Tamarac, FL -Residents in the City of Tamarac now get to see what is going on in city hall and they don’t have to leave their homes to find out.
Call it the final step in “transparency” in local government.
After over a year of trying to persuade the city to air their meetings in Tamarac Talk and at city hall, the Mayor and Commissioners voted in September to approve of live streaming their workshop and commission meetings.
The good news is that you don’t have to watch the meetings live. Residents can watch them days, or even months later.
Just this month, the city went “live” using a service called Swagit Productions which, according to Information Technology Director Levent Sucuoglu, eliminates the need for city staff to index and time-stamp video content. Swagit Productions works with the agenda so that while the workshop or commission meetings are in process, they are breaking the video segment up to make the video correlate with the agenda. Therefore, when a resident goes to the city website, they can watch exact section of the meeting they would like to see, instead of wading through hours of video.
Broadcasting or streaming meetings is nothing new or different. There are over 30 cities in Broward County and 19 of them already broadcast their meetings either on cable or online.
The cost will be a $21,000 one time charge for broadcasting equipment and each year there will be a $9,000 annual fee to Swagit for the ongoing costs for broadcasting, storage and indexing.
During city commission meetings, two cameras and are set at fixed positions, so there will be no close-ups during proclamations or awards at this time.
Last Wednesday, the parents of the Tamarac Cougars piled into city hall to discuss issues regarding their lease with the city, probably had no idea that their public remarks would be broadcast. Now hopefully, with the recording of their comments, others will see their plight and more people may become more familiar with our sports teams and the issues they are facing.
Also on Wednesday, Commissioner Harry Dressler made a poignant speech asking Commissioner Patte Atkins-Grad to step down. Just last month this would never have been seen outside of a meeting. Now his speech can be viewed by people in Tamarac and in other cities.
While the system is very new ,it is far from perfect so if you have any suggestion, please let our Informations Technology Department know.
“There will be a few tweaks here and there,” Sucuoglu said. “Since everything is still new, cameras may added in the future so that residents can see better but we must take baby steps to get there.”
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Swagit Productions, LLC is a leading video production company specializing in providing streaming media solutions to television stations, newspapers and local government agencies. Swagit pioneered the ‘Hands-Free’ fully automated streaming service plan. This eliminates 100% of the labor required in producing professional and easily accessible streaming videos for meetings and newscasts. For more information about Swagit, please visit: www.swagit.com or call 1-800-573-3160.