How To Find Recordings Of Amherst Government Meetings
Photo: Pixabay.com. Creative commons
Over the past couple of months, the Town’s website, www.amherstma.gov , has undergone a substantial upgrade. Although much more information is available on the site than previously, it is sometimes not clear where to find it.
Since the pandemic began, all committee meetings, community chats, and Cuppa Joe breakfasts have been virtual and recorded. These recordings can be accessed on the Town’s YouTube channel through the video recordings tab at the bottom of the home page or by clicking on the video recording link from the home page of each committee. The recordings are usually posted within a week of the meeting.
Town Council, School Committee, Finance Committee, and Planning Board meetings are also posted promptly, on the Amherst Media YouTube Channel .
Sadly, the Jones Library Trustees do not feel that the public needs to view their monthly meetings. For the very first time ever, starting last June, some meetings were recorded and posted on Vimeo. Then meetings were recorded and not posted. Now, only the Library Chats are available to the public.
One wonders why the library does not want transparency when the Trustees are asking the Town to approve $22 million toward the demolition/expansion project this April, even before a state grant is awarded and before the Town Council has prioritized all capital expenditures.
Why won’t the Trustees record and post their meetings as other Town departments do?
From my experience looking for recordings of meetings, many are not posted within a week of the meeting, or even within a month for that matter.
The Elementary School Building Committee meetings, for example, have been very slow to be posted. I’ve reached out to town IT staff each time for help in getting them posted. The December 9th meeting was posted almost four weeks later, on January 4th. The January 13th meeting has still not been posted.
According to town staff, they are stretched thin with so many meetings now being recorded. They were hoping to get some additional support to help with the added work and volume to handle the recordings but I don’t know if that has happened. It appears that only those few committees that are covered under contract by Amherst Media are regularly posted quickly.