The St. Petersburg City Council discussed an item of new business today concerning the city council workshops that are currently not televised.
Some council members say there is a demand for the broadcast of these workshops. “I have had a lot of citizens call and say ‘this is important to me,’” said councilmember Steve Kornell. “It’s 2010, not the 80s and frankly I hear a lot of citizens saying they want this. We should absolutely do close captioning and should pay for it,” said Kornell.
The council meetings are televised regularly as well as the Public Services and Infrastructure (PSI) Committee and Budget Finance and Taxation (BFT) Committee meetings, but the council members conduct other types of meetings that are not televised. Workshops in which the members receive a briefing on different issues, like the recent police workshop, are not televised. The workshop minutes are not posted online, if they are taken at all, and regular council-as-a-whole meeting minutes are difficult to access and must be found through a search bank.
During the discussion of the current available programming, a recent police workshop was discussed.
“There were no recommendations, we took no vote,” said councilmember Jeff Danner. “There was just information. There will be many steps to that process. I don’t even know if it was a workshop. I don’t think the public is being excluded from any process because that is just step one. When we reach step ten we will have the analysis of the process. I don’t think we are stopping the public from seeing anything.”
The St. Petersburg Times published an editorial today in favor of televising all meetings, saying,
“This is not open government. City Council members aren't board members of some private corporation. They are conducting the public's business and should be doing it transparently and with the public's convenience in mind. All council meetings should be advertised and televised. All should have published agendas. And the public's participation should be welcomed, not treated as an imposition.”
Danner says this is something he has not been asked by his constituents. “I would like the opportunity to go out to those that I represent and ask that question,” he said.
The Council debated about the cost of the extra programming, which could come to about $200 per hour, with an extra $100 for close captioning. The council members debated back and forth about the necessity of close captioning.
“You either do all or nothing. I am not hearing a huge outcry. I know the Times would like everything televised and at 6pm. We’ve tried a variety of things, but there was very low turnout,” said Council Chair Leslie Curran.
A study was conducted in July 2008 by OpinionWorks, a company commissioned by the city, to determine the percentage of viewership of WSPF-TV, the St. Petersburg government access channel. There were 400 interviews randomly done by telephone with a margin of error of five percent. The study found that: 75 percent of all adults that took the survey are aware of the city channel, 52 percent have ever watched the channel, 23 percent watch at least a few times per month, 10 percent watch at least a few times per week, 26 percent watch for more than 10 minutes, and seven percent have watched the channel on the web.
The motion to televise all council meetings of the whole as well as workshops was put to a vote and passed. “There will still be some things that won’t be televised” due to Homeland Security issues like the layout of the police station, said Mayor Bill Foster.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.