Cuyahoga County Council Streams Live, Tweets & Facebooks

The efforts described in today's Plain Dealer (read here) by the Cuyahoga County Council to be transparent and open were announced last week on WCPN's The Sound of Ideas. You can hear the entire podcast here. I listened to it live (and actually called in and spoke for a couple of minutes) and tweeted about the new social media efforts as C. Ellen Connally, the Council President, mentioned them.

From the PD article:

Live meetings of the council and its committees are available online. Click on "streaming video." The full council meets today at 6 p.m.

Legislators adopted the tools to improve transparency, which had been a pledge of members when they campaigned last year.

The council several months ago heard from a company whose technology allows citizens to watch meetings online, search video archives and link to related legislation and other public information. The system in place was done in house, and does not include features such as searchable video.

Residents can also watch archives of council meetings, but not committee meetings. Eventually, audio archives of committee meetings will be posted, said chief of staff Joe Nanni.

Internet users can also find Council on Twitter, twitter.com/cuyahogacouncil, and on Facebook at facebook.com/cuyahogacouncil.

"These new social media tools will help us to more easily interact with citizens," Council President C. Ellen Connally said in a news release.

Pepper Pike as a city does not have a Facebook page, a Twitter account nor does it stream its meetings. However, just last week, the mayor told me that he would be sending out letters to residents whom we've identified as individuals we'd love to have be part of the City's Communications/Tech/Web Committee which I chair.  I've not yet seen that go out but hopefully it either has or will shortly.