Experimental Albemarle School Board Podcast

Two and a half years ago, I address City Council, proposing that they have a podcast of Council meetings. Of course, we didn’t have the word “podcast” then, so I settled for describing it as a web-based archive of MP3s of each Council session. Nothing happened, of course, but a fella gets used to that.

So, naturally, Brian Wheeler has picked up the ball and run with it. As a one-shot effort, working with Sean Tubbs, he’s created a podcast of the October 27 Albemarle School Board meeting. Brian writes:

I do not plan to create additional Podcasts of the meetings I am participating in, but I hope this will serve as an example that might motivate others in the community to help us get our public meetings available on the Internet. While the City of Charlottesville is able to broadcast their School Board meetings on local cable TV, the County of Albemarle has no similar capability. Podcasting, whether done officially by the School Board or by interested citizens or students, would be a great public service project.

Some business whose customers consist of adults with school-aged children would do well to sponsor an ongoing podcast of Albemarle School Board meetings, putting a brief promotional message for their business at the beginning of each podcast.

Municipal podcasts are useful for a great many reasons, but the two that really stand out are that meetings become more accessible, and a permanent archive of past meetings is created. Both of these are really valuable, certainly more valuable than the cost of putting together such podcasts.

Since City Council isn’t likely to do this anytime soon, it would be great if somebody could TiVo each Charlottesville City Council meeting, MP3 the audio, and turn that into a podcast. I bet Charlottesville Podcasting would even host the audio.