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The cost of recording a Town Hall plummets from previous estimation by Saanich’s Corporate Officer. Council rejects recording options anyway.

By Sasha Izard
April 14, 2025


On March 10, 2025 Saanich Council deliberated over Councillor Chambers’ Motion:

“That Council direct that Saanich Town Halls be video recorded and the recordings be made publicly available on the District’s website.”

During the course of the deliberations, Saanich’s Corporate officer noted that staff had carried out preliminary research and found that the cost for holding a potential town hall to be $6000-$8000 per meeting, something that I wrote an article about.

As it was put in the Minutes of that March 10, 2025 Council Meeting:

The deliberation over Chambers’ motion, ended with a different Motion being put forward and passed by Mayor Murdock and Councillor Plant:

Microsoft Word – 2025-03-10-council-minutes.docx

This subsequent motion, which was passed unanimously, effectively nullified Cllr. Chambers’ Motion to have Council meetings recorded, without it appearing that way at first glance from reading the Minutes.

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After the meeting, I decided to investigate what the preliminary research made by Saanich staff consisted of that led to the $6000-$8000 estimate for recording a Town Hall.

5 days later, on March 15, I sent the following Freedom of Information (FOI) request to Saanich:

Hello,

I am submitting an FOI request to see the records of the staff research of the cost of recording a town hall meeting.  That staff made research of the costs involved was mentioned by the Corporate Officer during the March 10, 2025 Saanich Council Meeting item: H1.

I would like to see the records of the staff research that determined the cost of recording a town hall meeting.  The Corporate Officer mentioned that staff research determined the costs to record a town hall meeting to be between $6000-$8000.

This section of the town hall can be viewed on the webcast at the 2:37:00 time point in the webcast: Council Meeting

Thank you,
Sasha Izard

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I also made an FOI (File: 2025-56) for “the cost of the October 22, 2024 Saanich Town Hall at Cedar Hill Golf Club.”

On April 7, I was provided by Saanich FOI, the following spreadsheet of the costs.

PAW stands for Pacific Audio Works. Saanich had paid Pacific Audio Works $414.83, and in addition it turned out the Audio/Video (AV) costs were low due to the availability of an in-house A/V system at the facility. So why again, had their supposed preliminary research indicated a $6000-$8000 cost of recording a Town Hall?

Presumably, it makes sense that a recording took place, that would have been used to enable the creation of the scant Minutes of the Town Hall, which still notably lacked recording a single response from the elected officials to questions that evening.

The timing of this information arriving on April 7 is interesting, because they would deliberate on the costs of recording the following day on April 8, 2025.

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This was the FOI response (March 31, 2025) from Saanich as to the research that led to the estimates of recording a Town Hall meeting to be in the range of $6000-$8000:

As you can see the total cost after tax to Central Saanich for this invoice was $8,110.28

The S.21 redactions (censoring) of the document is under the category:

Section 21 – Disclosure harmful to business interests of a third party – Province of British Columbia

Put my skeptic’s gloves on that section being applied to censor those rates and amounts.

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After receiving the FOI response, I contacted Central Saanich staff to find out what this approximately $8000+ cost was actually for.

It was based on a public hearing held over 2 days at a major venue on the Central Saanich Fairground.  A resident from Central Saanich, estimated that included about 9 hours of time cumulatively.

Elaborating on what the cost consisted of, Central Saanich staff informed me:

“The supports included multiple operated cameras (2), live webcast feed, multiple TVs and inputs (PowerPoint, camera, Zoom), and all the microphones and sound (speakers) – plus two on-site operators/support staff.

Essentially, all of the technology in the room was supported by Pacific Audio Works.”

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In comparison, to a 2-day public hearing in a major venue, with supports to the hilt, including a live webcast feed; all for an event that as one resident estimated took place over a 9 hour period, Saanich’s Oct 22, 2024 mild town hall meeting in comparison, took place in a small venue, with an A/V system already in-place and took probably no more than 2 and a half hours.

It doesn’t take much calculating to realize the cost of a recorded Saanich Town Hall would be a fraction of the 2-day fully provided for Public Hearing.

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The Freedom of Information response revealed that Saanich staff’s using that invoice as a basis for an estimation of $6000-$8000 for recording a town hall was simply misleading. The comparison was apples and oranges.

Not surprisingly after that FOI response being sent out, Saanich staff’s cost estimates for recording a Town Hall came plummeting downward toward the realms of actual reality.

The following are the cost estimates in the staff report (see appendix at end of article) for the April 8, 2025 Saanich Special Committee of the Whole meeting:

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Let’s look at the cost of an audio recording from option 1:

“if a Town Hall is held at the Cedar Hill Golf Course Clubhouse, the cost would be $415 due to the availability of an in-house A/V system.”

Wow, that is certainly less than the $6000-$8000 dollars estimate from the Corporate Officer’s March 10 cost estimate.

