By Corey Fischer

City Council Meetings To Go Online Soon

Mar 28, 2018 | 9:38 AM

April 23rd is the planned start date for video recording of Vernon council meetings.

The meetings will be posted on the city’s website, and kept for two meetings, before being erased.

“Indexing will be required, so it will take a couple of days to prepare for the upload. Information services will review the quality of service, Internet traffic, and any online feedback received and determine further fine tuning,” says Wayne Ikesaka, Manager, Information Services, said in a report to council.

Councillor Scott Anderson has asked if committee of the whole and public hearings can be recorded and put online as well.

Mayor Akbal Mund says staff are looking into how much that would cost.

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“I have no problem with the committee of the whole meetings.The public hearings, I kind of don’t think the public hearings have anything to do with it. It’s a done deal,” Mund told CJIB News.

Mund says once decisions are made, he doubts many people will want to watch the public hearings.

“If anyone wants to see the result of that, just go online and you’ll see the result of that. You don’t need to see the whole meeting. The decision has already been made,” adds Mund.

“Council may want to be careful with public hearings. At the close of public hearings, that is the close of input,” said Will Pearce, City Chief Administrative Officer, to council Monday. “It will lead to many questions from people who watch it.”

New equipment costing about $7,000 has been installed in council chambers including a high quality video capture camera.

The city will also pay an annual fee of $9,694 to a service provider (Sliq) to to store and stream the content.

by Corey Fischer