Kennedy pushes for taping of Lynn City Council meetings

LYNN - After hashing around the idea to broadcast City Council meetings for a number of years, city officials are now scrambling to push the project forward in order to avoid further embarrassment of being lumped in with only a handful of municipalities in the state that do not televise meetings.

City Councilors At-Large Judith Flanagan Kennedy and Paul Crowley said they compiled a list of 150 cities and towns in the Essex and Middlesex counties and discovered that only Lynn and nine others are lagging behind.

"I stopped counting once I found out that 109 places have their meetings televised out of the top 110 by population and only we don't," Kennedy said. "We need to realign some resources to get this going."

Kennedy said that if City Hall were to be rebuilt on the same spot today, the building plan would be rejected because of a lack of parking spots, thus creating a hassle for residents who want to attend meetings.

"There isn't any air conditioning and there aren't enough spots, so it's unfair to people," she said. "Everyone should be able to watch the meeting from their living rooms."

Ken Kinna, executive director of Lynn Cable Access and Media (LynnCAM) reiterated to the Cable Access Committee that the project could be made possible with roughly $20,000.

"We could also make Channel 16 strictly for government access and run school notices and other information for people to see," he said. "I also got a couple of quotes from Audio Pro and costs for equipment."

After touring Salem City Hall last month to take a look at videotaping equipment and the similar layout to Lynn City Hall, Crowley and Kennedy said they gained prospective over how they could make the project work.

The only hurdle left standing in the city's way is funding for the project.

Kennedy said she recently spent time poring over contracts for Verizon and Comcast and discovered some capital funding allocated strictly for government access. She plans on looking into that funding further to alleviate the city's money woes.

"Other cities and towns have evolved over the years, but we just want to start off where they were 10 years ago," she said. "It needs to be done, so we hope to make the first step happen in this pilot project."

Originally slated to begin taping in January, the plan stalled out due to available funds and confusion over how the project would actually work in an older building like Lynn City Hall.

An anticipated fall date has been targeted, but a specific date has not been set.

Kennedy said she plans to push for other city meetings such as the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Licensing Board to be televised as well.

July 2009

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