Council Reconsiders Proposal To Videotape Meetings

Lake Forest residents may get the chance to watch City Council meetings online after all.

Councilman Peter Herzog again brought up videotaping the meetings—a topic —Tuesday evening.

If the council is willing to for meeting attendees, it should fork over a few hundred so its constituents can watch video of council meetings online, Herzog said.

Herzog in January. His colleagues seemed amenable to discussing the issues, but when it was raised , three voted against doing so.

At the time, Councilwoman Marcia Rudolph led the opposition, heatedly telling Herzog that she would not support the plan.

An early advocate of broadcasting the meetings, Rudolph said that she had been shot down by Herzog and "his minions" when she proposed taping the meetings years ago.

Herzog has said that he was opposed then because the proposal was for permanant video technology, which he thought unsuitable for a rental building. 

At the meeting this February, Mayor Kathryn McCullough also said she was uninterested in videotaping meetings; Mayor Pro Tem Scott Voigts said it would be too expensive.

The trio's stance against the proposal killed it.

But Tuesday evening Rudolph said that she had changed her mind and would now support Herzog's request to gather information on the cost of the equipment needed to record meetings on video.

She did not say why she had changed her mind, only that she is no longer "totally in disagreement" with the proposal.

Rudolph's support gave Herzog the majority needed to bring the item back for discussion at the council's next meeting on April 17.