Wednesday, July 13, 2011

TOWN BOARD MEETING ARCHIVES MORE TRANSPARENT THAN EVER

TOWN BOARD MEETING ARCHIVES--MORE TRANSPARENT THAN EVER!
At yesterdays Town Board work session Town Clerk Judith Beville, our records access officer, introduced the Town Board to our new partner in streaming meetings of the Greenburgh Town Board, SWAGIT PRODUCTIONS. We just launched a revamping of the archives portion of the Town Board meeting which will make town government more transparent than it ever has been. Please check the town website: www.greenburghny.com (Town Board archives—listed on the left side of our website). Some new features of the website include the following:
• You don’t have to watch our entire Town Board meetings to find a topic that was discussed. The meeting is broken down into different categories: presentations, public hearings, public comments and votes. By indexing your topic you can now directly access the portion of the meeting that you would like to view.

• You can also click on to the agenda of the Board meeting you're watching. If you'd like to share portions of the video with your friends or neighbors you can share the portion of the video (a feature we never had before). The result: Many more people will have access to relevant topics that are discussed and may interest their neighborhood. If there is a hearing on a neighborhood issue, civic leaders and members of the community could e mail their neighbors that portion of the meeting.
I would like to thank George Malone, our cable TV coordinator for recommending Swagit to Judith Beville, who coordinated the implementation of this new initiative. A special thanks to Councilman Francis Sheehan for reviewing the contract and to Thomas Madden, Commissioner of Planning and to Joe Lucasey, our webmaster for their efforts.
This is a very exciting new open government initiative. This is democracy and transparency at it’s best.
PAUL FEINER

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