HomeMy WebLinkAbout02/01/2016 TECHMINUTES OF THE REGULAR MEETING OF THE TECHNOLOGIES BOARD
HELD ON
February 1, 2016
The Regular Session of the TECHNOLOGIES BOARD of The Colony, Texas was called to
order at 6:37pm on the lst of February 2016 at CITY BALL, in the City Manager Conference
Room, City Hall, 6800 MAIN STREET, THE COLONY, TEXAS, with the following roll call:
Bill Swink
Present Council Liaison
Stephen Hoffinan
Absent Mayor Joe McCourry Present
Joye Grube
Present Kirk Mikulec Absent
Joe Zacha
Absent
Juan Martinez
Present
Roger Morehouse
Present
Nicole Love
Present
With Five out of Seven members present a quorum was established and the following items were
discussed.
11.0 1 CALL MEETING TO ORDER
1.1 General announcements
Brant introduces Chris Vazquez, City of The Colony's new IT Director.
-- 1.2 Staff announcements
Introduction is made of Chief Coulon City of The Colony Police Chief and Municipal
Judge, Judge I,augherty, here for the discussion of video arraignments.
2.0 1 DISPOSITION OF MINUTES
2.1 Acceptance of Technologies Board Minutes for a meeting held on November 2, 2015
Motion to approve -- Roger Morehouse; second by — Bill Swink; motion passed with all
ayes.
3.0 1 CITIZEN INPUT
none
4.0 AGENDA ITEMS — -
4.1 Discuss next steps on researching viability of a video arraignment system for
The Colony Municipal Court.
Judge Laugherty talked about the importance of the potential arraignment system to have
the ability to have two way document signing. Chris advised that we want to address all
challenges of the transition to a video arraignment system, any requirements by the court
need to be met in order to fully implement any new system. Juan Martinez brings up that
the company he works for, Securus, actually installs two way video that has the capability
of utilizing electronic document signing. If the City is interested in this system it can be
arranged for a company representative to come and give a presentation. Denton County
Jail currently operates on the Securus system Juan stated that possibly Denton County
can be contacted to inquire how that functions for them. Chief Coulon advised that we
will need to see what the current cost is of the phone system currently in use at our jail
and then with more information the offset costs can be evaluated. Judge Laugherty
brought up language barrier concerns. Currently she is able to conference in a call for
translation and that would be necessary in a new system. Brant recommends a visit will
be arranged to Denton County or City of Plano Police Department as they also utilize the
Securus software. It is important to determine if the system can be used for arraignments.
Coulon recommends the next Technology Board meeting to be held at the Municipal
Court so that a tour of the jail can be made for everyone to see and understand the current --
structure and how arraignments are currently handled. Judge Laugherty and Chief Coulon
exit at 7:03pm.
4.2 Receive update from Chris Vasquez on public WiFi Initiative.
Chris met with Terry Gilman, Pam Nelson and Jason the TWC representative to
determine where we are in the process of our TWC WiFi initiative. The letter of intent
needs to be signed which will allow the TWC engineers come out and survey the parks
we are interested in having the WiFi installed to determine costs and feasibility. Brant
and City Attorney did not like some of the language in the letter of intent. The language
has been changed and copies of the letter of intent provided to each board member for
review. They would potentially allow us to do two events, board is advised that Pam
Nelson recommends the Veterans day and Liberty by the Lake. To begin the process the
letter of intent is needed to move forward and additional details can be worked out after
the cost and feasibility is determined. Per the agreement the only service we have to
provide for WiFi is the power. So depending on if additional power needs to be moved
that could be an additional cost. Mayor Mc Courry raised concerns about the language in
the letter of intent relating that TWC having termination rights and not the City. Brant
recommends including a clause that allows both TWC and City of The Colony have
rights to terminate the contract. The board has concerns over design. Brant recommends
that site design include tech specs for any equipment placement. Juan is concerned about
the equipment that will be used for the signals and wants to be certain that anything being
used will not cause interference to any surrounding homes and their services. Possible
fiber availability was mentioned and clarification will be sought.
4.3 Discuss upcoming meeting schedule and consider a possible change in the day meetings
occur.
Calendar of all other board meetings and their scheduled times is given to all members to
review to make a determination on changing the night the technology board meets each
month. Roger Morehouse makes a motion to change the technology board meetings to the
final Wednesday of each month at 6:30 pm beginning in the month of March 2016. Joy
Grube seconds the motion. Motion passed all ayes.
4.4 Discuss migration of the City's internal email system to Microsoft's Cloud services
platform, Office 365.
We have had email issues over the last couple of years in relation to storage space. Chris
has proposed that we move our email service to :Microsoft Cloud. Currently about 10
hours a month of Teds time is spend correcting email issues. There is an upfront cost of
12k dollars however email is the lifeline of our City business and migrating will solve the
majority of our email server space issues and function. Microsoft will uphold all retention
requirements that we need. It is https secure and end users will notice no difference, all
the data saved on our servers will migrate to the cloud servers. Motion is put forth to
approve email migration by Joy Grube, second the motion by Roger Morehouse, passed
with all ayes.
4.5 Board to provide direction to staff regarding future agenda items.
Joy brought forth the concern of there being a lack of lighting at Five Star. The lighting is
only on if there are games taking place on the adjacent fields. Can we look into the
possibility of motion activated lighting for the individuals accessing the Five Star Trail
after dark.
5.0 I ADJOURNMENT
With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 7:51 p.m.
APPROVED:
Steph n I offinan, Chairman Aman G cia, Recordi I
ecretary