MI: New Buffalo plans to discontinue livestreaming public meetings

NEW BUFFALO — In the wake of a brief Feb. 20 regular meeting of the New Buffalo City Council, it was learned that the city had decided to end the online livestreaming and video archiving of its public meetings.

City Clerk Lori Vander Clay said the video-system contractor, Granicus, provided the cameras and other components to make the livestreaming possible.

Asked why the city was discontinuing the service, Vander Clay replied, “Because it’s a cost to us, $4,000 a year. It was a staff decision; we didn’t renew the contract.”

Regarding why the City Council didn’t make this decision in an open meeting, she said, “We weren’t required to,” while noting that the service had been in place about four years.

Granicus, with offices in Denver, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and the UK, with some additional operations in Atlanta, “provides technology that empowers government organizations to create better lives for the people they serve” by “offering the industry’s leading cloud-based solutions for communications, meeting and agenda management, and digital services to more than 3,000 public sector organizations,” according to its website, Granicus.com. Read more…