\nMetro Atlanta cities want to air their business in living\nrooms. Alpharetta agreed to spend $68,000 for a video recording system\nin its council chambers. Dunwoody will shell out $93,000 for a digital\nvideo recording system, enabling residents to view city council and\nplanning commission meetings live from home.\n\nWhile not every city electronically records its council meetings, the\npractice has become increasingly popular.\n
\n\n
<\/a>\n\u201cIt\u2019s an overall trend of cities, going where people are to share\ninformation, to keep people in touch,\u201d said Amy Henderson, Georgia\nMunicipal Association spokeswoman.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\n\u201cPeople just aren\u2019t going to council meetings.\u201d\n\nAlpharetta\u2019s new system will allow the city to archive and time-stamp\nrecordings so residents can call them up online and navigate to a\nspecific agenda item. It won\u2019t provide live streaming of meetings\nbut will accommodate that in the future, Assistant City Manager James\nDrinkard said.\n
\nCouncil members said the system will protect the city from litigation\nand open up government to more residents, especially those who have\nnever been to a city council meeting.\n
\n\u201cLots of them do not attend; I wish they would,\u201d council member\nCheryl Oakes said.\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n\n
<\/a>\nAs I was\n\ndiscussing with Valdosta’s mayor,<\/a>\nit doesn’t have to cost as much as that.\nEven if it does,\nit’s a one-time upfront capex expense, and the one hopes\nthe fancy ones would handle uch of the busy work of indexing\nand posting that otherwise staff would have to do.\n
\nAll that plus they can make sure the whole meeting is visible,\ninstead of leaving it to volunteers like us who will usually\npick and choose and post with our own idiosyncratic commentary.\nMunicipalities can instead post with their own idiosyncratic commentary.\nAnd they can attach related documents, such as whatever they were\nvoting on, or whatever a citizen handed them in Citizens Wishing to the Heard.\n
\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,11,733,3,54],"tags":[5135,8701,10,3862,548,8702,12,7,2495,6,8726],"class_list":["post-2458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-lake","category-media","category-transparency","category-valdosta-city-council","tag-20-jan-2011","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-john-fretti","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mayor","tag-valdosta","tag-valdosta-city-council"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-DE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}