from staff
December is traditionally a slow time for City Council and with a rare “fifth” week on the schedule, Council Director Cheryl Brown is taking advantage of the downtime to upgrade the technology in Council Chambers.
The upgrades will begin Dec. 1 and run through Jan. 10. During that time, the Council’s standing committee meeting will be moved from the Council Chambers to one of the committee rooms in the Council offices on the fourth floor of City Hall. In an effort to ensure adequate meeting space for the public, the regularly scheduled Council meeting set for Dec. 13 will be held in Council Chambers. Brown said no special requests for the use of Council Chambers or either of the committee rooms will be honored during this six-week period to any agencies or organizations not associated with Council members or their district meetings or issues, boards or commissions.
Brown said the current technology in use in the Chambers was installed when the St. James Building was reopened as City Hall in 1997.
“The life span of this type of technology was estimated between three and five years,” said Brown. “It was my desire to maximize the system to its fullest.”
Since that time, much of the hardware and software has become outdated. Monitors are starting to fail, systems run slow and request-to-speak buttons don’t always work properly. Bigger issues include votes not uploading, something that can be a real problem because Council votes on dozens of ordinances and resolutions at every full Council meeting. During the past eight years, Brown and her staff have worked to keep the system running by utilizing the City’s ITD office and other patchwork means.
Brown said the funding to upgrade the technology in Council Chambers will come from the City’s loan pool.