The Newton County Board of Commissioners’ meetings will now be recorded on video and placed on The Covington News’ website, CovNews.com, where they can be viewed in their entirety for free by the public.

The two regularly scheduled monthly meetings of the board will be recorded by The News and posted at CovNews.com/section/188, a special webpage set up to host the recorded meetings. The page can also be accessed by going to the CovNews.com main page, scrolling over the “Local” tab in the top, left corner and then clicking on “BOC Media” in the drop-down menu that will appear.

Tuesday’s meeting will be the first regularly scheduled meeting to be recorded. The video recordings will be uploaded by 4 p.m. Wednesday.

The cost of the recording will be covered by The News and project sponsors Newton Federal Bank and the Covington-Newton County Chamber of Commerce.

Historically, the board’s meetings have been recorded on audio, but those recordings were never publicly posted.
County Chairman Keith Ellis said he hopes to have a line item in next fiscal year’s budget for video recording, so that the county can pay a company for the work.

“We do want to help defray the cost of recording. You have the cost of a camera, someone to do the recording, setup and all the things necessary,” Ellis said. “The other thing is that we want to try to get the video on our website and work it out with the city of Covington to make sure its broadcasted on cable.”

Ellis said he wants the meetings to be recorded and be made publicly available to fulfill a campaign promise he made. He mentioned the county was looking for a partner in the project at a Rotary Club of Covington meeting, and The News stepped up to fill the void.

“It’s a public service. We’re just doing what a community newspaper should do,” said The News’ general manager T. Pat Cavanaugh.