By TERRY PUGH
Video recordings of Warman City Council meetings are slated to be available on the City of Warman’s YouTube channel starting in mid-April.
Warman City Council passed a motion at a meeting on Monday, March 23 to approve in-house video recording and online uploading of all regular council and committee of the whole meetings. The first meeting to be recorded will be the April 6, 2026 regular council meeting.
The decision to stream video recordings of council meetings came after council was approached by Access Communications earlier this winter with a proposal to partner on a project to broadcast the meetings.
Access Communications officials made an initial presentation outlining the proposal and explaining the company’s community involvement at the January 12, 2026 council meeting. A follow-up meeting between company officials and city administration took place on February 4, and a report from that meeting was presented to city council at a committee of the whole meeting on February 9.
The company had proposed filming council meetings for broadcast on the Access Communications channel at no cost to the city.
However, one of the conditions proposed by Access Communications was that the city refrain from uploading recordings of council meetings to its own YouTube channel until the meeting had been broadcast three times on the Access Communications channel. The administration report noted that broadcasting the meeting three times on the Access community channel could take “a few weeks” following the council meeting date.
During council discussion on the Access Communications proposal, a second option – that of recording and uploading meetings in house using existing equipment at City Hall – was proposed. One of the points raised was that in-house recording and uploading would allow the video to be viewed by a wider audience as soon as possible following the council meeting.
A recommendation from administration favouring in-house recording was presented to the March 23 council meeting, and councillors voted to proceed with that option. Council also voted to have a sign posted in council chambers noting that the meeting was being recorded. It was noted that in-camera discussions by council that involve confidential personnel, financial and other applicable matters will not be recorded.
The in-house recording equipment was tested during the March 23 council meeting, and according to city administration, it worked well. The next regular council meeting on April 6 will be recorded and uploaded to the city’s YouTube channel two or three days after the meeting. A link on the City of Warman website (www.warman.ca) will direct viewers to the YouTube site and the video recording of the meeting.
While this is the first time in-person meetings in City Council chambers will be recorded and uploaded to the City of Warman YouTube channel, it’s not the first time council meetings have been uploaded. During the Covid 19 pandemic between March 2019 and March 2020, city council meetings were held remotely, with recordings of those meetings posted to the city YouTube site.
Over the past several years, numerous videos created by city communications staff documenting events and issues have been uploaded to the YouTube channel. They can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIhEw-PeA1Bm_RIFsScSY_A/videos