By Rhonda Massad
www.thesuburban.com
In an effort to ensure that all citizens have access to municipal news and council decisions as of January 2015, council meetings will be broadcasted live on the borough’s website.
“Making Pierrefonds-Roxboro’s borough administration more easily accessible to citizens precisely match the open communication that our administration wants to have with citizens,” Pierrefonds-Roxboro Mayor Dimitrios (Jim) Beis announced on his Facebook page on August 5. “I am pleased that our borough joins the webcast network, an additional tool for citizens in regard to their daily municipal affairs, which falls within the concept of smart city launched by Ville de Montréal.”
For an annual cost of approximately $25,000, residents at home will simply have to click on the homepage of the city’s website to have access to the session that includes the report of the police service, the highlights of the month’s activities and the citizens’ question period.
The council chamber will be outfitted with three cameras and microphones to capture the sounds and images of the meetings. The recordings will then be made available to be reviewed in the following days and weeks as they will be kept in archives.
According to Beis’s Facebook page the firm that was hired by the city of Montreal already broadcasts council meetings for ten boroughs, the municipal council meetings and the weekly meetings of the Executive Committee.
All recorded sessions can be seen on the Webtv.coop web site.
