I remember back in the heady days of Big Dreams and Profligate Spending…when City council was trying to explain why we needed a ridiculous no-bid $95,000 audio/visual system for their new chambers, with all the bells and whistles.
Assistant City Manager Gary Cox was explaining to The Dispatch:
“The monitors [TV sets Azbell raped them on] in the secondary rooms can be set up to provide audio and video from the main chamber — which would allow people to watch meetings live from the additional rooms if the crowd is too large [HAHAHAHAHA] for all audience members to fit in the main council chamber.”
And also this…..
“Cox said an archive of meeting videos will be available to the public. He added that the City Council could decide to stream live video on the internet so people could follow the proceedings if they cannot attend a meeting in person”.
WOW! Archives AND live-streaming! TOTALLY worth getting bent over for almost $100,000!
So I asked the City yesterday if I could see the video recording of the very first meeting in The Fishbowl on October 28th…seeing as how we paid almost $100,000 for the privilege. Their answer?
There is no video recording!
In fairness, Monica probably forgot how to work the fancy gizmo since they were likely trained on it almost a year ago. They did, however, send me a link to the audio recording. I’m no sound technician, but I’m pretty sure you can record audio-only for a LOT less than $95,000.
Audio link: https://app.box.com/s/k7e9kao553yiyt4vgatpfhvx6igyk9gq
So we don’t have live streaming of video…we don’t even have an ARCHIVE of the video. So I guess Monica couldn’t figure out how to record video after having over 10 months to do so, and all those fancy cameras and video recording devices were for naught. Just another failed Big Dream that cost the taxpayers a small fortune. Well done!