4/22/1997 - Laserfiche WebLink

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ON MOTION by Commissioner Adams, SECONDED by Commissioner Ginn, the Board unanimously (4-0, Commissioner Macht being absent) approved staffs recommendation as set out in the memorandum, staff will contact the City of Sebastian to determine if they are interested in Parcel 5. 11.C.2. TELECOMMUNICATIONS GRANT PROGRAM General Services Director Sonny Dean reviewed a Memorandum of April 7, 1997: Date: April 7, 1997 To: Honorable Board of County Commissioners �Through: H.T. "Sonny" Dean, Directo�A Department of General Services From: Terry L. Smith, Telecommunications Manager Department of General Services Subject: Telecommunications Grant Program BACKGROUND: The U.S. Department of Commerce recently announced the 1997 Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP) grant competition. This grant program is administered through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and is a highly competitive, merit -based grant program that provides assistance in the form of matching funds for creative approaches to applying information and telecommunications technologies. The County's Telecommunications Division, Department of General Services prepared the grant application and submitted it prior to Board approval in order to meet the application deadline. If the bid for this grant is successful, the Public, Education, and Government access channel can be improved Franchise agreements for the operation of TCI Cablevision and Falcon Cable in Indian River County require the provision of a PEG (Public, Education, and Government) access channel. The Indian River County School District videos the County Commission Meetings and programs the meeting playback along with School District programming and County agency programming on video tape. The entire programming content is sent to TCI Cablevision and is cablecast over Channel 13. The programming is also sent to Falcon Cable from TCI Cablevision over a microwave link which has been furnished by TCI Cablevision. At the Falcon headend, either the signal from TCI Cablevision or a signal from the City of Sebastian is cablecast over Channel 35. The quality of the signal getting to Falcon via the microwave link is sometimes questionable and the switch of the feeds from the City of Sebastian to the Indian River County & School District programming is difficult to manage. This has led to complaints from CATV customers when the desired PEG programming was not available in some areas. 51 April 22, 1997 nor 10 1 L PACE � ,