Residents may soon have the option of watching town council meetings from the comfort of their own home.
The topic of live streaming was discussed during the town’s regular meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 9, with council deciding to bring the idea back for decision during their 2019 budget deliberations.
Three options were brought forward for council’s consideration.
The first had a budget of $1,500, requiring only one camera and an existing laptop.
“We would use something like a free social media platform, post it on something like Facebook Live or one of those,” explained assistant CAO Bill Rogers, adding some disadvantages would be the ads.
The second option, with a budget of $2,700, included the purchase of a camera, with the addition of a $1,200 fee for a subscription to a hosting service. This option would also use a laptop already owned.
“This would have live stream video, ads would be eliminated, and it would appear to run through our website,” Rogers detailed.
The final option was a professional, third-party hosting with multiple cameras. The budget would range from $10,000 to $15,000 for hardware, and another $15,000 to $28,000 annually, depending on hosting fees.
“The disadvantages to this, other than the higher cost, is we’d have to have one of our people trained to be an operator on the system,” noted Rogers.
Coun. Brian McEvoy, who originally suggested the idea to council, preferred option two in terms of cost, and suggested trying it for a year before making major investments.
“In option one, even though it’s cheaper, we don’t control the ad material. If we don’t control the ad material, we could be sitting here discussing anything and it could be whatever scrolling across the bottom of the screen,” he said.
Mayor Gene Sobolewski noted the first two options would mainly be picking up audio. The camera angle would be a shot of all of council.
“It will be fairly small, so long as everybody’s aware of that,” he exclaimed, adding live streaming is another way for residents to find out what’s being discussed at council if they can’t attend.
“Once (people) tune in, if there’s a topic that really interests them, they can watch it sitting at home having a beer and eating some Cheetos.”
CAO Mark Power was interested to see if a live stream would prompt residents to attend meetings, and tracking the number of viewers would help provide some insight.
Council will discuss the topic during their 2019 budget deliberations.
