City staffers plan to solicit proposals from companies to stream video of council meetings from the city’s Web site. The technology also would allow residents to click on an agenda item to view the council’s discussion on a particular issue without watching an entire meeting, said city spokeswoman Sue Olafson. (source: Daily Herald 11/23/06)

I think it’s great that they’re considering putting video online. It will make it much easier to follow what’s going on, because believe it or not a lot of people don’t watch television. But what I DON’T understand is why we would pay anything in the range of $7,500 plus $860 a month (more than $10,000 a year) to do this.

Hasn’t anybody in city hall heard of YouTube?? Yeah, it’s free. Just upload your video and you get free hosting and everybody can comment and it’s a lot of fun. Please don’t reinvent the wheel and please don’t use taxpayer money to do what can be accomplished for free (click here to see how others have uploaded city council meetings to YouTube)

Remember that the city hired a full timer just to edit the city council videos, presumably to make them as flattering as possible for the powers that be. I’m sure this staffer can figure out how to upload a video to YouTube. If she doesn’t know how to do it, I’ll be happy to show her for free.

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