Council mtgs on the web
Thanks go out to Craig Houghton. Over on his newly created Cheshire Town Post (btw, is that a blog or a wiki? I don't know all the proper terminology.), he's done what so many of us here in Cheshire do, he volunteered his time to assist Town Hall.
So what did he do to assist Town Hall?
Well... you may recall that I've been pushing for (and the Council unanimously supported) investigating the possibility of putting town meetings on the interweb. But as with most things, they come at a cost. And the only professional place I'd found so far was fairly costly... nonetheless, I wanted to try to jumpstart a dialogue. And now Craig offers up his idea for town meetings on the internet over at the CTP. I really like the idea. And it comes at a much lower cost than what I had found.
According to Craig's numbers, there are probably two key dollar amounts -- $20 to divide up two hours of video by agenda item and (I think) $15 to upload two hours of video. But Council meetings usually last between two and four hours, so...
If you multiply those numbers by two, you get $40 + $30 = $70 meeting. And with... let's just say... 2 meetings per month for 24 meetings per year... you get an annual cost of $1680. That's a dollar amount that may not even need a Council vote for funding... though... we may need a Council vote to make it happen.
Again... thanks to Craig Houghton over at CTP for researching this. As for me, if the service is decent, this would definitely be worth the cost. Because I do believe we would have a whole lot more people watching the meetings and having a better sense of the policy views of the town's elected officials.
Tim White
Town Council, 4th District
5 comments:
I first assumed the $20 chapter break-up fee was in addition to the 15$ for the video. When I called, the rep. corrected me and insisted that it's $15 without the chapters and $20 with the chapters. In response, I told her she should mark-up her prices -- they're practically giving it away. ;)
The Cheshire Town Post
lol.
For under $1,000/yr, it would definitely be worth it. Again though... has to be a decent service.
Sounds like a good idea to me. They should also consider doing the Board of Ed meetings the same way. Often when you try to watch a replay of a BoE meeting, there's video or audio problems or it's just not replaying at all. They do a horrible job airing meetings in a timely manner. But, it probably is just the way Dr. Florio wants it.
Craig is a great guy, but I hope he is not going to take on the job of making information available when we are paying staff to do that.
It is difficult to understand why minutes to meetings are not always posted on existing town websites in a timely manner. It appears that the staff of some departments just don't care to have the public informed or worse they don't want them to know. Sure, you can go to town hall and read them, but this is ridiculous when we already have the internet capability. It is expensive for people to drive to the town hall in time and money, it adds traffic and the most important thing is that most residents work.
Getting meeting information out to the public should be a goal of each department and part of the salary review process.
"Craig is a great guy, but I hope he is not going to take on the job of making information available when we are paying staff to do that."
Once the videos are in a web-ready format, anyone can upload them. I agree that paid staff should do this.
That being said, the workflow has to be pegged down so that we can avoid the same problems we've had with the minutes. If necessary, I would happily volunteer to walk a staff member through the initial process. I'm in IT (programmer at SCSU) and fairly used to introducing people to new technology in the workplace.
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