Highland City Council may start broadcasting meetings live on television

Residents soon may be able to watch Highland City Council meetings from the comfort of their homes.

Angela Imming, director of technology and innovation for the city, told the council once the system is installed, it should not be difficult to maintain.

“It will take us some time to figure out how to do this,” she said.

But once it’s in place, it should be as simple as turning on the camera, she said.

The tentative plan was to broadcast the meetings on local access television and on social media live, and then to provide a recording on the city’s website for people to watch later if they please.

“I’m a huge advocate for this,” said councilman John Hipskind. “We should have been doing it a long time ago.”

One problem with a live broadcast on television is no one knows how long a city council meeting may go. Some recent city council meetings have been as short as 30-40 minutes; others have been as long as three hours when dealing with a controversial topic.

Councilman Rick Frey suggested instead of broadcasting live, then, they could broadcast the recording the next day, so the programming can be scheduled around the length of the meeting.

Imming said they are still working out the system, which is expected to cost about $1,200 in equipment with internal labor of approximately 12 hours. However, she said, the council should be aware due to the nature of technology, the equipment may have to be replaced every three years.

Other metro-east cities have been live-broadcasting and/or archiving video of council meetings for years. Collinsville has video and audio recordings of its council meetings archived on its website, going back at least as far as 2009. Edwardsville’s meetings are broadcast on local access television and archived on the site as far back as 2017. Belleville has its own YouTube channel, hosting council meetings since 2014.