For the most part, if there were topics of interest to Wright County residents that were going to be discussed at the Wright County Board of Commissioners they had to attend the meetings in Buffalo or wait a couple of days to watch the meeting on cable access television. At the Oct. 15 meeting of the Wright County Board, the commissioners were informed that they’re close to having their meetings carried live on the internet.
Information Technology Director Bill Swing said that the preparation for the board to go live with streaming of their board meetings on the county’s website is slated to begin Nov. 5. The board has been conducting meetings with trial runs of the live streaming the last few weeks and they’re ready to go live.
“We feel we’ve got a product we can move on,” Swing said. “What we’re looking at now are procedural matters. We’re doing a couple of test runs to make sure we have the bugs worked out and will be ready to launch Nov. 5.”
Commissioner Mark Daleiden has spearheaded the effort for the county to embrace available technology, which is far from what current viewing of county board meetings has done. The board meetings are currently taped on VHS tapes and delivered to the Charter Communications office in Buffalo. It was the problems with Charter that prompted the change. The county had been informed that they would have to record meetings on DVD and deliver them to St. Cloud for broadcast days later. That and the fact that Charter doesn’t have a cable TV monopoly prompted the move.
“Not every resident has Charter as their cable provider,” Daleiden said. “We’re not currently providing a service to the residents who have an interest in seeing a board meeting. This will allow anyone who is interested to watch the meetings live or whenever they choose to watch them.”
Swing said that technically the board meetings could already be airing on the county’s website, but that they’re fine-tuning elements like camera angles and how to start and stop the streaming when the board is on a break. He said those have been rectified and the county is ready to go live Nov. 5 and a change is long overdue.
More information appears in this week's Messenger.
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