BPU Officially Live Streams First Meeting
The Jamestown Board of Public Utilities livestreamed its first board meeting for the Jamestown community on Monday.
During the meeting, Mayor Eddie Sundquist asked David Leathers, general manager, to provide information regarding the BPU’s livestream plans.
“Could you tell us more about the livestream and how you guys are doing that?” he asked. “Is it be streamed on Facebook, is it on the website, are we testing it today?”
Leathers explained the livestream for the BPU meeting is available on the BPU’s website. In addition to providing a livestream for each BPU board meeting, Leathers said the meetings should be recorded and made available for those who want to watch the meeting at their convenience at a different time than the original livestream.
Leathers told The Post-Journal that Monday’s meeting was the first time the BPU has made the livestream available to the public.
“We did some test runs,” he said. “We actually modified the way we’re doing it, so now I’m anxious to see how it turned out, and we’ll keep working on improving it from there, but this is the first time that it’s gone live for viewing.”
The BPU’s livestream of board meetings provides an additional layer of transparency for Jamestown residents and customers of the BPU.
Doug Champ, a Jamestown resident, had previously pressured the BPU to livestream board meetings in order to provide transparency for those who could not attend BPU meetings in-person.
City Councilman Jeff Russell, R-At Large, asked Leathers if the livestreaming of BPU meetings was a permanent plan and if all future BPU meetings would be made available for the public.
“I think it’s our intent,” Leathers said. “I would like to go into maybe mid-next year and review it and have conversations about how it’s going and what we’d like to see continued going forward. It’s our intent to do it and make it available, get feedback and improve it.”
In other news, the BPU unanimously approved the Solid Waste Division’s 2023 budget, bringing a conclusion to the months-long process for the BPU’s 2023 budget. After the final division’s budget was approved, Leathers acknowledged and thanked the board members and BPU staff for their support, input and work on each of the five divisional budgets.
“I would just thank all the board members for your work as we’ve gone through this year,” he said. “As volunteer board members, you show up, you ask questions, you request more detail and you make us better as a staff. I appreciate that very much. Your involvement in committee meetings and your input, questions and ideas really make us better for the community.”