The City pays a hefy fee to Swagit Productions of Houston, Texas to handle live streaming and direction of its City Commission meetings, various citizen committee meetings and special meetings. The price tag is well over $100,000.
Normally, Swagit has a director running the commission meeting room camera during these events. When a speaker addresses the commission, the camera does a close up of that speaker. When the mayor reads a proclamation, the camera focuses on the mayor and the group/persons being recognised. When a commissioner makes a comment, there is a close-up on that commissioner as he speaks. The same goes for when the City Manager, City Attorney or City Clerk addresses the commission.
None of that took place during Tuesday's hour long City Commission workshop and the following two-and-half hour regular commission meeting. In fact, when the commission meeting ended, the live stream was still broadcasting the empty commission chambers.
Instead of varied video shots, Swagit produced only a continuous fixed shot (seen above) for the workshop and regular meeting. To make matters worse, the video resolution was of substandard quality.
So video of Interim Chief Jeffrey Tambasco formally promoting Officer Corbitt to the rank of Sergeant has been lost forever. Same with Mayor Bradley Bean reading proclamations for Pride Month, Flag Day, the Main Street quarterly report and the lastest update from the executive search company in recruiting a new city manager.
None of the slides or exhibits displayed on the projector screen during the meetings was broadcast or captured for the archives. During the workshop, Commissioner Chip Ross presented an in-depth study of downtown parking spaces that the viewing public never got to see.
We informed City Clerk Caroline Best about the absence of any Swagit production activities during the meetings the next day. She was quick to respond and shot off an email to Swagit asking what had happened.
"Thanks for letting us know," was Swagit's reply.
As of Thursday morning, Swagit had not provided the city with an explanation.
However, the Swagit streaming of the CRAAB meeting Wednesday had returned to normal production quality.
This comes on the heels of Swagit's inability to stream the May 16 City Commission meeting that included a solar farm proposal and approval of townhouses on the Tringali property leaving city residents in the dark about what had transpired. It took Swagit nearly two more days to upload the meeting video to the city's website.
So who was responsible or irresponsible to cancel the Christmas Parade 5 minutes before it was to procede?
I suspect that Swagit didn’t have a person available to change the camera shots so they kept the fixed wide angle shot. Better than nothing but not what the city pays for. Perhaps someone from City Clerk’s office should monitor at least the first 30 minutes of a meeting to ensure it is being broadcast properly.
Sad. The incompetence and impact on public input grows. Perhaps we might invalidate all commission actions this night.