Council member Mitch Harper: Making first City Council meeting digital audio available for download

Last Tuesday, I recorded the Committee session of the Fort Wayne Common Council on a digital recorder.  The Mp3 digital record of the February 5, 2008, session is available for listening and download. (As noted below

Click on the following link:

February 5, 2008 Fort Wayne City Council committee session audio mp3.

One of my stated pledge last year was, that as a Fort Wayne City Council member, I would work to make city government more open, accessible and transparent.

This means making digital audio recordings of public meetings available for downloading on the internet; increasing the number of documents available on the internet, and easing the burden on citizens seeking to research current or historical city records.

As much as Fort Wayne government has been promoted as being wired for the internet age, there is so much more that can be done. 

Quite a bit can be done with existing, inexpensive technology.  I will be an advocate for official proceedings of city government bodies to be recorded in a digital format.  Did you know that many meetings, such as those for the Plan Commission, the Board of Zoning Appeals, and the Redevelopment Commission are recorded on magnetic tape? 

That is a fading technology.  Digital recordings allow a record of official hearings to be easily transmitted to other officials and interested parties by boards and commmissions.  The proceedings could be immediately available for download by journalists, citizesn and, yes, citizen-journalists.

In addition to expanded use of digital recording and digitized images,  I will explore having additional meetings of boards - particularly those dealing with zoning and land use matters - recorded and broadcast on government cable access.

I would hope that these efforts would meet with support among fellow City Council members as well as members of the administration and members of boards and commissions.  There may very well be a transition period where digital recordings may be made simultaneously along with the official record being made on magnetic tape. 

There may also be a transition while city officials and board members become acclimated to the new technology.  In the meantime, citizens may be able to fill the gap in making recordings of meetings more accessible on the internet.

Indiana law guarantees the rights of citizens to record public meetings; the technology is relatively inexpensive; audio editing software is available as a free download (e.g. Audacity); and, audio may be uploaded and hosted on weblogs such as this one using Typepad.

Citizens have a right to know in a timely and easily accessible way what government is doing.  This is a start.

I recorded the Council meeting using an omnidirectional microphone and a simple digital recorder. Unfortunately, even though the coucil is miked, there is no freely available audio jack for an additional recorder.  The audio volume varies on this mp3 depending on the distance of the speaker from the microphone.

Thank you for your support in this effort to make government more accessible.  If you would like to see Fort Wayne move forward on these efforts please contact me.

-Mitch Harper
Member -Fort Wayne Common Council Fourth District

Comments

I think this is a GREAT idea; the one thing I still miss from cable tv, since switching to satellite (about 10 years ago!) - is the public access channel and city council.

Say - a semi-related question, regarding public access to the government of Fort Wayne. Especially in light of the terrible events at Kirkwood Missouri last night, and given the increased security at the Allen County Courthouse - is Fort Wayne municipal government reviewing the security around city council meetings?

Ed. note from Mitch Harper:

Well, in addition to the Sergeant at Arms the presence of Marty Bender provides some assurance.

Seriously, though, the real answer is that these sorts of incidents are rare. Elected officials shouldn't project that they are fearful of their own citizens. Such fear is corrosive of democracy itself.

[John McGauley]

Mitch deserves a lot of credit for doing this. The county podcasted Commissioners' meetings for a year or two as a way of extending electronic access to their meetings beyond cable television. Offering access to these meetings online is a nice way to improve the overall accessibility of local government.

[Tim Zumbaugh]

I usually TiVo the meetings on the public access channel when something important is going on, but this is another step forward. I also liked Liz Browns idea about having all discussions transcribed into written minutes and made available on a timely basis. Although this is old media, it provides a way to quickly skip past all the sidewalk concrete cost discussions and get the the meaty part of the meetings. My suggestion was to get a couple high school kids transcribe the video the next day and have it posted to the council web site. How much could that cost?