Bethlehem residents will be able to view town meetings live online starting Wednesday, Feb. 22 via the town’s new webcasting system.
Through the work of the Jeff Dammeyer, the town’s director of management information services, and Town Clerk Nancy Moquin, all three types of board meetings held within Town Hall’s main conference room (Town Board, Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals) can be streamed live. In addition, all videos will be archived online and cross referenced with the meeting’s informational attachments.
“The new system is wonderful,” said Supervisor John Clarkson, who called it a “great labor-saving system.”
According to Moquin, the videos will now be used to supplement the town’s records, saving her a considerable amount of time. Now she’ll only have to write a short summary of the discussion of agenda items before they are voted on, with a count of yes and no votes by board members.
“There will still be paper copies available of the votes, but for the full discussion on record people will need to go to the videos,” she said, adding those without Internet access can go to the library to see the videos.
Town Board meetings have been recorded with the new system since mid-January and are now available for viewing online. The video is indexed by agenda item so viewers can jump right to the topic of interest.
According to Dammeyer, the town has been working on the system for about five months. The new system includes three remote cameras and a live feed interface that allows all digital presentations given to each board to be uploaded directly online.
The entire system cost about $16,000 and was purchased by Verizon through a franchise agreement as part of the Public, Educational, and Government Access Program (PEG) described in state law. The franchise agreement was reached as part of Verizon’s rollout of FiOS service in Bethlehem.
“It allows localities to obtain assistance with these types of services from the companies who provide it,” Clarkson said.
Although the equipment was free, the town must pay $3,840 a year, or around $160 per meeting, for the software that allows the streaming and storage of videos, a figure that includes software updates and technical support.
Dammeyer said the new system also helps the library, which no longer has to send someone to tape the meetings using two different cameras and then edit the video together. The old process took days to get the videos available for the public’s viewing on a public access channel. Now the videos will be immediately archived after each meeting.
“It’s an amazing system in my opinion,” said Moquin. “The credit really goes to (Dammeyer) who did the contracts for us and the research. We’re lucky to have him.”
Moquin said the new system is pretty self explanatory and so far there have been no issues.
Officials said the new system will ultimately help the town save money and provide information more quickly to the public, Clarkson stressed he and other Town Board members still would like to see residents at the meetings.
“Public discussion is an important part of local government,” he said.
Dammeyer will give a presentation on the new system at the Feb.22 Town Board meeting. At all future meetings, the system will be run by the Town Clerk’s office.
To see the new system visit:
http://bethlehemtownny.iqm2.com/Citizens/Default.aspx
