{"id":39459,"date":"2022-07-15T17:22:56","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T23:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-considers-new-audiovisual-equipment\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:49:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:49:51","slug":"cortez-council-considers-new-audiovisual-equipment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-council-considers-new-audiovisual-equipment\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez council considers new audiovisual equipment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The paintings \u201cBelow Sunshine and Wilson Peaks\u201d by Jan Heyl hangs beside \u201cAquaessence\u201d by Barbara Grist in Cortez City Hall chambers. City Council is considering an upgrade to its audiovisual system in the chambers. (Journal file photo)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The city of Cortez is considering upgrading the audiovisual system for council chambers, although the project\u2019s price tag is raising questions about its necessity.<\/p>\n

The City Council discussed the proposed upgrade with staff at Tuesday night\u2019s regular meeting. The discussion came as staff looked to clarify language to be used in a future ordinance, said Kelly Koskie, the city\u2019s finance director. No decision was reached.<\/p>\n

The audiovisual upgrade is one of four capital improvement projects and expenditures Cortez looks to tackle using surplus funds from this year\u2019s budget, as part of the city\u2019s midyear adjustment.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a necessary upgrade, said City Manager Drew Sanders and IT director Shay Allred, who highlighted the aging infrastructure of the current AV system and the rising cost of equipment. Still, the nearly $217,000 cost caused some councilors and one member of the public to hesitate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho knows what could happen,\u201d said councilor Matthew Keefauver, expressing concerns about spending the surplus. \u201cAt any point there could be some sort of emergency, that we absolutely need funding to address that emergency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the council asked staff to separate the AV upgrade from the other items to pass the midyear adjustment without issue.<\/p>\n

According to Koskie, when the 2022 budget was passed, the city\u2019s general fund had a surplus of nearly $3.32 million because of increased revenues and decreased expenses over the 2021 budget. The increased revenues were largely attributed to sales and marijuana taxes, and the decrease in expenditures, to budget-tightening efforts, Sanders told The Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

The city listed five items on the budget adjustment. The first four expenditures were assigned mainly to surplus dollars.<\/p>\n

The five items are:<\/p>\n

$135,000 for the Montezuma County Community Intervention Program.$79,745 for the new city attorney and new administrative assistant, a half-year salary and benefits for the two positions.$105,299 for the purchase of the lot at 1002 E. Empire St., for the purpose of intersection improvement, according to the agenda packet from April 26.$216,899 for new audiovideo equipment in the council chambers.$150,000 for the improvement of County Road F to the Cortez Municipal Airport.<\/div>\n

The first three items were approved by City Council earlier this year, to be funded through general fund dollars. If approved, the new AV system would come from the general fund, and the County Road F improvements would be paid from funds provided in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.<\/p>\n

ARPA funds are separate from general fund dollars, but were included in the midyear budget adjustment to maintain public transparency, Sanders said.<\/p>\n

Sanders said the failure of the current audiovisual system was \u201cimminent.\u201d Allred added that the system was 14 or 15 years old, and industry standards suggest that after seven years, the system should be sold back to the vendor and the technology upgraded.<\/p>\n

Sanders said the upgrade would include translation capabilities \u2013 complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act \u2013 and prices would increase if the order were deferred another year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do need the equipment, we do need to make some changes, and it\u2019s just up to us to decide whether or not now is the time to do that,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n

AVI-SPL, based in Tampa, Florida, was selected as the vendor for the project. According to Allred, the request for proposals stipulated that vendors must take part in an on-site walk-through to be considered for the bid, and only two showed up. Of those two, AVI-SPL won the bid process.<\/p>\n

Councilors voiced mixed opinions.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, I think accessibility is really important,\u201d said Mayor Rachel Medina. \u201cAnd so I would like to see this on there. If it means that we can have hybrid meetings, it means that we\u2019re more ADA compliant, and if there\u2019s better records of our meetings, it\u2019s easier to participate and go back to our meetings, and also just easier for the council to navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medina added that she understood the cost concerns, however.<\/p>\n

Councilor David Rainey expressed the importance of preempting a more serious \u2013 and expensive \u2013 issue in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t do something about this in a relatively short period of time, it\u2019s like kicking the can down the road, or like running out of gas in the middle of the desert,\u201d Rainey said.<\/p>\n

Keefauver spoke of the need to evaluate how many people would be affected by the upgrade. The CIP program and work on County Road F made sense to him as expenditures that would benefit the public as a whole, he said, but the AV system was less far-reaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you think about the impact that this will have, we do need to think about the total number of people that it\u2019s going to impact citywide, versus us and maybe a few people that tend to watch online,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During the public comments portion of the meeting, Lisa Passell questioned the decision to purchase AV equipment while cutting back on other expenditures.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut even above the number of citizens who will benefit is the underlying question: are we watching expenses or not?\u201d Passell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

some to hesitate, question need<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,1698,896,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-finance-general","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84340,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39459\/revisions\/84340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39459"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}