A Wallaceburg councillor wants staff to look into the possibility of live streaming Chatham-Kent council meetings.
Carmen McGregor told the Sydenham Current she thinks streaming the meetings would be better way to reach and communicate with more residents.
“Right now if you choose to watch the council meetings, you have to be a Cogeco customer,” McGregor said.
“Cogeco doesn’t do a lot of the outreach into a lot of the rural areas. So there is a lot of us that are unable to watch the council meetings on TV or to see what is going on on Monday night.”
McGregor said in the past, there was the ability to watch online.
“I remember when I was running for election, I was watching the council meetings from home,” she said.
“So I know it was done before and we also tried the live streaming on Facebook when we did a forum night. That seemed to work out, people could actually interact with Facebook and ask questions. Of course it wouldn’t work to ask questions during a council meeting, but it is just another ability to stream the meetings.”
McGregor she is hoping to gathered the council support and for staff to describe what was done in the past, why it changed, and what needs to be done to re-start it.
“If you have something on the agenda that interests you, that might be a night that you would like to watch without making the drive to Chatham to sit in the gallery to do so,” McGregor said.
“I think that this council, and there is a number of us who have been working to find ways to better communicate to our communities and I think this would be a good part of that package and a good start for us.”
McGregor added: “We run so many really wonderful programs out of the Municipality and when you’re talking to people they’ve never heard of it. We have to find better ways to engage with the community. If they were on there or they knew there was something of interest… then they might reach out to councillors or communicate better with the Municipality, or it might answer some questions for them. I think we need better communication. The days are gone that we are going to have meetings in each of our communities, I think this is just another way in this day and age to communicate with the citizens of Chatham-Kent.”
If approved, McGregor is hoping to have a staff report back before council at the June 5 meeting.
Her notice of motion is set to be presented at the regular council meeting scheduled for Monday, May 8 at 6 p.m.
Just an FYI that CogecoTV Chatham has never streamed Chatham-Kent Council meetings live. In the past the municipality has streamed the audio portions of the meetings live, and uploaded copies of the telecasts for delayed streaming 48 hours later.