![\"City](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/HobbsCityHall1-336x203.jpg\")
Courtesy photo<\/p>
City Hall in Hobbs, N.M.<\/p><\/div>\n
Citizens first began pushing for webcasting of Hobbs City Commission meetings\u00a0a year ago<\/a>. After months of investigating, the city said earlier this month that streaming video of meetings online live and archiving it for later use would cost too much — $80,000.<\/p>\n That prompted skepticism of the cost estimate and a backlash. On March 13, the Hobbs News-Sun published an editorial rejecting the city’s argument. The newspaper suggested webcasting could be done with a camera that costs a few hundred dollars, existing city staff, and a free YouTube channel.<\/p>\n “The City of Hobbs recently spent nearly $8,000 to send three employees to Italy to look at a swimming pool company that could, potentially, install the new pools at the planned Health, Wellness and Learning Center,” the editorial stated. “It seems the visit to Italy caught many outside City Hall by surprise. Perhaps having city meetings recorded and available for residents to view would help keep them informed about what the city is doing with their taxpayer dollars.”<\/p>\n So two city staffers —\u00a0Director of Communication Meghan Mooney and Director of Information Technology Ron Roberts — came up with a proposal to purchase a camera for $600, record meetings, and post the video within 48 hours on YouTube. They made their pitch to the city commission at a meeting on Monday.<\/p>\n Some citizens who have led the push for webcasting agreed with the majority of commissioners that such a step wasn’t sufficient. The commission\u00a0voted 5-2 against\u00a0the proposal. Commissioners\u00a0Jonathan Sena and Joe Calderon were in the minority.<\/p>\n “If we vote ‘no’ on this or if we move to table this, I think we’re sending a mixed message to Megan and to Ron. I think we need to get the ball rolling,” he said.<\/p>\n Mayor Sam Cobb said the city would keep working “to try to come up with a reasonable solution.”<\/p>\n Citizens are already webcasting video of meetings live and archiving it for later viewing. Hobbs resident Nick Maxwell operates a website, WeTheFourth.org<\/a>,\u00a0that posts city documents online and webcasts low-quality recordings of meetings, including Monday’s discussion about webcasting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maxwell and\u00a0Hobbs resident Dennis Barcuch — who has written a commentary\u00a0for NMPolitics.net<\/a>\u00a0articulating\u00a0the need for webcasting — agreed with tabling the proposal and searching for a better solution.<\/p>\n Barcuch told commissioners at the meeting that citizens were already doing more than\u00a0city staff was proposing — and it wasn’t costing taxpayers any money.<\/p>\n “But let’s discuss the cost of moving forward. I don’t believe it’s $80,000. I don’t believe it’s $600. I think it’s somewhere in between,”Barcuch said.<\/p>\n Some\u00a0commissioners suggested putting citizens including Maxwell, Barcuch and webcasting advocate Byron Marshall<\/a> on a committee to help the city figure out how to proceed.<\/p>\n Hobbs is behind\u00a0the curve when it comes to webcasting. The state\u2019s largest cities \u2014\u00a0Albuquerque<\/a>, Las Cruces<\/a>, Rio Rancho<\/a> and\u00a0Santa Fe<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 all webcast and archive meetings of their governing boards, as do many smaller towns\u00a0including Las Vegas<\/a>,\u00a0Silver City<\/a> and\u00a0Socorro<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hobbs broadcasts\u00a0commission meetings on a local radio station. That\u2019s\u00a0helpful for people who can listen live, but not those who are busy with jobs, families or other activities. You can buy a CD containing an audio recording of a meeting if you have the money and means to pick it up.<\/p>\n After Monday’s\u00a0vote against the $600 camera, Barcuch told NMPolitics.net that the commission did “the smart thing\u00a0by not spending hastily money that could be put toward the real\u00a0solution.” Citizens, he said, “will aid the city with footage until they make a decision and implement a proper access to government’s activities and crowd-sourced engagement.”<\/p>\n “We look forward to working with our city leaders to open wide complete and comprehensive communication between government and we, the people of Hobbs,” Barcuch said.<\/p>\n Maxwell agreed.<\/p>\n “A handheld camera is not an acceptable long-term solution, nor is it conducive to facilitate webcasting,” he told NMPolitics.net.<\/p>\n Maxwell\u00a0called for the city to implement a webcasting system this year and said his goal with webcasting and publishing documents on his website\u00a0is to “demonstrate how public records and meetings can be more readily accessible to the people than ever before.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Government officials and citizens in Hobbs continue to wrestle with how to make city commission meetings more accessible to the public by broadcasting them online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[885,706],"class_list":["post-137828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-hobbs","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}