Troy’s City Council Webcast Needs Improvements

Trying to watch last Thursday’s webcast of the Special City Council meeting was a major pain. Both the audio and the video were working poorly. Most of the time there was no audio and the video image was frozen.

I sent an email message to Cindy Stewart and John Szerlag raising concerns about this issue.  Assistant City Manager John Lamerato responded with a message stating: “I totally agree with you and I will be meeting with Cindy & Gert to address this issue. It was unfortunate that with such a important issue being discussed that the web casting was so poor.”

Thank you, John!

During the webcast, I also posted a complaint on Twitter. A former City employee saw it and gave me some technical information on the problem. When the signal is poor, that means the City is close to maximum capacity in web viewers.  That capacity  is 20 web viewers. It was a cost saving move and set up that way at a time when demand wasn’t high.

In this day and age, I would assume that more than 20 people will be watching City Council meetings on the web.