Algoma city department heads recently started participating in a show called Department Head Reports. The goal of the program is to make the decisions of committees more understandable to the public.
Each department head summarizes what is happening on the committee level by doing a brief review of the minutes and giving additional information that doesn’t necessarily need to be discussed during a committee meeting, but is very helpful to residents.
For example, on the topic of brush pickup, the minutes might simply record when it begins. But the public might be interested to know how to place their brush to assist the public works crew in collection efforts. This level of detail is not discussed in detail at the committee meetings but is talked about in Department Head Reports.
Police Chief Randy Remiker delivers his committee report to the camera on Algoma’s Department Head Reports.
Before the new show, committee minutes were read during the Council meeting and the technical style of the minutes made it difficult to capture the interest of viewers. The new program is played immediately before the Council meetings and aired on government cable access channel Charter Spectrum 982. The videos are also uploaded to the Algoma Community Access Television YouTube channel where all government meetings provided to our channel are available.
So far the project seems to be successful! But the new show does require a bit of editing for each video to be ready to be aired. This has added a small amount to the budget of the cable department but the city believes the information being shared is well worth it. The City of Algoma is always trying its best to get information out to its residents using all the tools at its disposal.
