In Chillicothe Council Monday evening, it was announced that aging technology is interfering with watching council on TV.
Council president Bruce Arnold worked to get council sessions back on television with old equipment in the building...but age keeps getting in the way. He said Spectrum / Time Warner is going digital May 1st, and they said they may not be able to broadcast council's feed.
The other local cable system, Horizon, is already digital, and can still broadcast council's signal - but Arnold says they get a direct feed, so that may be different.
And he says his replacement pan-and-zoom camera...which he already scavenged from elsewhere in the aging building...is refusing to pan-and-zoom.
Viewers used to be vocal, but he hasn't heard much recently. He wants a consensus on what to do; his email address is bruce.arnold@chillicotheoh.gov.
Council member Dustin Proehl records sessions on his iPhone and later uploads it to council's Youtube channel...but Arnold agrees, it's not the same.
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Chillicothe Council paid for a new computer to prevent another attack of ransomware.
Transit Director Donna Schinkle said recently, they got a message that all their files were locked and the city had to pay with Bitcoins...but they were advised to not even communicate with the hostage-takers.
Schinkle said it she and her five staff were at a standstill for a week and a half, until they could get their backups usable. She said fortunately, their operations files were in the cloud, and were unaffected.
Bidders said better safeguards would be available on new computer, so council appropriated $13,000 on first reading for to buy one. She said doing so would be first on her agenda in the morning.
Kevin Coleman regularly reports on Chillicothe & Circleville councils and local culture