"Commissioner downplays recording of meeting"

By Jenna Portnoy, PhillyBurbs.com, November 5, 2009:

. . . A more than two-hour-long meeting of the Bucks County commissioners was recorded Wednesday thanks to in-house video equipment at the Middletown Township building. But it's not clear if the video will ever be viewed by a wide audience.

"I'll take it under advisement," Republican Commissioner Charley Martin said after the meeting. "I don't see any advantage to it."

Martin said he worried about grandstanding by officials or members of the audience. Already, he said the lengthy meetings are a far cry from the days when he said commissioners were in and out in 25 minutes.

Commissioners generally meet at 10 a.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of the month at various locations throughout the county. In the winter months, meetings take place at the courthouse in Doylestown. Anyone who can't be there can listen to audio files posted to the county Web site, www.buckscounty.org, after the meeting.

But Democratic Commissioner Diane Marseglia has pushed for televised meetings since before she took office in 2008. She maintains that the meeting times are inconvenient for people who work during the day.

She volunteered to pay the cost of recording the meeting in Middletown, where she used to be a supervisor, so commissioners could test out the concept without expending taxpayer dollars.

Commissioner Jim Cawley said he had no problem with the video appearing on television or streaming online. Two commissioners' support for a measure is typically enough to make it happen in Bucks, but Cawley said he would defer to Martin to make the final decision.

Unlike in municipalities, counties do not have cable franchise agreements to use as leverage for air time and video equipment from cable companies like Comcast. Showing the videos online could be a cost-saving alternative.

Back in April, then-Chief Operating Officer Dave Sanko said video of the meetings could begin streaming online as early as July.

At the time, Sanko said the technology would give anyone with Internet access the chance to view the meetings whenever it's convenient for them. The service would have been worth the costs of recording, he said at the time.