2010070803

City Of Raleigh Has Paid $62,400 For Video Hosting In Just Four Years

By Olivia Barrow, The Raleigh Telegram

Saturday, July 10, 2010

RALEIGH - The City of Raleigh currently spends about $18 million in exterior contracts each year, but this year the council is evaluating all contracts and looking to eliminate unnecessary ones.

In 2006 the City Council decided to offer an online live video stream of its meetings in addition to broadcasting them live on Channel 11, so that people who do not have television or prefer to view media from the computer could have instant access to their meetings.

On Nov. 29, 2006, the council entered a contract with a California company called Granicus, Inc., paying $40,050 for set up and the first year’s payment, and $15,600 for each following year to set up a system for the live online broadcasting.

Over the last four years, that adds up to $62,400 for just video hosting alone.

In addition to installation, set up and storage, the company also provides archiving and bookmarking of the videos, so that viewers can search for and skip to different topics during the meetings instead of watching the whole meeting, although the bookmarks are not always correct.

During recent budget meetings, Council member Bonner Gaylord has pushed for the reevaluation of contracts, especially the Granicus contract, in order to cut unnecessary spending.

“Live-streaming I think is a great benefit,” Gaylord said. “But if there’s a cheaper option, it makes sense to look at that.”

And there is a cheaper option. Almost $40,000 cheaper.

The public information office is already equipped and able to upload and stream the videos using free downloadable software, said Mike Williams, assistant director of public affairs.

The initial software purchase and installation cost Raleigh $27,050, instead of less than $1,000 if the uploading were done in-house.

Many companies also offer inexpensive website hosting fees, such as GoDaddy.com, hostmonster.com and Webhostingpad.com for as low as $10 per month or less with virtually unlimited storage space.

Granicus charges $15,600 per year for hosting.

“The archiving and the bookmarking would be difficult to provide internally,” Williams claims.

By contrast, the Raleigh Telegram and RTP-TV pays its hosting company around $10 a month for hosting over nine years of television shows and videos that have been produced by the company.

“We’ve had as many as 10,000 viewers in one day watch our videos,” said Randall Gregg, who is publisher of the newspaper, a television producer, and online video expert. “Why the City of Raleigh pays such an astronomical amount for simple video hosting is beyond me as I’m sure their audience is not very large.”

In addition, the City of Raleigh already has a YouTube account, which hosts all of its videos for free and even allows embedding of videos into third party websites using easy to copy HTML codes displayed on the video page, something that Granicus does not currently offer.

As the council reevaluates expensive third-party such as the Granicus contract, Gaylord said he would like to see the funds used more efficiently in the future.

The City of Raleigh’s new budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year will only increase property taxes by 0.5%. The overall budget amount spent will decrease from 697 to 620 million dollars.

However, the new budget also will raise water and sewer rates by 17%.

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