It’s official. On August 17th 2009 Spruce Grove City Council voted unanimously in all three readings to prohibit the public from recording the Open council meetings. On September 14th at the open council meeting I asked council if the public could record the meetings. They deferred my question and promised that the City Administration would respond.

Here is the email I received from Mr. Lagore, City Manager.

“Mr. Weed, firstly I would like to apologize for the time that it has taken me to respond to your inquiry about the possibility of audio recording of Council meetings.

For some time now city administration has been reviewing the problems with the audio recording of Council meetings. Currently the media do not record the Council meetings as they are not able to record the proceedings of the meeting in a an audible manner due to the acoustic problems within Council Chambers. In fact while city administration does record the proceedings there is quite often problems with the recording due to the acoustic problems which makes the recording inaudible. We have included funding in the 2010 budget for upgrades to Council Chambers that will allow the city to record the proceedings of Council meetings and make this recording available due to the public through our website. I believe this practice would accomplish what your are attempting to do.

In the meantime Council meetings will be open to the public with the agenda package being available however we will not allow any audio recording of the Council meeting.

Thank you”

This still leaves us with a lot of questions to be answered. More to come.