Island Lake mulls link to video of meetings

In an effort to make recordings of village board meetings more widely available, the Island Lake board says it will look into working with a private citizen who runs her own Web site.

Laurie Rabattini operates a site with political information about the village of Island Lake and offers audio recordings of village meetings.

Trustee John Ponio presented Rabattini's idea of making a video of the village board meeting, then allowing the village to link from its Web site to that video.

"(Rabattini) offered to have them available to us," Ponio said. "She's offered to do that."

Trustee Rich Garling said though the idea needed more research, he was interested in pursuing it.

"I have to admit I find the idea intriguing," Garling said. "It's something I would like to research the idea further."

Rabattini said she had been looking into the technical details, such as how to compress the large video file to make it smaller.

"I'm doing what you're suggesting now," she said.

Garling did say he worried that linking to a site with a political viewpoint might present a concern, however.

"You are, quite simply, a political Web site," Garling said. "I think we have a problem."

Ponio said he did not see the difference between linking to a political Web site and linking to a news Web site, which the village already does.

Garling said perhaps if the recording were given to the village, it could be posted on the Web site in its complete form.

"We have to be sure is an unedited version," Garling said.