Upgrading four conference and meeting rooms at Port Moody City Hall and the Inlet Centre fire hall so they can accommodate virtual sessions is costing more than originally budgeted.
Most of the money will be spent on modifications to the Brovold Room, which is large enough for committee meetings and even council sessions.
A staff report to council’s finance committee said Brovold’s domed ceiling presents “a unique set of audio challenges” for microphones to pick up audio from all parts of the room without echoing. As a result, the installation of acoustic panels in the dome, as well as acoustic treatments on the walls, is being recommended.
Even then, said Raman Braich, Port Moody’s manager of information services, the baffling may not be enough.
“No one would definitively tell us 100 per cent if this would get rid of the reverb and echo,” he said.
But, Braich added, without any sort of absorption of sound in the room, it would be unusable for virtual or hybrid meetings.
“The goal is to be able to use the room for council, committee and staff meetings,” he said.
The cost to upgrade the meeting rooms with microphones and video cameras was originally $108,000, of which $32,500 has already been spent.
The challenges of the Brovold Room will add another $9,000 to the total cost, said the report.
The extra funds will be used to add a ceiling mounted microphone, two cameras that can be switched automatically and a third video display — in addition to the two already budgeted.
The money is coming from the provincial Covid-19 safe restart grant program that is supposed to help pay for Covid-related modification projects.
Mayor Meghan Lahti said even though the cost could still go higher again, upgrading the facility is an investment in the future and an acknowledgement that times have changed.
“We need to do something that’s professional and will move us forward for the next 10 to 20 years,” she said, adding since the increasing advent of virtual and hybrid meetings during the Covid-19 pandemic, they’re “not going to go away.”
