Dubbo Regional Council will spend $30,000 to live stream meetings on the internet.
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Three high quality video cameras will be installed in the Dubbo chambers and a single camera in the Wellington chamber.
It’s expected it will cost $30,000 to purchase and install the equipment, plus an additional $15,000 per annum to archive the recorded footage. The footage will be available to the public for four years.
Council’s ordinary meetings, extraordinary meetings and standing committee meetings will be streamed live. The online footage will be broken down into chapters so members of the public can watch the entire meeting or just a single agenda item.
Mayor Ben Shields said we were 17 years into the 21st Century and the Dubbo local government area was behind the eight-ball. Streaming the meetings online would increase the accountability of councillors, while also making the information more accessible, he said.
“I believe that the more people within the local government area who do attend a council meeting, or at least see a council meeting, see their councillors in action, see the decision being made at the very time and see the dynamic of that decision and why that decision was made, is only good for the transparency of this organisation,” Cr Shields said.
While he admitted the web stream wouldn’t “crash the internet”, the mayor said it was important people had the ability to go on council’s website and see the meetings.
With meetings being held in Dubbo for the majority of the time and then Wellington twice a year, it also increased the accessibility, Cr Shields said.
“We have a significant proportion of the public could be anywhere over an hours drive to get to the council meetings if they want to see a particular issue being discussed or debated. With web streaming our ratepayers, our community, our residents can view our council,” he said.
The issue of web streaming the council meetings was raised by local government candidate Jacob Perry and councillor Dayne Gumley during the election.
It is currently used by numerous councils across the state including Mid-Western Regional Council and Bathurst Regional Council. Orange City Council is also looking to introduce the live stream.
Dubbo Regional Council’s Code of Meeting Practice stated audio recordings of a meeting were subject to the person advising the meeting of their intent to record. Requests to video the meetings had to be made to the mayor or general manager.
Funding for the cameras and archive will be made available from council’s 2017/18 budget.