the Clear One HD Conference processor.
The current Leko lights are “no longer efficient and do not produce the needed illumination” and will be replaced.
“These canister lights in here, these are from the 1970s,” said Freed, pointing to the ceiling lights in the meeting room. “They require high-energy ballasts which create the buzz that you hear when you are watching (the council meetings) from home. It’s not the best audio quality, nor has it ever been, because of old fixtures and things like that.”
Repp asked what would happen to the new equipment if the city sells the Municipal Office Center — it is for sale — and moves elsewhere.
“Everything is moveable,” said Freed. “So if we do decide to move the MOC, it all can be unbolted and taken with us. That was one of the requirements we put in the bid docs.”
Council member Anita Ashford recommended that the new system allow the mayor to have the ability cut off the microphone at the chamber’s podium in the event of too much “drama.” Freed said that he would look into it.
The council voted 7-0 to approve the upgrades.
“We hope to have this executed before the end of March,” Freed said. “They’ll start in February.”
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