And look, it’s the same price as what was paid for A/V in the first Town Hall! In other words, there is no reason for there not to have been an audio recording from the First Town Hall.

Also if there is an in-house A/V system, why are we only talking about an audio cost for it? A/V means audio and video, so there is also an in-house video system at the Cedar Hill Golf Course Clubhouse that can be used. Why is that aspect not mentioned in the report?

Let’s look now at the cost of an audio/video recording in option 2. Note: Option 2 says “Video Recording” in the title, but it is actually for both audio and video recording combined, as revealed in the description below it.

This has an estimated cost of $4,850 per Town Hall, but notably omits that an Audio/Video system is already setup in-house at the Cedar Hill Golf Course Clubhouse if the event is held there, which presumably would drastically reduce the costs for A/V similarly to how it drastically reduced the costs for audio in option 1. Why is that not mentioned as a possibility in option 2?

Even option 3, although they don’t call it that by name, instead: Future Planning – Video Recording with Remote Participation, with all the fixins added, are still below the original $6000-$8000 range. That said, one should ask why it would even be this high, given that a similar array of features for a 2 day town hall covering an estimated approximate 9 hours at a major event site on the Central Saanich Fairgrounds cost $8000+, and as in the case of option 2, doesn’t seem to take into account the possibility of incorporating the already available inhouse A/V system at the Cedar Hill Golf Course Clubhouse mentioned in Option 1.

So there we have it, the original cost estimation range for recording a Town Hall plummeted from $6000-$8000 to in-comparison $415-$4850, and if to add the possibility of adding remote participation (which isn’t actually required for recording a Town Hall by any stretch of the imagination) – to $5700.

Frankly, the $415 sounds perfectly reasonable, but throw in a bigger venue and add all the possible fixins (this isn’t Woodstock) and you still get to a number that amounts to mere pennies per Saanich resident (only we don’t have pennies anymore).

I think Councillor Harper actually put it best at the April 8, 2025 Special Committee of the Whole (1:27:32):

“It’s not about money. I mean I understand what the money costs are, but it’s not the money that’s dissuading me one way or the other.”

Instead the narrative changed, it wasn’t about the costs anymore (now that it had been exposed including by myself earlier that meeting that they were effectively irrelevant), but now it was all about creating a “safe space” (to quote Harper) for the public by not recording the Town Hall, a non-sequitur of course.

The deliberations that followed frankly came out to be a giant whine-fest. Canadian apologies for being so frank, but let’s face it, how does recording a public event make it less safe? Nothing the council said that in this regard that evening seemed at all convincing.

Luckily for the Council most of the public weren’t actually present to observe this, and why was that?

Originally there had been a Committee of the Whole scheduled on the calendar for the day earlier on Monday April 7. It never happened (without Open Forums anymore for unrecorded Town Halls, I guess who needs them?).

0 – 2025-council-calendar.pdf

The item on recording Town Halls took place at the April 8 Special Committee of the Whole meeting – Financial Plan. I’m still not sure what was so special at that meeting. The meeting also started at 6:00PM, when Council Meetings are usually held at 7PM, thus making it more difficult for working people like myself , and also having a youngster to consider; to attend, but attend I did, as I considered it my civic duty to do so with the knowledge of the real considerations behind the costs having been revealed by FOI and from prior communications with Central Saanich staff on the subject.

Without Council choosing to adopt any of the options for recording Town Halls that evening, the one-off charges they would incur did not enter into the Financial Plan. The option of adding it as a one-off charge may even have been prevented by placing the item as B.7, ahead of B.6., which dealt with one-off charges. These items may even have had their order switched, if my memory and more than one other person’s of the agenda that week serves us correctly.

When all is said and done, it seems the Council through the subsequent motion made on March 10, for a referral to staff on costs, and choosing none of the options presented by staff on April 8; they had maneuvered out of recording town halls, without technically having had to vote against Cllr. Chamber’s March 10 motion to record them. As a result, this did not have the dubious appearance of council overtly voting against it on the new Vote Dashboard, yet the effective result of the decision-making (or indecision-making if you will) would not be recorded, at least in the near term, with a Town Hall fast approaching and likely with no recording at all of such events to happen in 2025 if no further decision is made. Given council’s repeated and elaborate evasions of making a direct decision on this issue, it is unlikely they will.

As Cllr. Chambers put it that evening during the deliberations. “I’ve been trumped.”

With a Town Hall scheduled for May and only 2 Council Meetings left for April on the calendar, it is pretty safe to say that Saanich Council will have their unrecorded and almost completely off the record “safe space” for themselves, where they don’t have to worry about issues regarding transparency and accountability between themselves and the public being recorded.

With over 2 weeks off for the elected officials after the meeting, in the words of The Go Gos: Vacation, had to get away.


