Use ‘net to stream meetings in Wolverine Lake

An article by The SCN Editorial Board    1 Comment

Wolverine Lake officials are contemplating whether to use the Internet and a web camera to stream video of the village’s various public meetings. Given the relatively small cost of the necessary equipment and the potential benefit of streaming meeting sessions to the community, we’re encouraging village officials to give the initiative a stamp of approval.

The Village Council is expected to take up the proposal at its meeting tonight, Wednesday, Feb. 8. At issue is whether to stream video of committee and council meetings on the Internet so those who are unable to attend can watch the sessions live.

The village’s administrative committee — comprised of Village Council President John Magee, Village Administrator/Clerk Sharon Miller, Village Council President Pro Tem Ed Sienkiewicz, and Councilwoman Linda Champagne — has forwarded its recommendation to the council to begin the process by purchasing a web camera so the meetings can be streamed using the Internet service called Skype.

A Skype service would allow the village to communicate with members of the public via voice and video over the Internet. It provides features akin to those of mid-range video conferencing systems.

According to Magee, the administrative committee would like to use Skype and a web cam to stream video of the meetings on a regular basis, so all residents with Internet access can watch meetings live, or later as a podcast.

Really, we can’t think of a good reason not to implement the administrative committee’s recommendation. The costs would be nominal: The Skype service is free, and anyone can use it. Web cams can be purchased from under $50 to as much as $500; and, frankly, the cheaper ones work just fine.

We’re hoping the council will agree to make use of such modern technology to bring the community’s public affairs to the public. This would allow people to watch meeting sessions from their homes, or even while they’re out of town on a business trip or vacation.

While the village might be able to go the route of broadcasting meetings on community access cable television channels, we suspect that approach would cost far more than what’s now on the table. In addition, most communities that have their public meetings on cable television tape the meetings for broadcast later, rather than have live broadcasts; and with so many communities already using public access channels, it may prove difficult at this late stage for the village to secure programing time.

Hopefully it will be an easy decision for the Village Council to authorize the streaming video proposal.