Council debates broadcast of meetings

By KENT THOMPSON
We may be in a digital age, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a demand for analog broadcasts of Humboldt City Council meetings.
Much of the Tuesday, Sept. 3 Humboldt City Council meeting centered around public broadcasts of the bi-monthly Humboldt City Council meetings and how best to provide the information to the greatest number of citizens.
City Administrator Travis Goedken provided the Council with quotes from three web-based streaming services, Boxcast, Livestream and Dacast.
However, the consensus among the four Council members in attendance was that other options needed to be explored.
“How many people who want to view the Council meetings even have internet access?” Council member Joel Goodell asked.
“Would this be in lieu of channel 12 (Mediacom local access channel)?” he wanted to know.
“A lot of people can’t even get channel 12,” Humboldt City Clerk Gloria Christensen said. “We can’t get it in our office. The local channel is 117-2 for Goldfield Access (cable),” she said.
“We have had Mediacom in here several different times and they can’t get it (our current system) going, or fix the problem. They can’t get PowerPoint slides loaded into it,” Goedken said. “Live streaming is easier in that we don’t have to load information into the Mediacom system.”
He said the lightning strike of October 2017, which fried some of the communications equipment behind Humboldt City Hall, may be part of the problem. Humboldt County, which owns the communications tower east of city hall, is working on the matter.
In the end, the Council requested that Goedken try to work with Mediacom to find out what needs to be done to get Humboldt City Council meetings back on the air. Read more about the meeting in this week's Humboldt Independent. Subscribe by clicking on the link above.