August 2, 2022
Dear Board of Aldermen,
As Nashua’s Community Television Manager, from a technical and monetary viewpoint, it was
welcome news to hear that you are planning to eliminate a full blown Zoom element to your
meetings. As | have now heard that you will be debating this further at next week’s Board of
Aldermen, | would like to call to your attention a couple of factors that you may not be aware
of.
Approaching the end of a year using Zoom remotely, we could see the isolation phase of the
pandemic coming to an end early in 2021. Anticipating a slow transition to all in person
meetings, we endeavored to create a combo or hybrid set up in the Chamber. We quickly
found that mixing a service designed to be used over the web with one designed to be
broadcast over cable proved difficult. To be precise, the audio is always a miss-match. Through
the months we found that if our Videographer boots everything up in the Chamber on Monday
morning, and | start a “Mock” Zoom once we get everything balanced properly, and if we keep
the system on, it tends to stay that way for the four days that make up the rest of the week.
Unfortunately, we also found that if we keep the equipment continuously on past that, by the
next week it eventually degenerates to making those obnoxious electronic sounds when
people are talking. So, every Monday we perform this procedure at a cost of $3,744.00 per
year for the extra shift.
Because Zoom with a public element to it requires an active host, up until now this has fallen
to us as well. Basing it conservatively on three Committee meetings a week, this costs us
around $11,000.00 a year. This effectively doubles our cost to cover a meeting as our
Videographer (who cannot perform both duties at once) is there as well. This is unsustainable
for us.
As you can see, besides the subscription, the costs for Zoom have not come and gone, they are
continuous. As | believe we would be able to continue to absorb the Monday set up cost, | ask
that if you decide to keep Zoom, you make it available only to Aldermen and City staff on a per
need basis. That way it can be set to start up without the governing parameters that require a
watchful eye.
Thank you for Listening,
Jeff Poehnert
City of Nashua Public, Education, Government Television Manager
