By Sam Gilkey
For the News-Gazette

Look around at the next City Council meeting for Jay Bemiller and Mark Lindbeck. They are media services technicians for the city of St. Cloud.

Chances are you may catch a glimpse of them if you scan the back of the room and check out the glass windows that overlook the room.

The two men, with a combination of almost 15 years with the city, are important fixtures of not only the council meetings, but those of the planning commission, code enforcement board, board of adjustment and just about any other governmental body that uses the third-floor facility.

Behind the glass windows Bemiller and Lindbeck–and sometimes an intern–control the audio for all microphones as well as all graphic presentations while broadcasting the council meetings live on cable TV and to an Internet site and making a permanent record to a DVD.

“If it involves the city and you can look at it or listen to it, we have something to do with it,” said Bemiller. “Our main capacity is running the government access channel 199 on Bright House Cable. That’s a 24/7 channel, but in addition we also run the city’s web site. We are in the social media aspect of that–Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.”

All meetings are recorded and archived to provide what Lindbeck said is transparency in government.

“The records department keeps the copies for about five years. We keep a couple of years on hand (in our office). In case someone comes in and wants to look at something relatively current we can pull it up for them.”

If they are not busy sitting through meetings and recording them, Bemiller and Lindbeck will probably be behind the cameras at parades, ground breakings, ribbon cuttings and other live events around the city.

All of this eventually makes its way to the cable TV channel, Lindbeck said.

“We play five or six city meetings a week on the channel. There is an information scroll that runs during the day and we also play back some programming we receive at no charge from Public Education in Government. That helps fill out the other hours during the day.”

The city’s Internet page at www.stcloud.org is being updated all day long.

“There are probably 25-30 people who work on the web page each day,” Lindbeck said. “Each city department has their own person who keeps their page current. If they have questions or need assistance we are their resource.”

“I think the citizenry requires up to date information,” he said. “They are used to having instant news and an Internet presence can help fulfill that need.”

While all this information coming out of the Media Center’s office may sound and feel overwhelming at times, we can expect even more new devices to be available locally.

Digital signs are starting to pop up at various locations. The computer based devices are interactive and provide detailed information on specifics a citizen might want.

There is a kiosk on the first floor of city hall for records requests and access.

“And we have placed one in the marina for the rental facility,” Lindbeck said. “You can check out a boat slip, look at rentals for the banquet hall and see what special events are going on.

“We have Internet connectivity to it so the information is up to date and doesn’t get stale. There will be more interactive sites where you can walk up and find what you need rather than having to sort through a whole bunch of pages.”

“From our office we can control several locations,” Bemiller added. “We will start installing these types of displays at various facilities around St. Cloud.”