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The Peralta Community College District, which has gotten generally poor marks for the quality of its website, took a leap forward last week with board approval of a $55,000 three-year contract with Granicus, Inc. of San Francisco to provide web-based streaming videos of district board meetings. The contract provides for a setup fee and an $11,640 yearly charge for which Granicus will provide storage of Peralta’s video archives. 

Granicus currently provides a similar service to the Berkeley City Council (at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agendaindex.htm#current) and to other governmental bodies in the Bay Area. Public Relations and Communications Executive Director Jeff Heyman says that Peralta is the first community college in California to provide such streaming video board meeting service. 

Under the service, which Heyman said would be online within a few weeks, the public will be able to view Peralta board meetings live on their home computers through Peralta’s website, as well as access videos of past board meeting. Currently, Peralta board meetings are only available for viewing on Peralta’s cable television network. 

For PC users, the Granicus service allows viewers to access a menu in which they can jump to specific agenda items, as well as access to the backup public documents associated with that agenda item. Granicus’ service is more limited for Mac users, however, providing only the video itself and not the agenda menu or access to backup documents.