By Rod Hansen
Staff Writer

The public may soon be able to purchase DVD copies of public meetings from Goffstown Community Television, but it could cost them as much as $24.95.

“We don’t want to make it so easy for people to come in and buy the DVDs,” said Dick Gagnon, the coordinator of Goffstown Community Television who oversees the recording and archiving of public meetings.

This was one of the suggestions made at a special meeting to determine what should be done with video recordings of public meetings once the DVDs are removed from the library.

Currently, DVD recordings of public meetings are kept at the library for one month and then destroyed.

A special GTV Cable Access subcommittee on DVD storage and availability met Wednesday, May 3, in town hall’s Mildred Stark Room. The subcommittee was convened in response to public questions about the DVDs, said Rosemary Garretson, chairman of the GTV Cable Access Committee.

During the hour-long meeting, members of the GTV Cable Access Committee and one representative each from the library and the board of selectmen agreed the DVDs should be available to the public longer than 30 days.

Currently, board of selectmen’s meetings are broadcast live at 6 p.m. on Mondays on GTV Channel 22. Other meetings, including the planning board, the zoning board of adjustments, the conservation commission, budget committee and deliberative sessions are also broadcast on GTV 22.

School board meetings, as well as non-governmental items including children’s programming and educational shows, are broadcast on Channel 16.

Copies of the meetings are now deposited in the library’s mailbox at town hall to be brought to the library, where they are available to the public for 30 days and then destroyed.

This system dates back to when meetings were recorded on VHS videocassette, a more bulky media format that required more storage space and took longer to reproduce, Gagnon said.

The meetings are now recorded live on DVD, and are also stored as digital files on the GTV computer servers, where they are kept for approximately 30 days and then deleted.

However, Gagnon said he could keep the meetings on the server an indefinite length of time without causing problems in the system.

“Right now, space on the server isn’t an issue,” Gagnon said.

To keep the meetings available to the public, Gagnon suggested the DVDs be returned to GTV after their stay at the library and kept in a carousel storage unit.

Data files of the meetings could also be kept on the server for archival purposes, Gagnon said.

Making copies of the DVDs would not require the time or expense of making videotape copies, as a full meeting can be burned to disc in seven minutes, Gagnon said.

However, he noted GTV should only make DVDs available for purchase rather than lending to the public.

“We really don’t want to get into lending them and keeping track of where they are,” Gagnon said.

The cost of purchasing a meeting DVD should also carry a substantial cost to members of the public, Gagnon said, leading to his suggestion of a $24.95 retail price.

However, Selectman John Caprio balked at that price, saying GTV should be “reasonably compensated” for DVD production but that Gagnon’s asking price may be too high.

Members of the subcommittee mulled the idea of establishing a separate fee structure for residents and nonresidents.

To gauge interest in the recorded meetings, Gagnon asked library assistant Barbara Schuler how often members of the public borrowed the meeting DVDs from the library.

“Right now, there isn’t a lot of demand,” Schuler said. However, she said, the public was interested to view the deliberative session of Town Meeting and a selectmen’s meeting during the controversy over combining the police and fire departments into a single safety department.

When asked to voice the library’s concerns about the DVD program, Schuler said library officials mostly cared about getting recordings of the meetings in a timely manner.

“We just got the deliberative session,” Schuler said, speaking about the deliberative session of Town Meeting, which took place on Feb. 8.

The library’s Web site shows the recording of the deliberative session is still in active circulation.

Schuler said she wanted to establish a system ensuring the DVDs would be put in the library mailbox immediately following the meeting to avoid any lag time in the future.

Garretson said she would speak with Town Administrator Sue Desruisseaux about establishing a procedure for delivering DVDs to the library mailbox in a timely manner.

She said the GTV Cable Access Committee would fold the subcommittee’s suggestions into a list of recommendations later to be presented to the board of selectmen and incorporated into GTV’s policies and procedures.