In 2017, you may have one more way to watch Town Council meetings.
Currently, if you’re interested in the proceedings, your options are to attend in person or watch a live broadcast on CogecoTV (cable 10). Cogeco has been broadcasting council meetings since the 1990s.
At the General Committee meeting on August 24, Town staff presented a proposal to allow for a six-month webcasting trial for council meetings – webcasting is streaming video either live or for on-demand viewing at the viewer’s convenience – to assess the demand for such a service. The webcasting trial would be provided by Cogeco and would come at a cost of $3,000 or $500 per meeting. The live cable broadcasts would continue.
Councillor Bob Stone questioned the cost. “I spoke with a couple members of the Economic Development committee and they suggested this is way too expensive and we could do it ourselves for a lot less money and a lot less effort. They also spoke about the use of Facebook Live which would allow for comments and questions from the public about what they are watching and what’s proposed here wouldn’t allow that.”
He added that the information gathered from a trial regarding viewership would be useful, but that at the end of the trial would want to see “many more possibilities of how we can do this and achieve our objective, probably for less money.”
Andrew Zanier, Records Management Coordinator for the Town stressed that the trial would be taking advantage of existing services and would require minimal effort on the part of staff. He said that he would come back to committee after the trial with a full report on statistics and other available options going forward.
If approved, the trial is proposed to start in February or March of 2017 to ensure that statistics from the summer months are captured.
Committee voted to add the initiative to the 2017 budget – it will still need to be approved during budget deliberations.
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