2011-03-23 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MR. MATSUDA: Very good. MS. NICHOLSON: All right we’re on to B, Videotaping of County Council meetings. It seems to me that part of our discussion in addition to what we have here was what portion of meetings get videotaped. Having never looked at a single one of these broadcasts and probably never will. I remember somebody saying it’s like boy scouts come in for a commendation and then it goes on too. So to me that sort of got left out of this. Is that implied in we’re looking at the whole process of this? MS. O’HARA: I think it has gotten left out. What the original concern that was expressed was about taping everything that occurs while the council is in session that doesn’t always relate to their jurisdictional actions and in that event it tends to get overly long and we’re paying by the minute, by the hour, whatever we are paying on a time basis and I think that was the original concern that was expressed. I’m not sure that this fully captures that. MS. PROVALENKO: I think also what we had discussed at the last meeting was whether or not we should contract that out or have in-house videotaping. I think that’s what this is saying, assess the value of doing it in-house or contracting it out. MS. O’HARA: Right, so basically there are two different issues on the table. MS. NICHOLSON: So if we put assess the value of videotaping, the cost of videotaping, the topics videotaped, and the value given to the residents of the county, and the availability of it to the county. And then add another sentence; this would include the cost of doing this in-house versus contracting it out. Or in-house versus contracting services. MS. PROVALENKO: I think another question was who was going to do the assessing and Bill had left by that time and so the question was who would do it? MR. TAKABA: Videotaping is something that the council decides not so much the administration. They’re videotaping council meetings and they put it in their budget and normally it gets approved. So it seems like the council would probably have to do a self evaluation and decide how to cut back on the expense. If the council decides they would probably leave it as is. What gets expensive is the what do they call it… MS. GARSON: Closed captioning for ADA compliance. MR. TAKABA: Closed captioning. That made it very expensive. Then when people testify because they are on t.v. a lot of times they just drag it out. That gets very expensive. They run through the night sometimes the meetings. So, I think it’s something that the legislative branch would probably have to evaluate and decide. MS. O’HARA: I think another point that needs to be taken into consideration is how many of the constituents have access. Because it’s only available over cable so that does not include all the island’s residents. So it’s kind of a preferential treatment for certain constituencies. MS. NICHOLSON: But we sort of captured that in the wording that is here don’t you think; availability of it to the county. Or maybe it’s to county residents? 11