Columbia Borough nixes livestreaming in favor of YouTube

Photo: Christian Wiediger

Columbia Borough Council President Heather Zink said the borough will no longer livestream its meetings, citing technical difficulties, especially with Comcast and Facebook. Instead, meetings will be recorded and then posted the day after on the borough's YouTube channel, which can be found HERE. Zink made the announcement at the June 27 borough council meeting.

Poor sound quality, freezes, signal dropouts, etc. have long plagued borough council livestreams. In fact, sound quality was so bad for the June 13, 2023 meeting that it rendered the second half of the meeting unintelligible, due to frequent and sustained dropouts. The meeting was significant because six school board members attended to argue for the continuation of the Community Safety Officer agreement. Fortunately for the public, Columbia Spy recorded it and posted the audio HERE.

Other borough meetings (not borough council) have largely been spared difficulties but not totally. Some were unable to be streamed at all, according to Borough Manager Mark Stivers. Mayor Leo Lutz added that the last Planning Commission meeting "didn't work," but the posting shows that the meeting had been successfully livestreamed. Columbia Spy has found that such meetings, when livestreamed, are virtually free of problems. Stivers said the borough’s current system will be upgraded and will include a new camera better suited for its needs.

If the borough gets 1,000 YouTube subscribers, it will be able to livestream via its channel, according to Zink. She urged residents to subscribe to the channel in hopes of reaching 1,000 subscriptions, and to receive notifications of new postings. As of this post, the channel has only 10 subscribers. Several borough council meetings have already been posted on the channel.

A year or so ago, Zink threatened to pull the plug on livestreaming altogether due to online comments officials found unfavorable. The borough began livestreaming meetings several years ago after a suggestion by Sharon Lintner at the July 9, 2018 borough council meeting.