Shining a light on local government pays off Twp. receives state award for Internet accessible meetings BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer Brick came away a winner at the New Jersey League of Municipalities convention with a top award for Internetaccessible Township Council meetings. Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis accepted the Innovation in Governance Award for Records Management in the 21st Century from the state Department of Community Affairs and the League, at the League's annual conference in Atlantic City last week. "Anything we can do to let the public see what goes on in Brick Township, we are going to try and do," Acropolis said after the conference. He hopes someday to have Board of Adjustment and Planning Board meetings as well as school functions online also. "It's a continuation of our thrust into opening up township government," he said. "That goes hand in hand with corruption. When you put the light of day on actions and people can see what you are doing, there is less of a chance somebody is going to try and do something behind the scenes." The township signed a contract with San Francisco-based Granicus Inc. in January to make public Township Council meetings available on demand on the Internet. Council meetings were first televised on BTV20, the local cable channel, in 2004. Brick was the first municipality in the state to launch a live and on-demand Webcasting portal powered by Granicus. The company provides local government streaming media solutions. The township paid Granicus $9,640 in start-up costs and pays $684 a month for storage and distribution, system monitoring and continuous software updates for the service. Public Township Council meetings are archived on the township Web site at www.bricktownship.net. The meetings are available back to the Jan. 1, 2007, organization meetings. The meetings are also "time stamped," which means viewers can scroll down the agenda on the Web site and click on the portion of the meeting they want to watch. Residents need a broadband Internet connection, not dial-up, to take advantage of the feature and the proper computer equipment. Residents must have at least a 233 MHz Pentium II processor, a sound card, 64 MB of RAM and a minimum of 56 Kbps Internet connection to be able to access the meetings. Macintosh computers need a G3 system or newer, with Mac OS X installed. A Windows Media Player version 9 or higher is required. Brick's award has gotten national recognition, Acropolis said. "This story has gone all over the country," he said. "This is big time, getting the township and government into the 21st century. This is much bigger than I thought it was, when national newspapers pick it up." Township Clerk Virginia Lampman and Councilwoman Ruthanne Scaturro approached council members about Granicus after they saw the technology demonstrated at an earlier League of Municipalities convention. The service with Granicus also gives the township the ability to link streaming video with formal public meeting records, to create a unified source for both staff and residents to retrieve information. "The award validates the public benefits of expanding public records with live, archived and searchable streaming video of public meeting," Sal Baglio, Granicus northeastern regional director.