Anyone wanting to watch live coverage of Yakima City Council meetings will have another option as of August 1st.
Beginning with the Council’s first business meeting in August, all of the Council meetings held in the Council Chambers at City Hall will be able to be seen in real time through a live streaming feature on the City of Yakima website.
“Council members suggested live streaming meetings as another way the City could make it easier for people in the Yakima community to be aware of and be involved in their local government,” said Communications & Public Affairs Director Randy Beehler. “Until now, to see a meeting live someone had to either be at City Hall while the meeting was going on or tune in to Y-PAC (Charter Cable channel 194). Now that we’ve added a live streaming option, anyone can watch Y-PAC coverage of meetings as they happen on their mobile device, laptop, Surface, home computer, etc.,” said Beehler.
Not only City Council meetings will be streamed live. All City-related meetings that take place in the Council Chambers will be able to be viewed via the live streaming option on the City’s website. That includes meetings of the Yakima Planning Commission, the Yakima Hearing Examiner, the Historic Preservation Commission, the Parks Commission, the Community Review Board, and others.
After going to the City website (yakimawa.gov) and clicking on the “City Council” drop down menu at the top of the screen, website visitors will see a “Stream Meetings Live” option about three-quarters of the way down the menu. By simply clicking on the “Stream Meetings Live” option, visitors will be connected to a cloud-based live streaming page. If a meeting is being streamed, it will be visible on the screen. When meetings aren’t being streamed, a message will appear on the screen that says, “This channel is off-air.”
“It’s exciting that community members now have another way to keep in touch with City government,” said Beehler. “We have long referred to Y-PAC coverage of City meetings as a ‘window into government.’ With the live streaming option now available, that window has been pushed open even wider,” said Beehler.