City Council meetings could be coming to a device near you.<\/p>\n
The City Council\u2019s Technology and Communications Committee Tuesday agreed to spend $6,600 next budget year to make the city\u2019s streaming video feed available on mobile phones and computer tablets.<\/p>\n
The committee has been discussing ways to make the city\u2019s committee meetings more open to the public.<\/p>\n
At their last meeting, they discussed adding cameras to one of the upstairs meeting rooms. The additional equipment would enable the city to stream more committee meetings both to the Internet and to the city\u2019s public TV network, RTN.<\/p>\n
Right now, the city council chamber has three cameras for that purpose. Meetings in that room can be viewed live on RTN, channel 11, or online at any time. But not all the city\u2019s committees meet in that room, making other public discussions less accessible.<\/p>\n
But adding three cameras to a meeting room would cost $48,000, a price that seemed steep to committee members.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m more comfortable with the lower cost options at this point,\u201d Mary-Ann Baldwin said.<\/p>\n
The streaming equipment will not be ready until July\u00a0 \u2014 the first day of the new fiscal year \u2014 which is why committee members agreed to wait until the next budget cycle to add the technology. The full city council must still approve the budget.<\/p>\n
Committee members also want to encourage groups to use the council chambers more if possible, and look into offering free parking to those who do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems the council chambers are grossly underutilized right now,\u201d said Councilor Bonner Gaylord.<\/p>\n
Members had previously asked city staff to check with the city\u2019s 28 committees and groups. Raleigh Public Information Officer Jayne Kirkpatrick said five agreed to consider relocating or rescheduling their meetings so they could take place in council chambers.<\/p>\n
Kirkpatrick said she could create a matrix to schedule the meetings, and continue offering it to other committees and groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see if they really do or not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Groups who currently meet in council chambers but are not recorded will only be added upon request, Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n
She added that she had not heard from the council committees about whether they would relocate.<\/p>\n
Baldwin, a member of the technology committee and chair of the Law and Public Safety Committee, said she would prefer to only relocate for issues that have a wide interest and draw heavy attendance. For example, the LPS committee meeting room was full during debates about food trucks.<\/p>\n
Share your comments: Would you watch more council and committee meetings if they were streamed to mobile devices?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an effort to be more transparent, a city committee Tuesday agreed to spend $6,600 next budget year to make the city\u2019s streaming video feed available on mobile phones and computer tablets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24025,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15],"tags":[519,82,517,518,520],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}