Councillors and city staff during Monday night's city council executive committee meeting. (Alison Sandstrom/paNOW Staff)

By Alison Sandstrom

Talking tech

Council pauses video streaming discussion

Feb 11, 2020 | 4:50 PM

Prince Albert city councillors have decided to put the debate over potentially streaming their meetings online on hold until budget deliberations in November.

The vote to shelve the issue was made at Monday night’s city council executive meeting.

According to city adminstration, the cost of different streaming options ranges from an approximately $2,000 one-time fee to $12,000 per year, but more research is required to get a full picture.

The city’s communications manager suggested council wait to make a decision, allowing her to do more research particularly on posting video directly to social media. Coun. Evert Botha who initially proposed the idea of streaming meetings online in October, wanted to see a simple low cost option pursued in the meantime.

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City council meetings are currently broadcast on Shaw TV using cameras mounted to the council chamber ceilings. The cost of connecting to Shaw’s cameras would be a one time $1,775 fee.

“To me the low-hanging fruit is just to take the Shaw feed… and plug that into our website or YouTube,” Botha told the meeting. “I’d really like to see us start somewhere.”

Mayor Greg Dionne and others disagreed, saying they’d rather wait for the final report.

Coun. Ted Zurakowski said council needs to balance the need to inform the public with the associated costs, and ultimately he didn’t see himself supporting streaming the meetings.

“This is like cream cheese on a bagel from Starbucks. It really is,” he told the meeting. “When we’re talking about some of the challenges we have in our city.”

Meanwhile, Coun. Lennox-Zepp said she saw value in finding a mid-priced option.

“What we say in these meetings matters. What happens in these meetings matters to people,” she told council. “People are interested and there should be a reasonable way for us to provide accessibility.”

Council will revisit the possibility of live streaming meetings at November’s budget deliberations set to take place just after the 2020 municipal election.

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom