At the city council meeting a month ago, the council decided to stop video taping the meetings.

There were many reasons for this: the equipment was old and someone always had to be behind the camera, worrying about focusing, panning, etc. Also, there was a suspicion that no one ever watched them on cable (I couldn’t even tell you what channel they were on). It seemed like a lot of work for nothing.

So, staff put a poll on the city’s Web site. A total of 21 people voted, with 90 percent saying they never watch the meetings on cable TV. Anyway, the council decided, using the poll as evidence, to discontinue taping the meetings.

I found it a little concerning that the meetings would no longer be documented. The job of remembering what happened or what was said was now totally on the shoulders of the minute-taker, Sam from the radio station and me.

I starting wondering if at some point in the future, it could be my word against a member of the council.

This all seems a little silly­—”my word against theirs”— because if you’ve ever been to a Pine City Council meeting, you’d know that the group is very cooperative and there’s really no controversy. Besides a couple tense discussions, I’ve only ever witnessed a group of considerate people who work through problems together. But I have other reporter friends, so I know that not all councils are this way.

I have a friend who writes for a metro paper, and she is often told by council members that she misquoted them when they were in the middle of arguments with other council members. She simply goes home, watches a rerun of the meeting on cable and matches the person’s televised words with her notes. And even though I personally never watched Pine City’s meetings on TV, it was a comfort to know that the truth was in a vault somewhere if I ever needed it.

I never said anything about my concerns at the meeting, because I’m there just as an observer, to write about the decisions made by the council only. That’s why I was impressed at last week’s meeting when council member Mark Nisley brought the issue back up.

He asked if it was implied when the decision was made to stop televising the meetings that they would also no longer be taped at all. Members of the council said, yes, that was the decision that had been made.

Mark talked for awhile about how the videos can be used to clear up discrepancies, even with the minute-taker, Sam from the radio station and me their to document the meetings. Obviously, the three of us are people who can make mistakes. And if we don’t actually make a mistake, our word can still be contested. Unless there’s a video we can pop in to prove otherwise.

Just because the decision was made to no longer air the meetings on TV, the videos are still necessary for city records. These records are the only real proof of what exactly happened­— I’m not saying that proof will ever be needed, but just in case it ever is.

The council then discussed how to better keep these records. The old system of VCR tapes that cluttered an already packed city office is out of the question. The city administrator said he’d bring back costs for an easier system that could be set up and forgot about during the meetings. Some kind of audio recording device with itty-bitty tapes for easy filing would do the job.

Recording the city’s meetings, in whatever way, serves the people best. Not recording them anymore after already doing so seems like a step backward.