County Meetings to be Streamed Live, Archived on Website

Essex County Council is now streaming its regular meetings live to the Internet in an effort to better engage residents and promote open and transparent government.

The live stream for the regular meeting this Wednesday at 7 p.m. will be available once the meeting has started. The link will also be accessible from the Meeting Calendar page. The link will be pushed out Wednesday evening on the County’s social media accounts.

Following the meeting, the archived video will be posted and published as part of the regular minutes posted to the Meeting Calendar. Posting it with the minutes allows users to watch portions of the meeting corresponding with specific agenda items. Users can also watch the meeting again in its entirety.

County Council meetings have long been broadcast by Your TV. Initially, the meetings were recorded and broadcast at a later date. Improvements in technology in Council Chambers opened the door to live broadcasting, which is currently being made available by Your TV with the enhanced feature of closed captioning.

Not all Essex County residents have access to cable TV, however, so Essex County Council earmarked funding in the 2019 budget for the live streaming of meetings. Advantageous pricing was realized because several lower-tier municipalities were also interested in live streaming their meetings.

The live stream will be recorded using a single, ceiling mounted, stationary camera, which captures a view of the entire Council. While the Internet live stream is not currently captioned, it is hoped technological upgrades will allow for captioning beginning in January, 2020. The County, which is committed to providing accessible information, already covers the cost of captioning the Your TV broadcast.

Thanks to a partnership with Your TV, the meeting videos archived on the website will be the multi-camera feed used by Your TV. This recording is of a higher quality than the one captured by the stationary camera. It is attached to the minutes and agendas beginning with the Sept. 4 meeting of County Council.