SUNDRE – Although the municipal office is now officially hooked up to high-speed fibre optic broadband internet service, the suite of webcams installed several years at a cost of almost $65,000 will for the foreseeable future continue to remain inactive until such a time as council approves a policy and procedural framework for either streaming meetings live, posting video recordings after the fact, or possibly both.
“I would never be in favour of doing it without the policy and procedures being brought to council and approved first,” said mayor Richard Warnock.
“That would be the first step,” Warnock told the Albertan.
He agreed that more than three years after the high-definition cameras were initially installed in 2021 that the matter should be brought back for discussion on the next steps.
“It’s time to take a look at it,” the mayor said, suggesting that might be a conversation to include on the agenda for council’s upcoming fall workshop scheduled for Oct. 18-20.
“I think at this stage, I would say that we need to have this discussion at our workshop and then bring it to council before the end of the year.”
The project represented an expense of approximately $64,666 and was covered with provincial funding from the Municipal Operating Support Transfer program amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, past councils had discussed the possibility as early as 2017 as part of the municipality’s stated objectives of being more transparent and accessible to the public.
But when the cameras were finally installed, the town’s internet service was deemed insufficient for reliably livestreaming council proceedings at higher qualities.
And although Xplore’s gigabit service was officially completed in 2023, there remained some technical hurdles to overcome in connecting to the new network municipal buildings including the town office.
“Ever since Xplore came to the area and started putting in lines, we have been in discussions with them to try and figure out a way to have some of the town-owned facilities connected,” sad Chris Albert, director of corporate services.
“The first priority was, of course, this main office building, because that’s where all our IT infrastructure is,” Albert told the Albertan, confirming the town office is now hooked up and the effort to connect other facilities remains ongoing.
“Now that we’ve gotten that one connected and it’s working and everything seems to be online and working the way we hoped; yes, now the conversations have started in order to connect the community centre and the arena as possibilities,” he said earlier in September, adding there was no timeline yet available on when those facilities might go live and that once connected there would still remain some IT infrastructure issues to work out.
“There needs to be firewalls, there needs to be switches, there needs to be Wi-Fi routers, all bought and installed and things like that,” he said, citing among several technical hurdles to overcome at those buildings.
To date, the new service also seems to have been largely reliable without any major issues causing problems. Nevertheless, Albert said that out of an abundance of caution, the municipality has maintained the former service as a backup.
“We haven’t actually disconnected the old services,” he said, referring to the connection that “runs through the SuperNet of the fire hall. We’ve actually got a redundant system, which should help us.”
With the town’s office now “switched over to Xplore,” Albert said “the technology is probably 95 per cent there” and that while “some final tweaks” might be necessary prior to being able to livestream council meetings, that posting videos was already possible.
“I could definitely record and post, that’s easy,” he said, adding he occasionally spends some time testing the cameras to “make sure they’re still working.”
Before rolling out with live broadcast, Albert anticipated the best approach would be to test the waters by first recording meetings and then posting videos and perhaps eventually considering the possibility of streaming.
“It would probably be a progression, I would think,” he said, adding he could not speculate as to when – or even if – that might happen.
“That is another thing that I do not have a timeline on,” he said, adding the remaining hurdles at this point are less technical in nature and rather more bureaucratic.
“Basically, council and legislative services have to figure out how they want to do this, what they want to do. And then there’s policies that will have to be put in place, procedures,” he explained.
“We may have to look at establishing some bylaws that have to be in place before we can do it.”
As to why such policy framework had not been developed over the course of the past few years in anticipation of the new high-speed internet infrastructure that would finally enable using the cameras installed years ago while other municipalities have long since introduced virtual options for the public to see council proceedings, he said, “We are still catching up.”
For his part, Warnock said that among other high-priority projects ranging from the wastewater treatment facility’s upgrade to the Highway 27-Main Avenue infrastructure overhaul, that he had put the file pertaining to the dormant webcams “on the side of my desk.”
And while the mayor said he is not opposed to videos of recorded meetings being publicly posted for a period of time, he expressed reservations about live broadcasts and outlined what his preferred approach would be.
“I guess my view is, I’ve always been cautious of getting out there in that ‘never, never world’ – I'll call it that,” he said referring to the internet “where this stuff can get put out to any hacker or anybody that wants to get involved in what you’re doing.”
Speaking from his personal perspective, he said recorded video of a meeting could be posted publicly online and made available until such a time as the next meeting comes along at which point something might have changed in the nature of a certain discussion that perhaps makes redundant some details that had previously been discussed.
At that point, video recordings of older meetings would then be moved into archives, similar to other public records such as meeting minutes, which primarily outline resolutions that are either passed or defeated by council without greater insight or context as to the reasons why.
But “to just have (videos of meetings) sitting on a web page forever, I’m personally not in favour of it,” he said.
“Because what happens is – what I’ve seen anyway – is council has a discussion about something that they work on (and then at) the next council meeting, the solution may be brought forward by administration or a new approach that makes the last council meeting recording for that item redundant,” he said, adding that can by extension potentially pave the way to confuse the public.
“I’m all for being transparent,” he said, inviting anyone who is so inclined to attend meetings of council to listen in for themselves.
“I got no problem with that,” he said.
Of course recognizing that many people are for any number of reasons unable to attend regular council meetings on Monday evenings, Warnock said he therefore supports the approach of making publicly available a recording of a meeting until the next scheduled meeting.
“Fourteen days after a council meeting gives them lots of opportunity to listen to a one- or two-hour council meeting,” he said.
In some instances, that period might be for three weeks depending on when the next scheduled meeting of council might be, he said, adding that after that point, videos of older council meetings would then be archived for the record and only available on request.
“If we’re going to do this – if we’re going to record these (meetings) – then the recording would always be available at the town,” he said. “This is just me . . . this conversation has not been discussed with council, or administration, (as to) how we would do it.”
