York Region to begin streaming meetings May 15

Aurora Banner
March 24, 2014
By Sean Pearce

If you’re eager to listen in during York Region council meetings, you will soon have your chance.

Your first opportunity to listen to regional councillors discuss and debate issues live over the Internet will begin May 15, York spokesperson Pat Casey said.

The work required to stream live audio of regional council is proceeding smoothly, he said, although special attention is being paid to ensure all goes well and without any glitches.

Regional council gave the go-ahead for staff to implement audio streaming of its monthly meetings in October.

The idea was to get live audio streaming up and running for the region’s council meetings as quickly as possible and then examine the potential of expanding the initiative to include its committee of the whole meetings as well at some point in 2015.

In the fall, council was told the audio stream will take advantage of existing equipment and require no new hires with the only added cost being $65,000 for secure gateway hardware and software to allow for broadcasting of the feed without compromising network integrity.

The region doesn’t intend to archive the audio.

Video streaming was also listed in the committee report, but would have cost anywhere from $5,000 to $110,000 to install new equipment, while still requiring a secure gateway and another $234,000 annually for upgraded bandwidth, in most cases, for a cost of up to $409,000 for the first year.

Another option proposed was to broadcast meetings on Rogers TV, which would cost up to $80,000 to facilitate, but would have eliminated the need for a secure gateway and more bandwidth.