Recording Meetings in Hayden

The City of Hayden offers a YouTube channel with a variety of meetings available for viewing at your convenience. I appreciate the accessibility and extensive recording of our meetings. I frequently utilize the channel to prepare for future meetings by watching Planning & Zoning meetings or to review past decisions and discussion points.

Having meetings available on line like this is really a big deal. First of all, it means that your Council members care about transparency and making decisions avaliable to the public. This isn't easy to do because it makes us vulnerable. Personally, this is hard for me because sometimes my hair doesn't look the best or I stumble for the right words, but at the end of the day I'm saying things and making decisions that affect you and I want to be transparent.

At the end of our November 12 Hayden City Council meeting, Mayor Davis spoke about a future agenda item regarding recording meetings. I'm looking forward to this discussion because I think that the City of Hayden is doing a great job of video recording our Council and Planning & Zoning commission meetings. We have other commission meetings that I would like to have video recorded as well, but those are only audio recorded at this time.

This past year or so we have had an increase in workshops, so there have been more meetings to record. On an average month we have two regular City Council Meetings, two Planning & Zoning meetings, and then perhaps one or two special meetings on top of that, so that's 4-6 meetings a month being video recorded. The extra workshops do add to the cost of recording, but they also increase other costs if overtime needs to be paid to staff and/or the City Attorney needs to be present.

Personally, I'd like to have any meeting that the City Council, your elected officials, are at as well as the Planning & Zoning meetings be recorded, but this is going to be discussed and decided at our next meeting on November 26.

Our staff does a great job of recording and posting these recordings, and I'd like to see it continue. So now we need decide which meetings are a priority to have, to record, and a more cost-effective way to do it.

Video taping meetings is one of the best ways to show that a city values transparency.

Sandy White

https://www.youtube.com/@cityofhayden