The Fayston Select Board may draft a policy that would require town meetings – including those of the select board, planning commission, development review board and others – to be posted to the town’s YouTube channel. This could facilitate easier access to the video files, town officials said at the select board’s Tuesday, January 14 meeting.
According to the state’s Open Meeting Laws, which were amended last year, all towns are currently required to offer a remote option for meetings of public bodies, with the exception of advisory boards. They are also required to post audio or video files in an electronic location for at least 30 days after meeting minutes are published.
Fayston offers virtual meeting attendance and retains those videos for the required length of time on Zoom, however, Zoom has a limited storage capacity, and those video links eventually expire, Fayston town clerk Madison Vasseur told the board. Archiving videos to YouTube would provide greater storage capacity and videos could be hosted indefinitely.
ONE-STOP SHOP
Having a user-friendly central location to host videos would also make it easier to post videos from all town meetings, like those from the planning commission and the conservation commission. YouTube could function as a “one-stop shop – everything would be there,” Vasseur told the board.
Of course, the website and YouTube account of Mad River Valley Television (MRVTV) also function as central locations for videos of town meetings and public events. Towns can send their video files to the local station, which can’t cover every committee meeting that takes place across The Valley due to staffing limitations.
Still, towns that do their own archiving isn’t a bad idea.
MRVTV director Chris Wiersema points to the importance of “data redundancy,” or keeping multiple copies of the same data in different locations, formats and systems, ensuring the longevity of those files. YouTube aside, MRVTV keeps files indefinitely on physical hard drives, as well as backing them up to Internet Archive – a free, non-profit digital library that preserves file collections.
USER-FRIENDLY
MRVTV advocates that towns use non-profit hosting services rather than YouTube, since in theory, private corporations could decide to lock up content and require a fee for accessing videos at some point, Wiersema said. On the other hand, YouTube is user-friendly and it’s less likely that data would be compromised through hacking. “Ultimately I’m in favor of access, and however we can make these videos accessible,” he told The Valley Reporter.
At the select board’s January 14 meeting, board chair Chuck Martel said that all local towns should be posting video files of committee meetings to a platform like YouTube.
Vasseur said she reached out to the Vermont League of Cities and Towns for guidance about drafting a policy for Fayston.
