DIDSBURY - Video recordings of town council meetings may soon be available for future viewing through the municipality’s website after council considered the matter at the Oct. 25 council meeting.
Currently the YouTube livestream of council meetings is not retained following meetings as per the municipality’s procedural bylaw.
The Town of Didsbury's policy and governance committee was recently tasked with reviewing the bylaw.
“As part of that review, the committee identified two significant changes they would like to make that they’d like council direction on, including keeping livestream recordings of council meetings indefinitely and making them available through links on the Town of Didsbury website to the town YouTube page,” said Ethan Gorner, the town's chief administrative officer.
As the procedural bylaw is the bylaw governing council meetings, council members were asked to discuss the proposed change and provide direction to the community.
During the council meeting, held in person and on YouTube, council provided comments on the proposal.
Coun. Ethan Williams said, “I like the idea of the livestreaming and I love the idea of posting it on the town’s website. It think that improves transparency and accountability. It should always be up there.”
Coun. Bill Windsor said, “I’m fully in support of this and I think it should up there as long as our bandwidth and our storage space can handle it.”
Deputy mayor Curt Engel said, “I’m not against it. My reservation would be if this is increasing costs, but I’m not against the storage of it and people viewing it whenever they would like to.”
Coun. Joyce McCoy and Coun. Dorothy Moore also said they are in favour of the livestreams being stored and made available for public viewing.
“Leave it up there for as long as it can stay,” said Moore.
Mayor Rhonda Hunter said, “I certainly agree that we should have these posted for our residents, our citizens’ viewing pleasure.”
Coun. John Baswick said he would like to see the quality of the livestream improved, particularly the sound quality.
“We need a better audio system,” said Baswick. “There’s no point in doing livestreaming if no one can hear the livestream.”
Nicole Aasen, manager of community service, told council there would be no cost associated with keeping the livestreams.
“Just so council is aware, it will store on the YouTube channel and it will link back on our website to the council meeting date. People could click on it and it will take them back to YouTube and they can watch it,” Aasen said.
Council passed a motion referring the matter back to the governance committee for review and recommendation.
Council also referred the matter of councillor seating positions around the council table to the committee, recommending that a random draw at the annual organizational meeting be used to determine the seating arrangements.
Engel back as deputy mayor
Meanwhile, Coun. Engel has been returned as deputy mayor for another year, with councillors McCoy, Moore and Williams appointed as alternative deputy mayor for set periods until Oct. 25, 2023.
Engel had been appointed deputy mayor during the 2021 organizational meeting.
