Public access to meetings improved at City Hall

No need to hunt for a parking space or move from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy any more, now that the City of St Augustine has established a high-definition closed circuit broadcast arrangement for public meetings held in the Alcazar Room in City Hall that can be viewed by the public, without cost, over the Internet.

In addition to live broadcast of meetings, the new service offers on-demand viewing of past meetings of the City Commission, Planning and Zoning Board and Historic Architectural Review Board at www.cosatv.com

Starting with its meeting this coming Monday, St. Augustine City Commission meetings will be available for on-line live viewing and on demand playback. This is the first time this service has been offered. The March 24th meeting begins at 5:00pm.

All meetings will be accompanied with an indexed agenda allowing the viewer to jump to specific topics of interest.

The new service may be accessed at www.cosatv.com and may be viewed on both PCs and Macs as well as a wide array of mobile devices including iPhones, iPads, and Android-based phones and tablets.

The regularly scheduled monthly meetings available at www.cosatv.com are:

• St. Augustine City Commission at 5:00pm on the 2nd and 4th Monday:
• Planning and Zoning Board at 2:00pm on the first Tuesday; and
• Historic Architectural Review Board at 2:00pm on the third Thursday.

The streaming service is provided by Swagit Productions, LLC, a broadband multimedia communication company that specializes in providing streaming services to television stations, newspapers, magazines and local government agencies.

For many years the city has offered live broadcast of city commission meetings and rebroadcasts of PZB and HARB meetings, but only via St. Johns County’s Government TV on Comcast channel 3. While that service will continue, by adding live streaming and on-demand viewing the public’s access to public meetings is greatly enhanced.