City of Wilmington to Live Stream City Council Meetings
I was at City Council last Thursday where Bud Freel brought up an ordnanceordinance (pdf) that would allow the City to sign a contract with a firm that would take he video recorded by WITN of Council Meetings and live stream them over the internet. The intention is to expand the live streaming to other Council Committee meetings and the other programming on WITN. The meetings (at least) would also be available on demand — so you could catch up with the City Council meetings at your own convenience. Especially after you read about a dustup in Council the day after.
The contract is with a firm from Texas called Swagit Productions and would cost 18K per year, in addition to a one time $10,500 initial fee. I don’t have any idea how reasonable this cost is, but I am definitely glad that they are taking this step towards making these meetings and other content more readily available to citizens.
Too bad that the NCCo County Council is hiding behind their lame excuse that bloggers will be mean to them if they put their meetings up on line. Time to step up, NCCo!
Tags: Open Government, Wilmington
Hoorah!
That’s almost as good as bass-ackwards Sussex County, which has been streaming live audio and archiving it online for several years, all in-house.
Its time for all of government including public schools to wakeup. Like a broken record every political candidate and school board member runs on a platform of communication and transparency.
At least give us full audio! Red Clay has been using a digital recorder for the last few months and hopefully by July 1 the beginging of a new school year they’ll start putting audio files online. The cost is near null !
Wilmington’s costs are pretty high probably because they are trying to put the video online.
Rep. Hudson says that they State House is able to stream the audio for practically nothing.
Either way, there is no excuse for any public body of elected officials to run meetings without internet streaming. WDEL’s Rick Jensen has already offered to train county aides how to do it for free.
I hope the ordnance doesn’t explode on them.
LOL! Sorry and I fixed that. Am currently steeped in a potential MEC project, so I’ve ordnance on the brain.
What’s MEC?
Munitions and Explosives of Concern.
Too much work jargon on a day off!