The software program would, among other things, allow live web streaming of council meetings to mobile devices and integration of discussions to hundreds of different social media outlets.

Granicus’ program also includes a government transparency feature that links web streaming back to meeting agendas, allowing users to click on a specific agenda item and skip to view that point in the meeting.

Time stamps would be placed on specific points in the meeting to sync video up to the agenda.

With the system, meeting videos also can be searched by specific words.

Council members and city staff would be able to add notes to specific documents and send emails related to specific items — all while engaged in the application.

“You’re now just clicking a button and you’re being brought to all your different bookmarks,” Jack Melnicoff, a solutions specialist with Granicus, said at the meeting.

Installing and maintaining the program would cost the city about $8,000 a year, City Manager George Lahanas said at the meeting.

East Lansing Mayor Pro Tem Nathan Triplett said the cost of the service would be covered by savings achieved when the city renegotiates its video contract for taping meetings, which is funded through the general fund.

Lahanas said installing the software would make the city’s meetings “easy and approachable.”

On-demand video streaming fits in with the daily lives of most residents, he said.

“It’s what we’re used to with everything else,” he said.

The program eventually could lead the council to go paperless at its meetings, but Lahanas said council members must consider that step carefully.

The council is expected to discuss the software program at a later meeting.

Before council implements the software, Councilmember Don Power said a few members should be selected to test-drive the software.

“There’s some public policy questions you have to look at,” he said, noting that accessibility of data and emails sent between council members and city staff is a concern because of privacy concerns.

Streaming meetings and upgrading technology would involve more residents in city business, East Lansing resident and Pinecrest Neighborhood Association president Ralph Monsma said.

“It would be very helpful to … easily web-stream and be able to have it available to all residents,” he said. “It would also be very helpful to have the document up all of the time.”