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Goshen resident urges Elkhart County to restore livestreaming after meetings move out of commissioners' room
Summary
A Goshen resident urged the Elkhart County Board of Commissioners to adopt a local ordinance requiring recording and posting of county meetings after a state law led some meetings to move to a building she said lacks adequate livestreaming equipment.
A Goshen resident told the Elkhart County Board of Commissioners on July 14 that recent changes to where some county meetings are held have reduced transparency and urged the county to require recording and posting of meetings.
"In April of 20 23, legislators passed a law requiring that certain public meetings be live streamed and posted," the speaker said, adding the law took effect July 1. The speaker said the county had complied by posting live streams to YouTube but that some meetings that are not legally required to be streamed have moved to the Planning Building, which the speaker said "is not currently equipped" and has "microphone problems" and "temperature control problems." The speaker asked the commissioners to consider an ordinance to restore recording and posting for meetings that had been held in the commissioners' room.
The speaker, identified in the meeting record with inconsistent spellings as "Cindy Hajcak" and "Cindy Hyczyk," said the change has led to canceled meetings and moved meetings that are important to community members who routinely attend. She argued the equipment in the commissioners' meeting room already supports streaming and that the county could retain recordings for the required period — she said recordings need only be kept for 90 days — at a modest incremental cost. She noted county construction and capital spending in the recent past as context for the expense argument: "We spent about $100 million on a courthouse. We spent about $6.8 million on a footbridge; about $2.7 million of that came directly from Elkhart County residents," she said, urging the county to "set an example for the rest of the state to follow." She closed by asking the commissioners to consider an ordinance to return more county meetings to being recorded and posted on YouTube.
The meeting record does not show a direct response from the commissioners to the request during that session. The speaker's name appears with two different spellings in the transcript; the record notes her city as Goshen.
