City Council meetings now available online

From a City of Peoria press release:

Peoria – (September 14, 2010) – Within one week after each meeting of the Peoria City Council, citizens can go on-line to view streaming video of the meetings.

The video can be accessed by going to www.peoriacitycouncilmeetings.com and selecting a meeting from the playlist, then click play. Specific parts of the meeting can be viewed by highlighting the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. The toolbar appears when the mouse hovers over the screen. The site does require a flash enabled web browser to view the meetings.

This new feature is provided by Focal Point Video, the company awarded the contract to record the Council meetings. The Council meetings were previously recorded by Comcast.

Council meetings are televised live on Comcast cable channel 22, and are rebroadcast Wednesdays at Noon. Dvd’s are also available for purchase through the City Manager’s Office. The Peoria City Council meets on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at 6:15 p.m.

Probably no connection

On 11/17/2009, Gary Matthews of E. M. Properties contributed $10,000 to “Taxpayers for Quinn.” Previously, Matthews had given no more than $500 in a single contribution to any political candidate, most of them Republicans, according to campaign disclosures currently available online.

In a completely unrelated matter, Governor Quinn signed Senate Bill 2534 on June 19, 2010, giving Gary Matthews’ Wonderful Development a 25% income tax credit for qualified renovation costs with a cap of $10 million. The legislation is designed to be a “pilot” program for possible statewide historic tax credits of a similar nature, meaning that, for the time being, Mr. Matthews is the only developer in Illinois who benefits from this tax break.