Vegas to put council meetings on Web

dan@lasvegassun.com

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 | 7:18 a.m.

Did the mayor really say that?

Did the City Council really approve this?

For the fast answer to those questions, Las Vegans soon will be able to hit the Internet to check the video from past City Council meetings.

And you were worried about there not being anything good to watch now that "The Sopranos" are in reruns.

A new video and document service that will be launched at the council's July 12 meeting will store video from council meetings and make it available through the city's Web site ( www.lasvegasnevada.gov.) Those interested also will be able to search council meeting agenda documents dating back to October 2004.

The video and search functions will be available no later than July 14 by clicking through the city's Web site to the meetings and agendas section, which is located under the "find" tag on the left side of the Web page.

The video and document archiving and search service was part of a $344,326 contract with Salt Lake-based SIRE Technologies. The contract also included new recording equipment the city is changing from analog to digital plus new software that will ease the creation of agendas and programs expected to be used to improve record keeping.

The city is expected to pay $49,800 a year for round-the-clock technical support, plus the servicing of the coming video and document archiving.

Already more than 150 municipal and county governments around the country offer video of past meetings through their Web sites, said Pablo Gonzalez, marketing director for Granicus, the company that provides the document and video archiving services for some of those cities, and will do the same for Las Vegas as a SIRE subcontractor.

Long Beach, Calif., City Clerk Assistant Theresa Douglass said her city has had the service since September 2003. "We get nothing but rave reviews about it."

Douglass said residents seem to use the service to check on projects near their homes, "or anytime something with the Long Beach airport comes up."

Gonzalez said that in general people will use it "when that development next to them starts blocking their view and then they can find out what's going on."

Another class of people also is particularly interested in the video.

"Reporters like it because they can show the politicians they really did say that," he said.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, though, will not be among the regular viewers. Anyone looking forward to being able to watch old council meetings on the Internet, the mayor said, "should get a life."

"They should watch old movies instead," Goodman said.

The video archives will be set up so viewers can watch parts of a meeting, such as the discussion for a particular agenda item, without having to watch the entire meeting.

Las Vegas City Clerk Roni Ronemus said the new features should make reviewing past council actions a lot easier for everyone.

"Now someone has to come down and get a tape and pay for a tape, and with this it's just on the Web site," Ronemus said.

Dan Kulin can be reached at 229-6436 or at dan@lasvegassun.com