Bloomfield Township Trustee Meetings to be Televised in January

Bloomfield Township will be equipped and ready to record and broadcast board of trustee meetings by the end of January, Supervisor Leo Savoie said Monday.

The announcement preceded a unanimous vote to approve a $77,039 bid with Midwest Media Group for video recording equipment and upgrades to the studio control room at Bloomfield Community Television, Channel 15. Trustee David Buckley was not in attendance.

"It has takens several months to put this together," Savoie said. "Worst-case scenario, we will have the system in place for the last regularly scheduled meeting in January (Jan. 23)."

The measure gives a definitive timeline for a project that started to develop in July. Requests from the public to televise meetings began years ago, but peaked during the selection process for a successor to retiring supervisor Dave Payne.

The July 25 meeting during which Savoie was appointed supervisor was the first township board meeting ever televised or streamed online. Demand continued to grow and in September the board authorized an $88,000 plan to get all trustee meetings recorded and online.

That meeting and recordings of others since are also available on the township website. The Oakland Press has also live-streamed multiple township meetings since.

Documents show the township received three bids for construction improvements of the studio and new video recording and broadcasting equipment. They were:

• $49,493 from ProVideo, a company from Perrysburg, OH, that did not include some necessary equipment in the bid.
• $80,087.43 from Roscor Media and Information Technologies, a Chicago-based company with a local office in Farmington Hills.
• $85, 857.50 from Midwest Media Group, based in Royal Oak.

Township Community Relations Director Leslie Helwig indicated the station worked with Roscor regularly for years and that the township was prepared to award the company the bid. However, Roscor abruptly shuttered its sales and equipment rental departments after more than three decades on Oct. 28.

While discussing alternatives, township officials learned that key equipment needed for the project is manufactured by Ross Live Production Technology, a different company from Pinckney that distributes its products exclusively through Roscor in this part of the country.

The township requested that company to sell the materials directly to the township and it agreed to bid. Township officials then recontacted Midwest Media Group to revise its bid without the equipment that Ross could provide directly, Savoie said.

The company responded with a bid of $48,800. When combined with the $28,239.11 equipment purchase from Ross, the new project total was $77,039.11.

The bid does not include installation, which is estimated at an additional $2,000. It also does not inlcude the live-streaming function, for which the township has only received one sealed bid thus far. However, Savoie said the project will still be under budget.

"With the streaming portion we’ll still be underneath the $88,000 that was proposed to us from the very beginning," Savoie said.

Delivery of the equipment is expected within 45 days of bid approval and another 30 days will be allowed for installation and training.

There was little discussion from the public or the board.

"I think it’s worthwhile that we took the time to do it right," Township Treasurer Dan Devine said.