Councilors told staff Dec. 9 that the Keizer Community Event Center continues to have audio problems at crowded events even though some vendors' site visits did not reproduce complaints. Staff said six AV firms inspected the space and that some consultants attended events and still reported no problems, producing conflicting assessments.

Council members and staff discussed next steps: staff will share consultant reports with councilors and may invite local AV contractors to provide assessments. Councilors urged use of local vendors where feasible. Councilor comments highlighted that sound quality is good in some uses but "super muffled" or "garbled" at others and that internal and external microphones can "fight" when multiple microphones are used.

Staff also described a separate but related issue: lighting fixtures in the building are aging and some lamp types are obsolete. The city has contacted the Energy Trust of Oregon for an evaluation of the entire facility's lighting and said Energy Trust is assessing incentives; staff cautioned that LED-to-fluorescent energy-savings incentives are smaller now than decades ago because the biggest gains already happened in prior lighting upgrades.

On facility upgrades, staff said new chairs have been ordered and that ceiling strength must be verified before installing drop-down screens or ceiling-mounted projectors. Budget timing and coordination with a facility-wide lighting plan will influence the sequence of AV upgrades.

Provenance:
Topic intro: "So, the council, helped us win over some revisions with the, community event center, updated some documents. We are ordering new chairs, and, the AV has been the 1 that's the audiovisual on there has been the the challenging 1." (block_2422.2)
Topic finish: "They don't make them anymore. We have bought up the supplies we can, to keep us operating without having to update all the fixtures in the building... I don't think we've received back their report or any incentive programs available to us yet, but this does affect the entire facility." (block_3224.255)