Conclusion: The first Saanich Town Hall of 2025 that was supposed to take place in February was cancelled. A Saanich Town Hall is scheduled for May, but is currently not set (at least overtly) to be recorded.

This is what it says in the Minutes from March 10:

“Estimated costs to record Town Halls would be $6,000-$8,000 per meeting.”

Compare this to what is said in the report of April 8:

“For example, if a Town Hall is held at the Cedar Hill Golf Course Clubhouse, the cost would be $415 due to the availability of an in-house A/V system”

With staff estimates of recording costs varying from unreliable and over the top expensive (March 10) to far more pragmatic and amazingly in comparison inexpensive (April 8); the Council narrative switched from the question being an issue of costs to an alleged issue of safety.

That recordings of a public space make the space less safe is not a logical position, didn’t matter to the elected officials. With the costing argument blown out of the water, Council desperately grasping for straws at that point, used any excuse it conjure up not to record Town Halls and could only find one: the good old fashioned fear card.

Open Forum was eliminated, not for adding additional meaningful public engagement as was claimed at the time by staff and elected officials alike, but it was done so instead to prevent such engagement from taking place, by not recording open public engagement between elected officials and their constituents, as is a necessity for actual democracy, instead of oligarchy.

Welcome to the quaint (or medieval) District of Saanich at the first quarter of the 21st Century.


References:

Microsoft Word – 2025-03-10-council-minutes.docx

Schedule, Agendas & Minutes | District of Saanich

According to Saanich’s Corporate Officer, Saanich staff researched and found the cost for holding a potential recorded town hall to be $6000-$8000 per meeting. – CRD Watch Homepage


Appendix 1: Saanich Staff Report “Recording of Town Halls” for the April 8, 2025 Saanich Special Committee of the Whole

Appendix 2: The presentation that I had prepared to deliver to Saanich Council at the April 8, 2025 Special Committee of the Whole.

Sasha Izard Saanich

Item B7: Recording of Town Halls

I think the figures presented in the report for combined audio/visual recording are highball figures.

On March 10, 2025 Saanich’s Corporate Officer noted that staff research indicated the cost of a potential recorded town hall to be $6000-$8000 per meeting.

I subsequently made a Freedom of Information request for that research.

I received through the FOI an invoice from Pacific Audio Works for Central Saanich for $8,110.28 after tax that Saanich used to make its comparison.

This comparison was apples and oranges, as I found after I reached out to Central Saanich staff to find what that cost consisted of.

It was based on a public hearing held over 2 days at a major venue on the Central Saanich Fairground.  A resident from Central Saanich, estimated that included about 9 hours of time.

Elaborating on what the cost consisted of, Central Saanich staff informed me:

“The supports included multiple operated cameras (2), live webcast feed, multiple TVs and inputs (PowerPoint, camera, Zoom), and all the microphones and sound (speakers) – plus two on-site operators/support staff.

Essentially, all of the technology in the room was supported by Pacific Audio Works.”

Assuming Saanich did about a 2 and a half hour or so public hearing like last time, that would be approximately a quarter of 9 hours.  Divide $8000 by 4 and you get $2000.  Divide that into the approximate number of Saanich residents (120,000) and you get approximately 1.67 cents per resident per Town Hall.

If to be generous and allow for all possibilities, we could even estimate for a highball figure more similar to the figures in the staff report tonight. We could well more than double to reach that figure for costs and we’d still be at less than 4 cents per Saanich resident per Town Hall.

That’s a pretty cheap price to pay for a bit of democracy.

I don’t want to hear the excuse that we don’t have actual pennies anymore, to pay for it.

If Saanich really wants to pinch its pennies here, Councillor Plant could record it for free, like he did for the All Candidate’s Meetings previously.
Or, Saanich could simply have it in-house where everything is already setup for this, and the costs are no different than any other Council Meeting, remember that is what these Town Halls are, Special Council Meetings.

So let’s be very clear, all these proposed costs are simply for having what was termed an “informal” atmosphere for a Town Hall.  We know we are going to have a Town Hall.  The question is, will it be informal and costly, or normal and cheap. 

Either way, Saanich has no excuse that will hold up to rational scrutiny not to record what these are, which are Special Council Meetings by legal definition.

Finally, the staff report states: “There will be one Town Hall in early 2026, due to the General Local and School Board elections.”

Then will you have Open Forums again in 2026, or is it because there is an election year, the public shouldn’t be able to have broad input on the local government items that concern them?

Without Open Forums, a single town hall a year, is only a single opportunity for recorded public engagement to council on broad subject matter, whereas previously they had that opportunity 12 times a year, and yet getting rid of Open Forums for Town Halls was absurdly justified under the guise of creating “additional opportunities for meaningful public engagement”.  This would be a subtraction of 12 opportunities for 2026.

Thank you.