WITHIN EARSHOT

City meetings now fully audible to those with hearing difficulties

MIDDLETOWN » The city has bought a handful of personal vocal boosters that will allow individuals with hearing difficulties to better pick up voices of officials and members of the public during meetings in council chambers.

“I was asked, I can’t even tell you how many times, about hearing. ‘I can’t hear, I can’t hear,’” Common Councilwoman Deborah Kleckowski said, “especially for people who mumble or don’t speak clearly. I had numerous people complaining that they couldn’t hear with the acoustics in that building and people don’t speak up.”

Now, members of the public can sign out a Williams Sound Personal PA Select FM Receiver at the beginning of meetings, hold it in their lap or clip it onto a purse or belt, and adjust the hearing level to suit their need.

The devices, which have a single earbud and are very easy to use, amplify voices and cancel out extraneous noises, according to Middletown Common Council Clerk Marie Norwood. They are very useful, “especially if there is a long meeting and there is a lot of comment going on,” Norwood said.

Each person at the dais in chambers has a microphone that can be moved around depending on where the official is sitting, which picks up their voice — but it has to be near enough to work effectively.

“Your speaker may be on, but you’re three feet away from it,” said Kleckowski, who initiated the project in April 2015.

“We have very flat microphones, so if you have a council person speaking who puts a piece paper down over it, before you know it, they’re looking at a paper, they’re discussing it with someone, they put it down over the microphone or they start to comment and forget to turn it on or they move it closer to them,” Norwood said. “It’s a multidirectional microphone but has to be within so many feet of where your head is and it should pick up the sound.”

Norwood said she has fielded several complaints during school board and zoning board of appeals meetings that members aren’t speaking loudly enough.

“People in the audio room are constantly calling the chair to tell them to put their microphones on,” Norwood said. “Marcy (Popple) over at the board of ed has a little green sign that she’ll put a name tag on that says, ‘please turn on your mic.’”

Even the loss of one piece of information — especially at the beginning of a meeting — could cause confusion or misunderstanding, she said, when officials are discussing things amongst themselves.

“Otherwise, there are going to be inaudible portions of your meeting that might be important in the future and they’re not going to be heard because

you covered the microphone or you didn’t turn it on,” Norwood said. “The chamber is quite loud and if the air is going or the heat is going, it interferes with people who might have a hearing impairment of any sort.”

After she was contacted by Kleckowski, Norwood consulted municipal agent and Americans With Disabilities Act coordinator Laura Runte at the senior center, who informed her that the city had to have at least three devices to meet ADA law.

Work on the council audio system was already taking place at the time, Norwood said. “We were looking for (a personal amplifier) system to tie in to and pick up the frequency of our audio equipment in our control room,” Norwood said.

Tina Gomes, Mayor Dan Drew’s budget analyst who also spearheads special projects, worked with members of the public works and IT departments to find the hearing devices as staff were making other changes to the audio equipment.

“It took a while to find devices that would hook into our system,” Norwood said.

Now, when members of the public enter council chambers, they can check with the clerk and sign out a device for the meeting.

“It clips onto a belt, a purse that you hold in your lap, it has an earbud, and you can adjust the sound,” Norwood said. “It enhances the volume of whatever is happening in the chamber and dampens out extraneous noise so that voices can be heard better.”

The city may secure even more devices shortly, she said, after receiving additional complaints from members of the Planning and Zoning board.

CASSANDRA DAY — THE MIDDLETOWN PRESS Williams Sound Personal PA Select FM Receivers may be checked out ahead of a city meeting being held in Common Council chambers at City Hall. The sound amplifiers also cancel out ambient sound.

CASSANDRA DAY — THE MIDDLETOWN PRESS Each seat at the dais in Middletown’s council chambers is outfitted with a microphone that resembles a computer mouse and can be moved around within a three-foot range.