FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — Fort Fairfield has contracted with Town Hall Streams to provide streaming and playback access to town council meetings.
Residents can watch meetings live at townhallstreams.com/locations/fort-fairfield-me from anywhere with an Internet-connected device. Past meetings will be stored on the Town Hall Streams server for playback anytime.
As a result of this change, residents will no longer be able to watch council sessions on the town’s public access channel. Public announcements and information will continue to be provided on that channel.
“While this change may impact a few folks negatively, it will allow increased access to our meetings for many,” stated Town Manager Jim Risner. “With the old system, only residents with cable could watch the meetings and they could only watch them live, as they happened, at 6 o’clock on the third Wednesday of the month.
“Now, these meetings will stream live over the internet, which is available to many more homes. But the biggest benefit of this move is that the meetings will be recorded and available for playback on demand at a time and place that is convenient for residents,” said Risner.
Recorded meetings will be stored for a minimum of five years. After that, they will be downloaded and kept on file in accordance with Maine law.
Individuals who do not have access to the internet at their homes may view the meetings on the computers at the Fort Fairfield Public Library.
Town Hall Streams is a Maine-based company that was created to provide simple, low-cost and effective solutions for towns to stream and archive meetings. The company serves dozens of municipalities, authorities and school districts throughout the Northeast.
For more information, contact Tim Goff at 472-3802 or tgoff@fortfairfield.org.
