East Gwillimbury council split on live streaming meetings

YorkRegion.com
Nov. 29, 2016
Simon Martin  

Ever dream of curling up with glass of Cabernet and watching East Gwillimbury council meetings from the comfort of your own home? You may just get your chance.

East Gwillimbury council is looking into the possibilities of streaming meetings as part of its 2017 budget deliberations.  

The budget line item which has an estimated cost of $7,500 got a mixed review from council. Not surprisingly, Councillor Tara Roy-DiClemente was most vocal in her support for streaming meetings. It has been an issue she has supported repeatedly in her two terms on council.

“(A lot of our residents) are at their desks doing their jobs while we meet,” she said. "They might want to check in on a particular item on the agenda. This is a perfect way to deliver that for them.”

Others weren’t as excited about the proposal.

“If it’s not broke don’t fix it,” Councillor Joe Persechini said.  If residents want to know what happened at a meeting they missed, they should read the local newspaper, he said.

Councillor Marlene Johnston was concerned that live streaming meetings could potentially lead to people taking what councillors said out of context and more grandstanding from representatives. “I don’t see that is going to help good governance,” she said. “Good governance comes from working as a team.”

Chief Administrative Officer Tom Webster also voiced some concerns about how long the meetings should be archived on the town’s website because the clerk’s minutes of the meeting should be the official record. Webster also said concerns have been raised that clips could be edited to produce sound bites out of context.

Details of how the streaming would work were light on details and council members were unsure if both council and committee of the whole meetings would be streamed.

“I’m not opposed to moving in this direction,” Councillor James Young said.  “If we go this direction I think everything should be recorded. It should be archived. I have no desire to just do council meetings."

East Gwillimbury and King are the only two councils in York Region that don’t have any form of live streaming service. The service hasn’t exactly taken off in other municipalities.

For example, Aurora averages fewer than 10 viewers for its meetings, while Georgina typically draws five viewers, Newmarket attracts 13 on average, Markham pulls in an average of 14 and Richmond Hill gets 20 on average.

Whitchurch-Stouffville added live audio streaming earlier this year. While York Region live audio streams its meetings, York Region councillors are considering live video streaming and archiving their council and committee of the whole meetings.

The decision is still more than a month away as the region investigates how best to broadcast the meetings and the cost, which could be in the neighbourhood of $125,000.

The East Gwillimbury option looks relatively cheap in comparison to the region. But until East Gwillimbury enacts some form of live streaming, it is hard to tell what kind of a market there is for the proposal. “Who knows how many people will watch?,” Young said.