The City of Auburn is now officially live streaming City Council meetings via Eagle Eye TV. Auburn’s City Council had previously agreed on a desire to live stream council meetings, and as of the Jan. 8, 2019 meeting, all City Council meetings will be live streamed.
Jim Buston, the Auburn city manager, said that while the Council had previously agreed to live stream the meetings, Tuesday night’s meeting was the first time they were able to do so.
“The problem is ADA regulations require that if you are going live broadcast a public event, it has to be live captioned,” Buston said. “And so, the question for the Council was, do we want to spend the money to live broadcast and live caption, which is the expensive part.”
Buston said setting up the technical pieces was easy, and the technology needed was readily available. The reason for the delay once the decision was made to live stream was figuring out who to contract with and if it was worth the funding.
Councilmembers were excited to see the live stream up and running. Beth Witten, the returning Ward 3 representative, said she had been pushing for a live stream since her first term.
“Since day one of my original term, I’ve pushed for the live stream, so I’m very excited that it is now officially operating,” Witten said. “I always say families are fully scheduled, and so people who would love to be here in person but have other responsibilities can stay informed and hear it directly from us.”
Bob Parsons, the newly elected Ward 6 representative, had pushed for live streaming during his campaign. Before Tuesday’s meeting he would live stream the meetings to Facebook.
“I brought my tripod in the event that nobody came, and I was prepared to do it again,” Parsons said. “I’m pleased; it’s a good start. I will continue to stream every other meeting I go to that doesn’t have the Eagle Eye contract.”
While Parsons thinks the current live stream is a good beginning, he is also looking forward to using the new building and technology to further the experience for viewers.
“The software that will come into the new building will have multi-cameras and will have the actual agenda items in real time,” Parsons said.
Mayor Ron Anders was also excited to see how the live streaming experience would help include citizens throughout Auburn and get them involved in local government.
“I appreciate the kind of local-yokel flavor we had of those early streaming meetings because someone took their time to sit there for hours and put it up on their own Facebook,” Anders said.
Anders said with the new public safty building and the technology available there, viewers would be able to view documents and agenda items in real time during the stream to help further communication.
“Whatever it costs to provide this professional level of what we do as a council to inform people on a greater level is worth it,” Anders said. “It’s going to be really cool, you can see a person talking with a map or document with what he’s talking about. There are some real opportunities to do some cool stuff with this.”
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
