I want my Council TV

I am not one to heap praise on people or organizations. In fact, I’m of the mind that we generally offer up way too many unwarranted accolades simply for meeting expectations. It probably has something to do with my rejection of the “Everyone Gets A Trophy” approach for recognition or maybe I’m just cynical. In any event, you have to do something pretty impressive to get a thumb’s up from me.

With that said, whoever is responsible for conceiving of and creating the Metro Council’s new video web archive deserves all the raises. Seriously, ALL of them. Just take whatever line item in the budget is dedicated for pay raises and appropriate them to this genius. As my colleague, Adrienne Connelly, would say: this thing is so dope (well, she probably wouldn’t, but I’m appropriating it for my purposes).

For any regular reader of this blog, you know that I have a thing about local government transparency. I think citizens should have the full complement of tools and resources needed to determine whether their local government is operating efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, tools and resources of that nature are few and far between. For instance, if you see an item on the upcoming Metro Council agenda, you can request the detailed proposal from the Council Administrator or Parish Attorney’s office, but that can be an inconvenient and not always timely process. The agenda summaries are largely unhelpful; usually only telling you what ordinance is being modified, rather than what the modification does. It’s an inconvenient and foggy morass.

So when something like the new Metro Council video archive comes along, it’s a really refreshing shock. So exactly how cool is this thing? Take a look at the image below, it’s a screencap from the archive.

(Click to enlarge.)

This is a video from the February 13, 2013 Metro Council meeting at which the Council authorized a temporary continuation of the red light camera program. The video displays in the upper left portion of the page, the agenda item text is located below the video. On the right hand side is the agenda, which is divided up as it was considered. The video will jump to whatever item you select. It’s really a very impressive bit of archival technology.

But Slater, you may be asking, how in the ever-loving name of Woody Dumas do I find a specific item? No problem, the website has a search function. If you click on the first link in this post, it will take you to the main streaming website. At the bottom of the webpage is a box that displays the current feed for Channel 21. There are a few tabs along the top of the box: Metropolitan Council, Council Zoning, and Planning Commission. The astute reader can determine that each of these tabs contains archived videos of the appropriate meeting in chronological order dating back to the beginning of 2013. Between the tabs and the list is a Search box. By entering a term, the website will conduct a search of the archive database of agenda items and kick out any relevant hits. The search will cover all three tabs, so you don’t have to run multiple searches.

Two things to remember: the search is very literal and run against the text of agenda items. That’s relevant because agenda items are written in a very technical manner.

For instance, if you want to hear the comments made during the consideration for the Costco TIF, you can’t actually search for the term “TIF” and expect good results. Instead, you’ll get a few items related to neighborhood beauTIFication (yeah, it’s that literal). In order to find it, you have to know what TIF stands for (Tax Increment Financing). I did a search for “tax increment” and got the Costco hit immediately.

This is a great tool for citizens to find out exactly what it is their Council representatives are saying on their behalf. By adding a search feature as well as parsing the video archive based on agenda items, it also saves a hell of a lot of time. Other than the slightly flaky search function, my only complaint is that it doesn’t go back further than 2013. And that cuts out all of Bones Addison’s epic rants. My ultimate hope is that this is a first (albeit giant) step in a broad attempt to provide greater transparency in government to the citizens of East Baton Rouge Parish.