2011-03-23 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MS. O’HARA: County residents or constituents. MR. TAKABA: So you have some options. One is do we need to tape both the committee meetings and the full council meetings or do you just do the council meetings. The other one was does the public really need to have…. They have access to the transcription, the minutes but the question is do they need to actually have access to the video? I mean there are a lot of people who watch it there’s no question about it. There is a following. MS. NICHOLSON: Is this the kind of thing we can direct the legislative auditor to look into so there’s an unbiased…. Because I heard you say well the county council if they look at it they are going to want it. So can we put the onus on somebody who could look at it objectively? MR. TAKABA: I don’t know if that’s their role though. Maybe the commission should just come up with a recommendation then it’s out of the hands of the council and administration. MS. NICHOLSON: I just don’t know that we are qualified because we don’t have all the costs. I’ve never seen the thing. I’m not interested in seeing it. So I’m not part of the audience, I don’t even own a television set. So, I don’t know that we are capable of coming up with a really good…. It would be ideal if we could but I just don’t know if we’re capable of doing it because we don’t have all the facts and figures before us. MS. O’HARA: I think it’s a great idea to record both committee and council meetings because to be honest most of the work of the council occurs in committee. Being part of other organizations that do tape proceedings and tapes are made available to the public to borrow as in a library situation. So if somebody wants to come in and take out a DVD for a meeting on March 12 or whatever they can. I think that would be great to have that available. That could be done on a way lower cost than this. Of course that would not include closed captioning. MS. NICHOLSON: Yeah, it would still have to include closed captioning though and if that’s part of the expense. MS. O’HARA: Well closed captioning can be handled by the written transcript too. Because that has always been available to the public so you can get the written transcript of each of the meetings. I think that the public has to pay for those do they not? MR. TAKABA: The transcripts? Do they charge? If they charge it’s like $1.00 for the first page, ten cents a copy thereafter. MS. O’HARA: But transcripts can get very long. MR. TAKABA: So I’m not sure if they charge. MS. O’HARA: So there is a charge to the public if they want the written transcript. MS. GARSON: Actually, I think it’s available online. MS. O’HARA: The transcript? MS. GARSON: The minutes. I believe the transcribed minutes are available online through a web accessed Laserfiche repository. 12