County officials have chosen a local company to provide an install new audio/visual systems with enhanced teleconferencing capacity for local courtrooms.
The Bartholomew County commissioners accepted a bid of $158,420 from the locally-based CIM Technology Solutions to provide and install the equipment in all courtrooms except Bartholomew Circuit Court. New equipment for Judge Kelly Benjamin’s courtroom was already part of the extensive renovation now underway in that courtroom, county IT director Scott Mayes said.
While the county originally estimated the new equipment would cost $200,000, the bid from CIM Technology came in under that — at $155,420, Mayes said. In addition, the county has purchased a one-year managed services agreement for $3,000 that will ensure local courts will have the shortest possible repair time if needed, he said.
The new equipment will be paid for through the $2.7 million that Bartholomew County received through the federal CARES Act Provider Relief fund for COVID-19 related costs, county auditor Pia O’Connor said.
County officials took some time to go through an estimated 180-pages of bid materials that included specific technical component information and described how each system would be installed in the different courtrooms, Mayes said.
“I felt that we get one chance to make this right, so I wanted to take that extra time to go through it line-by-line,” the county IT director said.
When proposing the new equipment on Nov. 9, Mayes emphasized the needs of the courts have evolved over the past months, and that high-quality teleconferencing is required to conduct more virtual hearings.
“Our existing (audio and video) equipment was primarily installed in 2003,” Mayes said. “That was before Zoom and other teleconferencing solutions ever existed. It was just not designed to properly and reliably handle the interactive type of teleconferencing we do today.”
The upgrades will increase the amount of social distancing while allowing judges to continue to have court sessions — “even if people are in isolation, unable to make it to the courthouse, or it’s just not safe for them to be here,” Mayes said.
The new audio/video systems will be compatible with new web conferencing software such as ZOOM, as well as provide the courts more recording reliability as compared to the 17-year-old existing equipment, the county IT director said.
Money from the CARES Act is also being spent on replacing desktop computers for laptops, air quality improvements, courthouse scanning, contact tracing and acquiring more personal protection equipment, O’Connor said.
While the renovation of the Circuit courtroom is scheduled for completion at the end of January, the county and company have not yet worked out a timetable for the equipment installation in Bartholomew Superior Court 1 and Bartholomew Superior Court 2.
