Proper Lighting, Microphones & a "Pan" Camera are needed in Macon City Hall
When citizens can't clearly hear or see their elected officials in an online meeting, public access becomes a technology problem ...
I was sitting about 12 feet from the Macon City Council ( in the front row of the chamber) and I couldn't hear everything being said by the Mayor or the City Council. If I can't consistently hear the City Council meeting from the front row of the chamber then how is someone watching on their phone supposed to follow the meeting?
After attending the last three council meetings in person I realize the problem joining a City Council meeting online wasn't simply the city's livestream, the Internet connection, or something wrong with my computers. That was when I started looking at the problem through a different lens. What appears on a cellphone or computer screen is the end product of the "virtual" online meeting process. The problem actually begins inside the council chamber, with how the chamber itself is setup. There needs to be additional audio & video equipment added as well as decent lighting and a podium for guest speakers to address the council & the public from.
The City's online meeting system is supposed to extend public access beyond the people who can physically attend City Hall. Macon has citizens who work during meeting hours, have transportation problems, are elderly or disabled, or simply cannot get to City Hall at 6:30 pm on the second Tuesday of the month. For those residents the online meeting may be their only possible way of observing their local government. If the audio isn't understandable and the video is dark and grainy, the technology may technically be providing access without producing a legible quality broadcast.
Once the meeting is broadcast "Live" it is no longer available. This should not be the case.
The current setup appears to rely solely on a camera/ microphone, mounted near the ceiling at the back of the room, rather than individual microphones positioned at the council table. A microphone located that far away has to pick up voices from across the room along with everything else happening in the chamber. Some folks voices come through better than others, while people who are facing away from the microphone or speak quietly, become difficult if not impossible to understand. Conversations between people on opposite sides of the room can be even more difficult to understand.
That same problem affects the automatic captions. Anyone who has watched one of these meetings online has probably noticed that the captions can sometimes produce words that bear little resemblance to the English language. That's not because the captioning software itself is defective. Automatic transcription is only as good as the audio being fed into it, and when the source audio is poor, the resulting transcript will be unreliable as well.
The video presents an additional problem. The camera position and lighting make it difficult at times for someone watching remotely to determine exactly who is speaking, and the picture is dark and the camera angle isn't ideal. A citizen watching from a cellphone screen has an even harder time identifying the person speaking and following the meeting.
Proper lighting, microphones, and camera placement in city hall matters because Macon's City Council conducts important public business during these meetings. Ordinances are discussed, motions are made, votes are taken, questions are raised and decisions affecting taxpayers, property owners and the community are made. Citizens need to be able to see who is speaking and understand what is being said if they are going to meaningfully follow the City Council meetings via the online portal.
This is a technology and public-access issue, and there are relatively simple ways to fix it. Individual microphones at the council table, or small clip-on wireless microphones attached to each council member's shirt collar, would give the audio system a much cleaner signal. A modest mixer or small public-address system could mix those microphones and provide a clean feed to the online meeting platform, while better camera placement and improved lighting would make the video much more useful to people watching the live meeting on their phone or computer.
I have spent decades working with electronics and recording equipment, and I know that good results don't necessarily require expensive equipment. Sometimes the difference between a poor recording and a good recording is simply putting the microphone in the right place.
At this point in time in Macon, when someone is addressing the City Council they remain seated with their back to the camera and most of the time completely out of frame. I recorded a council meeting via the online portal a few months ago and I could hear a man's voice pitching the proposed $80 million water treatment project while he remained seated totally out of the camera's view. The person actually delivered a decent pitch but there is no video record of it. This is not his fault. Apparently, there is no set protocall for a person addressing the City Council. Something as important and as critical as a proposed $80 million project to replace Macon's water treatment facilities demands clarity in its presentation. Standing at a podium with a camera clearly recording the audio and video of an $80 million proposal to the citizens of Macon, should be the standard. That recording should be available online for present and future reference.
If I can get a quality video recording through the online portal then I have no need or desire to attend the City Council meeting in person.
I will happily stay in my office and "Live Stream" the meeting and capture the video. I will then upload the raw un-edited meeting video to a dedicated YouTube channel & this website. Citizens can then watch a quality video of the City Council meeting whenever they wish.
There is another important reason to fix the system: A clean recording would remain useful long after the "live" City Council meeting has ended. Citizens could go back and review a discussion, reporters could verify exactly what was said, residents who couldn't attend could watch the meeting later, and the community would have a much better permanent record of what happened inside the council chambers.
"The video capture & preservation of today's City Council meeting preserves the history of Macon for future generations" — TP
In 2026, we seem to be in our own little "Dark Ages." Think about future generations of citizens and historians in Macon discovering that back in the 2020's there were 8K video cameras and AI was in its glory, yet there is no basic video documentation of City Council meetings even though there were permanent cameras mounted in City Hall. Future citizens of Macon will certainly wonder why we didn't prioritize decent video recordings ( or any recordings at all ) that could be reviewed, studied, and appreciated for generations to come. If this protocol is not legally required it certainly should be.
The technology to accomplish this is inexpensive, readily available, and well within the capabilities of a small municipal government. I have posted previous articles addressing this situation and have proposed different options for City Council meetings to be recorded and promptly uploaded to the City of Macon's website. There is a field in the city's database for "City Council Meeting Videos" that currently has no entries. That raises another question. "Is the camera in chambers simply broadcasting the City Council meeting or is it recording what it is broadcasting?" I don't know but I will find out.
There are AI-based plans for around $20 a month that can record the City Council meeting, identify the folks speaking, and generate "unofficial minutes" that can be proof-read and posted online almost instantly. Waiting months to view City Council minutes is ridiculous. Some council meeting minutes have taken three to six months to be published, while some council minutes have never been published. When "semi-cryptic," sanitized City Council minutes are quietly published months after a meeting, almost nobody bothers to read them. Why would they?
Macon citizens pay taxes that support the operation of their city government. The technology to document Macon City Council meetings and preserve those records is readily available, and it does not have to be expensive. The question is whether the City is willing to use the tools it already has, along with a few inexpensive additions, to create a reliable record of what happens inside the council chamber.
Regards Maconites,
R. Dominique - Editor
