RETN Board of Directors Meeting

Draft Minutes

Wednesday, October 26, 2005, 4:00 - 5:30PM

RETN Studio

Attending: J. Kaplan, E. Matthews, T. Fleury, T. Sargent, D. Burritt, B. Owens, T. Bourne, T. Comolli, C. Remy, B. Brisson, J. Olinger, A. Walker, E. Frazier, S. Campitelli; absent: E. Bianchi, P. Irish, B. Thompson

Convened

Called to order by President Judy Kaplan at 4:10PM

Welcome and introduction of new Board members

Cindy Remy, Executive Assistant at Chittenden Central Supervisory Union, has joined the Board to represent Essex Junction.

Tim Comolli of Williston has joined the Board as a Community-At-Large member representing seniors in our area.

Update on Comcast purchase of Adelphia docket at the Vermont PSB

Scott and Emily have been at the Public Service Board hearings Monday and Wednesday for the live testimony on the Comcast purchase. The Department of Public Service and Comcast struck a deal without consulting with Vermont Access Network and have proposed the Certificate of Public Good conditions without due consideration of PEG Access issues. This leads VAN to pursue a more difficult route of impressing upon the PSB the need for specific conditions related to PEG Access without the support of the DPS. PSB members were visibly annoyed and concerned with the approach the DPS and Comcast took excluding VAN. The docket continues now into final briefs and eventually (possibly January) the PSB findings and final order.

This update does raise the issue of the need for RETN to support VAN legal costs in this proceeding. Unfortunately this process, like the Burlington Telecomm process, was unforeseen when budgeting for 2005. Scott asked the Board to approve two payments of $2,000 (total $4,000) for legal expenses related to the Comcast docket. VAN's legal counsel is Doug Marden of Little and Cicchetti, P.C. in Burlington. The Board supported this use of funds and asked Scott to find budget money to pay this.

Report from VAN Statewide Summit

Judy Kaplan reported on the discussion that took place September 20, 2005 at the Statehouse in Montpelier to explore how public, educational and governmental access organizations throughout the state can work together both technically and organizationally. Ed Bianchi, Barbara Brisson, Emily Frazier, Jim Olinger, Adam Walker and Scott Campitelli also attended from RETN. Plans were put in motion at the summit to continue work to connect all access operations and share programming around the state. RETN has taken a leading role in this initiative with the Vermont Access Network. A new group, the VAN Statewide Steering Committee, was formed at the summit to guide progress. Scott is now chair of that committee.

Awards

RETN has been honored with three awards recently.

The Vergennes Union High School production of "Step Inside My Life" won the Community Impact award for professional productions given by the Northeast Region of the Alliance for Community Media. This program involved girls at VUHS candidly discussing issues around drug use.

The Vermont Social Studies Project won two Pegasus Awards recognizing productions nationally from small production houses. The Middle School Level program won second place for full length programs on education. View it at http://www.vermontsocialstudies.org/vssp/MiddleSchoolClassrooms.html. The Elementary Level program segment on Mary Casserino, geography teacher in Rutland, won first place in the profile category. View it at http://www.vermontsocialstudies.org/vssp/ElementaryClassroom.html.

2005 Financial Update

Scott reviewed where we stand at this point in the fiscal year. Last year we changed our fiscal year to coordinate with the calendar year, so there are two months left in the fiscal year and our next funding payment from Adelphia is due to arrive in March. Finances are tighter than usual this year due to some unforeseen expenses and some big projects that have required additional staffing and other expenses. The brief financial update accompanies these minutes.

Project Updates

Database

Emily reported that progress is continuing on the major RETN database project and we anticipate having a public database of RETN programs before the snow gets too deep. She demonstrated the current database and its search capabilities (including by key word or by titles and other ways).

Digital Conversion

Adam, Jim and Barb discussed RETN's current capacity for digital creation of programs and cablecast. At this time RETN is predominantly shooting, editing and cablecasting digital files rather than tapes. SVHS is on its way out. Our crews often shoot directly to hard drives in the field. All editing is non-linear. On-air is about 75% from digital files.

Statewide

Scott and Emily reported on progress with the technical side of the statewide project, to support the organizational side Judy discussed earlier in the meeting. Current hopes for the statewide network are to allow program sharing through peer-to-peer digital file-sharing, occasional statewide cablecast initially working with the cable company to share an existing statewide channel and later developing into a full time statewide PEG Access channel, and unicast (streaming) from remote origination points at access management organizations (AMOs) around the state to send signals via the Internet to a central statewide cablecast location. A demonstration of the unicast was set up showing MPEG4 streaming from RETN's master control. More information about the VAN statewide initiative can be found (and it is very interesting reading) at the VAN web site under Statewide Information at http://www.vermontaccess.net/ .

Planning for 2006

As we enter the final two months of our budget year Task Forces are planning to come off hiatus and help form the vision for RETN priorities next year. That will allow Scott and others at RETN to create a budget to support those priorities. All Task Forces will plan to meet before the January RETN Board meeting. This will allow Task Forces to give input on directions for 2006.

Task Forces Update

Chairs of the Task Forces acknowledged the recent hiatus of their work over the summer and into fall. Each proceeded with making plans for meetings to determine status and direction. The list of task forces and members accompanies these minutes. The chairs are:

Executive Committee - Judy Kaplan, transitioning to new RETN Board President
Organization - Tim Bourne
Marketing and Collaboration - Diana Burritt and Ellen Matthews (co-chairs)
Program Expansion - Bob Owens
New Board members joined Task Forces
Cindy Remy - Marketing and Collaboration
Tim Comolli - Program Expansion

Board Responsibilities

Each Board member is expected to join one Task Force, attend Board meetings and Task Force meetings, and represent the interests of the community he/she was selected for.

Election of Officers

Judy presented a slate of candidates to be officers of the Board.

Ed Bianchi - President
Ellen Matthews - Vice President
Thom Fleury - Treasurer
Bob Owens - Secretary

It was suggested that the Past President continue to sit as a member of the Executive Committee with voting power within that group. The Executive Committee will continue to guide personnel issues, including pay and benefits recommendations.

MOTION by Tom Sargent to elect the slate of officers as presented and to include the Past President as a voting member of the Executive Committee for all actions taken by that committee in the coming year.

Seconded by Tim Bourne

PASSED UNANIMOUSLY

Action from here

Task Force chairs will schedule meetings in the coming weeks.

The next RETN Board meeting will take place on January 18, 2006 from 4:00 until 5:30PM, with the 2006 budget as its main item for action . A bad weather date of January 25, 2006 from 4:00 until 5:30PM was also established. Location of the meeting to be determined.

Executive Session

At 5:45 the Board went into executive session to discuss personnel issues.

Adjourned

At 5:55PM by Judy Kaplan, Outgoing President.