How To Stream City Council Meeting: A Complete Guide

One of the key things to understand about live-streaming is that no two events are created equally. Everything needs to be accounted for in its own way, from the number of people in attendance to the venue to the actual goal of the event itself and more. Fully capturing a city council meeting and presenting it so that people can feel like they're actually in the room is certainly no exception. It's especially important these days as more people want to be involved in their local community activities than ever.

There's also a matter of legality. In many areas it's a local, state, or even federal mandate to have these meetings captured. On the plus side, you can also have it live on your municipality's website as well. 

Therefore, if you want to successfully live stream council meeting events in your area, there are a few key things to keep in mind.

Why are City Council Meetings Streamed Live?

Generally speaking, city council meetings are streamed live for a myriad of different reasons, including the aforementioned legality of it all. The people who live in an area have a right to know what the people who are supposed to be representing them are doing and what decisions are being made.  Beyond that, many of them have to do with the essential goal of involving as many people in the community as you can when making decisions that impact everyone.

In most situations, a city council meeting will take place on a specific date in a predetermined place that is open to the public. In the vast majority of situations, the location will be the city council chambers (unless such a place doesn't actually exist). It will also be on a regular schedule communicated well in advance - like every Tuesday or every other week, for example. 

But just because someone can't make it doesn't mean that they can't remain informed. Examples include people who may be out of town when the meeting is taking place, or elderly people who may not have reliable transportation. Live-streaming is a great way to include these people while the meeting is still going on, rather than informing them after the fact as to what has occurred.

Not only that, but the COVID-19 pandemic showed the importance of virtual events of all types - city council meetings included. There was a period at the height of the pandemic when a very limited number of people were allowed to be in one room in a public place at a time. That would have limited the maximum capacity of such meetings, if they were allowed to take place at all. With a live-streamed city council meeting, everyone could still participate without exposing themselves to a potentially dangerous situation. 

Equipment for City Council Live Streams

When it comes to putting together a successful live stream of a city council meeting, there are a few key types of equipment you'll want to have access to.

Obviously, quality PTZ cameras are essential. No, a city council meeting isn't necessarily known for fast-paced activity like you would find at a sporting event, but video quality is still very important. People watching at home, especially those on slower Internet connections, need to be able to clearly see who is speaking, and they must be able to take in any visual materials like charts or graphs that are displayed. At a bare minimum, a 1080p HD resolution camera is necessary, even if the quality of the stream ends up getting downgraded on the viewer's end.

Equally important is the type of equipment that you'll be using to record sound. You'll want to have one microphone for each city council member who will be present, especially if there will be back-and-forth discussions involved. City council members will already have microphones setup even if they're just designed for community members, yes - but if you can use mics that will wirelessly feed audio back to your own recording equipment (or tap into the audio feed from the mics that are already present), you'll get far better audio as a result.

Most city council chambers are equipped with gooseneck microphones. TV Pro Gear performs these installations and has done so for many cities in California. We help many municipalities create the infrastructure necessary to record these meetings, including cabling installation and everything needed to send recordings to cable stations, too. 

Note that especially if you're shooting on a mobile device like an iPhone or iPad, you want to make sure that you have external audio equipment to record everything properly. The onboard microphones alone will not get the job done. 

All of this audio and video information will feed into a mixing board which, when configured properly, makes sure it all goes out over the Internet exactly as intended.

After that, you'll want to make sure that lighting equipment is taken care of. Typically, this is done when the city council chambers are designed.