The Sunnyvale Sun

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Webcasting of meetings to begin in Sunnyvale

By Cody Kraatz

The city of Sunnyvale has jumped on the webcast bandwagon.

In May, it plans to begin webcasting and archiving Sunnyvale City Council and planning commission meetings online.

The city signed a deal in late February with San Francisco-based Granicus, Inc., which provides the same service for many cities, including Cupertino, San Jose and Mountain View.

Granicus' system "streams" meetings live to a city website. After the meetings are over, it archives them with bookmarks for each agenda item, saving viewers time.

"The advent of archived online meetings is the next step in the city's attempts to continually improve communications and involvement between our residents and city hall," said city spokesman John Pilger by e-mail.

"It just seems like a no-brainer to me," said Vice Mayor Melinda Hamilton, who sponsored a study of webcasting.

The council unanimously approved two contracts with Granicus that were signed on Feb. 29: one for $31,035 in one-time software, installation and training costs and a second for $18,315 per year for the ongoing costs.

The total cost for the first year, including staff time and other equipment, is estimated to be $80,500.

The start-up costs will be offset by a $25,000 grant from Comcast for public- access technology. Ongoing expenses will be paid from the city's information technology investment account, which has almost $300,000.

Previous meetings will not be archived online, just those conducted after webcasting starts. Those meetings will likely stay online for three years.

The city will monitor how much traffic the webcasts get over the next year to determine whether it should continue beyond that.

Currently residents must come to the meeting, check out a video at the library or subscribe to Comcast cable to see meetings. That's too limiting, she said.

"I'm conscious of the fact that not everyone has Internet access, either, but this is a more democratic way of getting information out. It's much more equal."

The council decided not to webcast or archive other board or commission meetings. It would have cost about $125,000 more in the first year alone because they are not set up to be televised.