Patrick Fox writes in the AJC, 18 Jan 2011,

Meeting access video grows among city councils:

Metro Atlanta cities want to air their business in living
rooms. Alpharetta agreed to spend $68,000 for a video recording system
in its council chambers. Dunwoody will shell out $93,000 for a digital
video recording system, enabling residents to view city council and
planning commission meetings live from home.

While not every city electronically records its council meetings, the
practice has become increasingly popular.

“It’s an overall trend of cities, going where people are to share
information, to keep people in touch,” said Amy Henderson, Georgia
Municipal Association spokeswoman.

“People just aren’t going to council meetings.”

Alpharetta’s new system will allow the city to archive and time-stamp
recordings so residents can call them up online and navigate to a
specific agenda item. It won’t provide live streaming of meetings
but will accommodate that in the future, Assistant City Manager James
Drinkard said.

Council members said the system will protect the city from litigation
and open up government to more residents, especially those who have
never been to a city council meeting.

“Lots of them do not attend; I wish they would,” council member
Cheryl Oakes said.

As I was

discussing with Valdosta’s mayor,
it doesn’t have to cost as much as that.
Even if it does,
it’s a one-time upfront capex expense, and the one hopes
the fancy ones would handle uch of the busy work of indexing
and posting that otherwise staff would have to do.

All that plus they can make sure the whole meeting is visible,
instead of leaving it to volunteers like us who will usually
pick and choose and post with our own idiosyncratic commentary.
Municipalities can instead post with their own idiosyncratic commentary.
And they can attach related documents, such as whatever they were
voting on, or whatever a citizen handed them in Citizens Wishing to the Heard.

-jsq