The Town of Rockport is providing ongoing access to municipal board and committee meetings as they happen via livestreaming video. Library, budget, planning board and select board meetings are now being aired online at the town’s Livestream.com/Rockportmaine site, and citizens can watch the proceedings either as they unfold, or later, as they are also archived at the same location. 

In 2015, the Meeting Room of Rockport Opera House received a major technology upgrade that harnessed the speed of fiber optic broadband, allowing Board and Committee meetings to be streamed live over the internet using Livestream.com/Rockportmaine. The addition of high-definition video cameras last winter delivered a higher quality video package. With this new service, anyone with an internet connection can tune-in to important meetings as they happen with clear visual detail without setting foot in the building or leaving the comfort of their home or office.

This improvement in convenience meant community members no longer had to check out a DVD from the town office or Library to review archived meeting videos as they had to in years past. Through Livestream.com, all town meetings filmed at Rockport Opera House are archived online for easy access.

“You can watch it live or when it is convenient for you to watch. You can see the agenda and other documents pertinent to the discussion, and you can do that from the comfort of your own home,” said Town Manager Rick Bates, in a news release. “You can even yell at your screen, and no one will ever call you out of order.”

A Livestream account is not required to watch live video from these meetings or view archived videos. But by signing up with a free Livestream.com account, viewers can subscribe to Rockport’s Livestream page. Subscribers automatically receive announcements of all upcoming streamed meetings as well as updates when those meetings go live, improving community awareness and policy communication.

Audiences can find agendas, meeting documents and links to streaming video in the town calendar on http://town.rockport.me.us. The information covered in Board and Committee meetings are given in their date on this calendar for quick and easy download. 

In an effort by town officials to inform the public, this service is one of many ways Rockport hopes to get the community involved. Our audience can use Livestream.com/Rockportmaine to garner details critical to decision making from meetings such as Ad Hoc Library Planning Committee, Select Board, Planning Board, Budget Planning Committee, and more.

“I like having the ability to go back and watch archived meetings because I don’t have cable. So it gives me the opportunity to see what’s been going on,” said Kimberlee Graffam, Rockport resident and co-owner of Penobscot Bay Ice Co., Inc.

 Recently the Camden-Rockport Middle School Building Planning Committee used Livestream to deliver information regarding options the Committee is considering for a new middle school building. 

How to do it:

Finding out which town meetings are webcast via Livestream.com is easy to do.

·         Visit Rockport’s town website at http://town.rockport.me.us to view the town calendar. Upcoming meetings are listed on their corresponding calendar dates.

·         Click or tap on the calendar date to view the Committee or Board that is meeting, download a meeting agenda and packet of materials covered, plus a link to the Livestream.com video page, if that meeting will be filmed.

·         Click or tap the Livestream link in the calendar to go to the corresponding meeting-video page. Once the meeting has started, live video will be available through that link.

·         Once meetings are over, videos become archived and are playable by the same link.

To receive announcements of upcoming streamed meetings, sign up for a free account with Livestream.com, and subscribe today to Livestream.com/Rockportmaine. 

As of November 14, the online archives include 97 videos dating back to May 2015 and 41 subscribers. Among many topics the archives include are Board and Committee meetings and public forums covering fiber to the town, trash disposal post-2018, and architects’ proposals on a new library design. 

For information on upcoming Rockport Board and Committee meetings, visit town.rockport.me.us.
For a list of archived video and to see what Livestream meetings are coming up, visit Livestream.com/Rockportmaine.