Who voted for what? In what meeting was this topic discussed?
These questions and more will be answered in a new service Prince William County will implement designed to shed more light on the actions of members of the Board of County Supervisors.
Today, the the board voted unanimously to spend $186,000 on Votecast, a service that will track motions and votes of the governing body, and then put that information online in real time.
“This board is taking a tremendous step forward in transparency,” said Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland, who, for years, has pushed the creation of a searchable voting database.
“Right now, you have to know what meeting in which the vote occurred, know what date it was held, and then you have to go back and search through PDFs to find information,” Candland added.
The new system should also help county employees who are tasked with responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, making information more readily available.
“I hope it draws more citizens to board meetings so they know what we are doing, and it allows them to play a larger role in what is happening,” said Neabsco District Supervisor Victor Angry.
After the initial investment of $186,000, the system will cost $135,000 per year to maintain. The new system will also include a closed captioning system for the hearing impaired watching the board meetings on TV.
The Votecast system is provided by Granicus, the firm the county contracts with to provide an online video stream of its board meetings one the county website.
“It is wonderful,” added Chair Ann Wheeler.
It’ll take 30 days to implement the closed captioning features on the video, while it’ll take about a year to implement the voting database.
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