County to begin video recording public meetings
SHERIDAN (WNE) — Sheridan County Board of County Commissioners meetings will soon be video recorded. Those recordings will be made available to the public.
For the last several years, county commission meetings have been audio recorded; the audio is then uploaded to the county’s website within a few days after the meeting.
Sheridan County Administrative Director Cameron Duff said the county had originally budgeted $125,000 to have a third party renovate the entire audio/video system in the commissioner’s meeting room.
“All told, the camera system and supporting hardware will be about $2,995,” Duff wrote in an email to The Sheridan Press.
The county’s information technology (IT) staff installed the camera equipment, which helped reduce costs.
IT Manager Mark Rambur demonstrated a temporary setup of the equipment during the commissioners’ staff meeting last week. He said he planned to mount the camera higher than the dais to help get better coverage of the room.
The camera rotates and focuses on speakers while microphones “can pick up anything,” Duff told the commissioners last week.
Sheridan County Clerk and Recorder Eda Schunk Thompson said she expects to begin video recording the county commissioners’ meetings July 21.
“The video will be available to the public via the county website — a link that will take you to YouTube,” Schunk Thompson wrote in an email to The Sheridan Press.
Schunk Thompson added clerk’s office staff will continue audio recordings of the meetings for at least one month while implementing the video recording system. Those recordings will also be uploaded to the county’s website, as they are currently.
“I have not made a final decision on if we will stop it entirely or in part, at some future point,” Schunk Thompson said.
While the audio recordings the county currently completes can typically be supplied to records requesters via email, Duff said the video files will be much larger, so requests would likely need to be fulfilled with a USB flash drive; the county charges $10 for records supplied on a USB flash drive.
This story was published on July 15, 2025.
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