Staff Against Recording Meetings

City of Vernon staff don’t think city council meetings should be live streamed on the internet, or video recorded.

A request to look into that by councillor Scott Anderson will be part of a report to be discussed at Monday’s meeting.

Anderson argued it would provide more access to what happens at council meetings to people who can’t get to the meetings in person.

The City’s manager of Information Services — Wayne Ikesaka — contacted several neighboring municipalities to see what they’re doing.

He says Kamloops uses a company that involved $40,000 in capital cost, and an annual cost of $10,000.

Kelowna uses video streaming through Castanet

“Due to manpower limitations, they would not be able to provide the same level of service (in Vernon) that Kelowna receives,” says Ikesaka.

Penticton uses a company call islive.ca, a 3 year contract is $6,000, and are considering moving to another company called sliq.com, of which Ikesaka is looking to talk to.

He says council would have to consider capital costs, hosting charges, management of the video capture, and upgrades to the existing equipment if they wanted to video the meetings.

Director of Corporate Services Patti Bridal recommends in her report that council not investigate further the video recording of council meetings, and continue to support Shaw providing the video recording.

Shaw provides the coverage at no cost to the city, and broadcasts it a couple of times each week, but it’s only available to Shaw customers.