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City of Hesperia to Webcast City Council Meetings Over Internet Beginning in October: New Service Will Include the Transmission of Sound and Video

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Hesperia Star, Calif.

Jun. 13--When the Hesperia City Council begins holding meetings in the new city hall in October, residents won?t have to drive down to Juniper and 7th Streets to see the new meeting room: It?ll be as close as their personal computer.

Last Wednesday, the council voted unanimously to begin transmitting sound and video of their twice-monthly meetings via the city?s Web site (http://www.cityofhesperia.us). The $68,107 contract was awarded to San Francisco-based Granicus.

?Granicus is one of the leading [Internet services] vendors for government throughout California,? city spokeswoman Kim Summers said last week. Summers had spearheaded the process of finding a provider. ?One of the things they specifically do is council and board meetings.?

Beyond simply seeing and hearing council members, staff and those addressing them, the Internet stream will also include any presentations made before the council.

In addition to seeing the entire meeting as a stream, residents will be able to find only the segments that most interest them: ?If you go to the agenda online, if you click on a section, it?ll go to that section online.

Residents will also be able to have an audio recording of the meetings automatically downloaded to their home computers as a podcast.

?It?s a wonderful system that I think will be great for the community,? Summers said. ?It?s something we?ve wanted to do for a long time ... but we would have had to go in and do all the wiring but we knew that we would be moving.?

The Webcasts will be comparable to similar services offered by local government in Apple Valley and Barstow.

?We needed all of this stuff anyway, so it was nice to find it all in one,? Summers said.

The next meeting of the Hesperia City Council will be June 21 at 6:30 p.m. Officials expect the first meeting in the new city hall to be held on October 4.

Beau Yarbrough can be reached at beau@hesperiastar.com or by telephone at 956-7108.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Hesperia Star, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Hesperia Star (Hesperia, Calif.)

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