Petition asks CSRD to webcast meetings to increase engagement

A Columbia Shuswap Regional District (CSRD) resident has started an online petition asking for the CSRD Board to either livestream or video record its monthly board meetings.

Maria Otting began asking the CSRD about either live streaming or recording meetings last fall. She says the catalyst was the board’s decision to introduce building services permits in Electoral Area D, where she lives. Other Electoral Areas, including CSRD Electoral Area B, also had building service permits implemented last year.

“We didn’t even know it was happening,” said Otting.

In October 2019, Otting received an email response from a CSRD staff member stating the board had denied a previous request to record its meetings, but that staff had been instructed to keep track of any such requests. With no success, Otting decided to create an online petition at change.org.

See the change.org petition via this link.

Otting said the petition isn’t intended to cause controversy, but rather is meant to highlight the desire for CSRD residents to have a way to stay better informed about what’s happening in the district.

“The public wants to have a voice. We want to be involved and participate. Even if [the meetings] are just recorded and posted on the site the next day. We have the technology to do that,” she said.

The CSRD’s monthly board meetings are held in Salmon Arm on a Thursday during working hours. This makes it challenging for CSRD residents from six electoral areas and four municipalities to attend the meetings.

“With time and distance constraints, the technology of live-streaming or recording meetings provides an opportunity for constituents to feel engaged and up-to-date on board discussions and upcoming items on the agenda in their communities,” states the online petition.

Live streaming or video recording of city council and other community board meetings is becoming commonplace. Revelstoke city council has live streamed its meetings for a number of years.

Otting said there are plans to present the petition and request for online streaming or video recording of the meetings as a delegation at the CSRD’s March 19 board meeting. She has also created a Facebook group called CSRD Residents ~ The People’s Voice as a way for residents to connect and stay aware of what’s happening.

The Mountaineer reached out to CSRD CAO Charles Hamilton for comment on the petition, but CSRD staff said he was attending conferences in Vancouver and Florida this week and was not available for comment.

As of the time of publishing, the petition had 110 signatures.

Revelstoke Mountaineer petition for webcasting CSRD board meetings denied

In 2019, Revelstoke Mountaineer Magazine and revelstokemountaineer.com editor Aaron Orlando petitioned the CSRD board, requesting that the board live-stream its meetings in order to increase transparency, promote democratic participation and encourage engagement.

The CSRD meets in Salmon Arm, but its geographic area includes communities as far away as Trout Lake, Golden and Revelstoke, meaning some residents have to travel hundreds of kilometres to attend a meeting.

“It is not practical for media outlets to send reporters to a meeting for one or two agenda items that may be relevant to the communities they serve,” wrote Orlando in his letter to the CSRD board. “In addition, the public would also be better served by the regional district if residents had direct access to what’s happening at the board table via a webcast. The technology that enables webcasting is now cheap and reliable and many local governments in B.C. are now taking advantage of this opportunity to increase engagement and transparency.”

However, the request was denied by the CSRD board after it received a staff report that presented many barriers. Read that report here.

The report, which noted many local governments in the CSRD are already live-streaming their meetings, said that webcasting would be expensive (it estimated $70,000–$100,000 for equipment), would be problematic due to data storage laws, would require extra staff resources, and that the CSRD had only received one request for live-streaming.

“There are also potential ramifications from video being taken out of context or used to deliberately embarrass a Director or staff member,” wrote IT manager Brad Payne in his report.

In CSRD Area B, building inspections also created controversy in the community, with many residents complaining that they were unaware the change had been proposed and that they did not support it. The current CSRD Area B representative, David Brooks-Hill, was elected on a campaign platform that included rescinding the inspection bylaw. His election signs focused on the building inspection issue.

—with files from Aaron Orlando