After months of preparation, the town is ready to live stream council meetings starting Aug. 13.

Residents will be able to stream the meetings from a link found at www.cochrane.ca/169/Council-Meetings and there's the added option of viewing the digital recordings on the town's YouTube channel at any point in time.

"Timestamps will appear on the agenda the day following the meeting so that residents can go to the specific spot in the video to hear about the item they are interested in if they don’t want to watch the full meeting," explains Jaylene Knight, town manager of Legislative Services.

Mayor Jeff Genung says other than people being conscious of speaking into the microphones so it can be clearly recorded, he doesn't believe there will be much difference in how the meetings are conducted.

"One of the things I want to keep true to is it's still a council meeting. It's not about making a good production," says Genung. "This is actually recording what is, so I don't foresee things changing.

"We talked about the potential of people acting for the camera rather than being natural, but I can't control that. I'm just going to continue to be who I am."

That includes making the odd wryly joke he slides in during meetings.

"I've done that my entire life. I don't see how I could get away with not doing that."

It's the archival feature that Mayor Jeff Genung believes holds the greatest value from recording the meetings.

'I don't see 2,000 people viewing it at home, in fact, I think it will be quite the opposite. But over time, someone will go back and look at it or the staff will go back and look at it or people who want to do business in town can go back and find things. I think it's a good move in the end."

"It's quite impressive, actually. You can go on at any time to watch it live or even for a research project. If you want to know how council voted on something or what the delegation was that day, you can go back to that agenda, click on that item and then that part of the video comes up, you don't have to watch the whole thing."

August 13 is a good starting point. Transit and the Greystone neighbourhood plan are two of the major items anticipated to be on that agenda.

The town is utilizing a three-camera system one pre-sets include all members of council, individually as well as a wide shot of the council bench, the senior leadership team for when they are called on to provide information, the presenters at the podium and will have the ability to show the presentation that is being given on the chamber's two screens. They conducted some tests during previous council meetings to finetune the system.

Initially, the focus is to stream council meetings, but in the future, the town may live stream planning commission meetings and subdivision and development appeal board hearings.