As some of you might have already deduced from reading this week's Talespin, we are going to attempt to film the next City Council meeting in its entirety.

The purpose of filming the meeting will be so that members of the public who don't feel like trekking down to City Hall when it's 2 degrees out, or are physically unable to do so, will be able to see what actually goes on when their legislative branch convenes and votes on legislation impacting the city and its residents.

From what we've long been told, it is the City Council's responsibility to tape the meetings so that they can later be broadcast on Time Warner cable for public viewing. However, the last four meetings have not been recorded. Council members have said that their camera is "broken" and that they have been looking through their budget to find the money to purchase a new one. Some City Hall employees have said that the camera works fine and that the council just doesn't know how to use it.

However, the fact remains that the meetings have not been taped.

Now we say we're going to try to film the whole meeting because while we do have a fully-functional camera at The Record, purchased by our parent company for the purpose of producing Web videos, a City Council meeting is not the easiest thing to film.

Anyone who has ever been in the City Council chambers at City Hall knows that the acoustics of the room are far from adequate. That being said, there are some meetings where all the microphones work great and you can actually hear what everyone, including public speakers, are saying - along with other meetings where all you hear can hear is gibberish.

We've also heard that the direct audio hookup for the PA system, which broadcast TV cameras would normally hook up to for sound, doesn't work.

So we will give it a shot to try and ensure the public has a chance to see their legislative branch hard at work, but be forewarned that, given the conditions of equipment in the chamber, there might be some complications.