Schaumburg to start streaming village board meetings in January
A six-month trial period of streaming Schaumburg's village board meetings on YouTube will begin Jan. 9.
Trustees Tuesday unanimously approved the recommendation made by the general government committee last month, based on a suggestion made by Trustee Tom Dailly in September.
Dailly has further suggested that viewership be used as a criteria in determining whether the webcasts justify their ongoing costs.
Village staff said YouTube can provide basic analytics showing the number of viewers, the number of concurrent viewers and the duration of these views for each posted video.
Staff members' initial equipment cost estimate of $12,000 to $15,000 dropped to virtually nothing when it was decided to use just one camera already owned by the village at the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts rather than acquiring up to three.
However, there's still an estimated staff cost of $150 per meeting associated with approximately three hours' work of setting up and taking down the camera each time as well as processing and posting the footage on YouTube.
Schaumburg Information Technology Director Peter Schaak said the camera would likely become a permanent fixture in the board meeting room if trustees decide next summer that the trial period was a success.
The videos will be posted on Schaumburg's YouTube channel, with links attached to the meeting listings on the calendar on the village's website.
An important point to understand is that only the village board's twice-monthly regular meetings are planned to be videorecorded and streamed in this manner. Its various committee meetings where more substantial discussion of issues typically occurs are held in a different room and are not planned to be recorded or streamed.
However, binding decisions are made only at the village board meetings themselves. Committee meetings result in only recommendations.