Grant to give Norwalk Council Chambers a technology boost

(Updated 4:43 p.m. with Karen Del Vecchio comments.)

NORWALK, Conn. – Norwalk will receive a $101,071.02 grant from the Connecticut Public Utility Regulatory Authority to upgrade the information-sharing technology in its Council Chambers at City Hall, according to a City Hall press release.

The fund will be used to replace the sound and video system, cameras, amplifier and recording system and public display screen, the release said.

The grant application was made by Norwalk’s Information Technology Department as part of its effort to upgrade the quality of audio visual systems within the Council Chambers, including the satisfactory delivery of video and audio to cable television subscribers, the release said.

According to Director of Information Technology Karen Del Vecchio, the new equipment should clear up barriers to the potential for live broadcasts from the Council Chambers.

“In the past, the sound quality was so poor that we had to review it before we could use the recording,” she said. “Sometimes the cameras were not so great,” she said, and, at times, the sound and video would be out of sync.

The new equipment should fix all of that, she said Friday afternoon.

“The new equipment will eliminate the barriers” to live broadcasts, she said. “We have to clean up the sound, improve our recording capability. In the past, we’d watch the recording afterward and the sound wasn’t right, the lighting wasn’t right. At one meeting it looked like we had a bunch of Smurfs up there.”

While the technical barriers to live broadcasts should disappear, there is still another hurdle to clear: The Common Council and mayor would have to approve going live.

The grant funding is expected to be delivered to the city within the next month. New equipment is expected to be installed in Council Chambers within the next 60 days.