Thursday, January 08, 2009
Editorial: Airing Roanoke's business
City council is looking at ways to bring its informal sessions into Roanoke homes.
From the RoundTable blog
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By the time Roanoke residents tuned in Monday to watch city council slog through its agenda, the mayor and council members already had clocked five hours of productive labor.
Unless you were one of the dozen or so members of the public to snag a chair in the basement briefing room, you missed it.
There was a lengthy discussion with city school board members and the superintendent about financing the schools, using the buildings better, redrawing attendance zones and construction progress on William Fleming High School.
Then came briefings on greenways, sidewalks and gutters, and downtown garbage collection. Next came lunch with U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, followed by an hourlong presentation from Valley Metro.
All this before council boarded the elevator for the ride to its fourth-floor chambers to gavel the meeting open to the airwaves.
That's a whole lot of information left unshared, but there is hope that might change. Another of Monday's briefings centered on the logistics of broadcasting council's work sessions.
In the past, we've advocated this. The briefings provide background and insight that can't be gained from the formal sessions currently on RVTV.
For now, broadcasting these sessions on television seems out of reach. The cost to equip the briefing room with cameras and accessories is about $55,000.
A cheaper alternative would be to move the briefings to the already wired council chambers. In chambers, council would sacrifice the informality that fosters discussions with its guests. The layout would be awkward when hosting groups. And it would still cost about $13,000 a year in production to air the meetings.
Another, less expensive approach would be to purchase the equipment necessary to wire the briefing room for Web casts. With this option, council wouldn't need to buy or limit air time. A five-hour session could run in its entirety online.
While not everyone has Internet service at home, those with an interest could, for no charge and at their leisure, watch from the public library -- if they have the stamina. Then again, Web casts have the added plus of allowing viewers to skip to the good parts.
