CHATHAM, IL. (ECWd) –
UPDATE: After more than 10 weeks, hoping the audio problems would have been worked out by now, the audio for the June 12, 2018 meeting is still horrendous and at times barely audible (start at about the 38:40 and listen for a couple of minutes).
This is not a good reflection of the Village of Chatham and certainly not a good reflection on the vendor, “Sundown One.” We are not sure whose responsibility the sound is, but when we initially contacted the Vendor, they told us that no one from the village had told them there were any problems with the audio. There obviously is, and the village needs to inform the vendor if they haven’t already.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
After fielding several complaints about the quality of meeting videos after the village of Chatham spent more than $27,000 on them, we looked at the situation.
Trustee Ryan Mann was apparently one of the officials who reviewed the bids, and the resulting winner was “Sundown One” out of Springfield, Illinois. Their bid was just shy of $25,000, with the village also paying an annual subscription fee of around $2880 to “Livestream” to process the videos and post them to YouTube.
According to Sundown One, they have not been notified of any problems with the audio or video of the meetings since installation of the new system.
Now we must ask: HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR THE VILLAGE TO NOTIFY THE VENDOR THAT THERE ARE PROBLEMS?
Any answers Ryan Mann? Other trustees? Village manager?
We look at this as a failure of the village to notify the vendor, and not the failure of the products/service provided.
Your failure to notify the vendor can only mean you are happy that citizens cannot listen to the meetings.
For the money spent, citizens should have expected improved performance over the cheap webcam/laptop live YouTube videos previously used by Chatham. The opposite happened…it got worse…
Here is a sampling of the old system from December 2017 (click here), and we agree that it is pretty bad, however, you can actually understand what is being said.
Here are samples after spending over $27,000 (click for Feb 2018 and March 2018), both of which are nearly unintelligible.
Add to that, the “accidental” deletion of the second meeting in March 2018, where we have fielded complaints of an illegal meeting-after-the-meeting inadvertently caught on the livestream when they forgot to shut it off, which was later “accidentally” deleted by someone at the village of Chatham.
We did notice, when reviewing the winning bid, that there was a lifetime warrantee on the “labor and installation” of products, however, no guarantee of the “use” or “quality” of the resulting video/audio. We hope, that once notified by the village that there are problems, this company will get things running smoothly without further charge to the village, and in time for the village’s next regularly scheduled meeting.
Citizens of Chatham deserve more than what they have received so far.
Sundown One responded to our inquiry and stated that they were not aware of any problems and if notified by the village they would respond to the village’s notification.
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