The current sound system is so bad Mayor Matthew Shoemaker said it turned a December meeting into a ‘complete gong show’
It’s going to cost more than a third of a million dollars to replace the played-out public address system that delivers live-streams from city council meetings.
Next week, councillors are expected to award a $355,497 (plus HST) contract to an Etobicoke company to buy and install an upgraded audio-visual virtual meeting system in the council chambers.
“The proposals were reviewed and evaluated by a committee comprised of staff from IT services based on the technical nature of the system and involved consultation regarding usability of system with staff from clerk’s department and communications,” says Karen Marlow, the city’s manager of purchasing.
“It is the consensus of the evaluation committee that the proponent scoring the highest in the evaluation process is ET Group,” Marlow said in a report prepared for Monday’s city council meeting.
As SooToday has previously reported, the current public address system was installed 13 years ago, replacing the original 1974 system.
“The 2013 system was designed for in-person meetings in the council chambers,” said Frank Coccimiglio, the city’s manager of information technology.
“However, the necessity for virtual meetings arose during the COVID pandemic. To meet this demand, IT implemented a temporary non-integrated solution, replaced in 2023 with an integrated system featuring cameras and Zoom capabilities,” Coccimiglio said in a reported prepared earlier this year.
“While the system has generally performed adequately, it has begun to fail after 12 years of service. It has reached the end of its useful life, necessitating replacement with a modern, fully integrated solution.”
The condition of the city’s paleolithic sound system was painfully evident during a council meeting last Dec. 15.
That meeting had so many audio and connectivity problems that Mayor Matthew Shoemaker apologized for a “dinosaur of a system” that turned the meeting into a “complete gong show.”
Among other problems, executives of Toronto-based Protexxa Inc. were forced to wait out a 22-minute delay during which their executives could be clearly heard on the city’s YouTube stream, but couldn’t be heard by city councillors in the council chambers.
Despite the annoying tech problems, Protexxa nonetheless gained municipal support for a proposed artificial intelligence/cybersecurity data centre on Yates Avenue.
“Ironically, on an agenda item about an IT servicing centre, we are having all kinds of problems with IT,” the mayor said.
ET Group was one of four companies that submitted proposals to beef up council-chambers audio.
The others were:
Justice AV Solutions Inc. of Louisville, KY
Design Electronics of Niagara Falls, ON
Echo Technology Inc. from Sault Ste. Marie.
Monday’s city council meeting will be livestreamed on SooToday starting at 5 p.m.