Report to Mayor and City Council
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Consent
SUBJECT:
Title
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF THE CONTRACT SERVICES AGREEMENT WITH MEDIASTAR, INC. FOR MAINTENANCE, PROGRAMMING, EQUIPMENT REPAIRS AND REPLACEMENT OF THE AUDIO VISUAL SYSTEM SERVING THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS (CITY COUNCIL)
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I. SUMMARY
The audio/visual equipment in the Council Chambers is outdated and has recently proven to be unreliable. Because it is at the end of life, the city has begun to experience repeated outages during City Council meetings that have included not being able to broadcast via the internet preventing access to a large portion of our viewers, and the periodic failure of the automated voting system and time stamping by the City Clerk. Moreover, this equipment is proprietary, which means staff have no access to it and must completely rely on an outside consultant whose business closes around 6:00 pm when we need them the most.
In view of the interest of the City Council to make its public deliberations and actions transparent, it is imperative that we address this unacceptable situation immediately. If the city were to go through the normal bidding process, it is likely to take three months or longer to get a replacement system. For this reason, staff is asking the City Council to waive the bidding requirements and to approve a contract with MediaStar Inc., for which we have received positive recommendations from other municipalities.
Due to the urgency of the matter, a contract has not yet been drafted. Staff would work with the City Attorney’s Office to develop an acceptable form of contract for execution.
II. RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
TAKE the following actions:
1. WAIVE the bidding requirements in Chapter 6 (“Purchasing System”) of Title II of the Carson Municipal Code, pursuant to Carson Municipal Code Section 2611(e) (“Sole Source Purchasing”); and
2. APPROVE a contract services agreement with MediaStar Inc., for repairing and replacing equipment and to provide support services for the AV Room in the City Council Chambers in the amount of $146,892.00 (“Agreement”); and
3. APPROPRIATE an additional $146,892.00 from the unallocated Public/Education/Government (PEG) fees balance to cover the cost of this contract.
4. AUTHORIZE the Mayor to execute the Agreement upon approval as to form by the City Attorney.
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III. ALTERNATIVES
TAKE any other action the Council deems appropriate.
IV. BACKGROUND
The City of Carson began using Electrosonic, Inc. in 2005. The City’s current equipment in the AV Room and City Council Chambers since then has been installed by this contractor.
The City started live broadcasting City Council meetings on the local cable channel on September 20, 2005. There have been various other upgrades to the equipment and system throughout the years, with the last major upgrade in 2014 to the audio equipment and programming modifications to the audio and voting system.
Electrosonic also provides support and maintains all the equipment and software in the AV Room and City Council Chambers. Because the equipment is propriety, staff has no access to troubleshoot the equipment and make the necessary repairs. We therefore must rely on Electrosonic for this kind of support, but they don’t provide it immediately after 6:00 pm. Unfortunately, the lack of dependable support has taken a toll on the system’s performance and has contributed to the inability to expediently address malfunctions, particularly during City Council meetings. One of the most pressing concerns has been frequent equipment failures that have impacted the City’s ability to live broadcast via the City’s website and/or the City’s public access channel.
Because most of the AV hardware is at its end of life, the most cost-effective approach is to replace the outdated equipment and to ensure that we have the ability to access it to provide on the spot support. While we would like to revamp the City’s entire AV infrastructure, we propose breaking this up into two phases with the first phase to address the most critical functionality and stability needs and a second phase, which would be put out to bid, to address the rest of the infrastructure.
MediaStar, Inc. came on-site and looked at the AV Room and Council Chambers and provided blueprints for the Information Technology division. Since they are most familiar with our equipment and system and based upon outside references are reliable, we are requesting their services to repair and replace the equipment in the AV Room and City Council Chambers.
V. FISCAL IMPACT
There will be no Fiscal Impact to the General Fund as the $146,892.00 will be funded through the Public/Education/Government unallocated fees balance. The amount necessary to cover costs is budgeted and will come from FY 2019/20 in account number 101-50-520-101-6004.
VI. EXHIBITS
1. Quote from Mediastar (Pgs. 4-12)
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Prepared by: Kevin Kennedy, Information Technology Manager