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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-28-26 Public Comment - M. Bateson - Closed Captioning for Meeting MinutesFrom:Mary Bateson To:Mike Maas Cc:Chuck Winn; Bozeman Public Comment; Alex Newby Subject:Re: [EXTERNAL]Closed Captioning for Meeting Minutes Date:Monday, April 27, 2026 9:49:08 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Thanks Mike, for your response! I understand the issue with the formatting and lack of keyinformation, like the time stamps and speaker ID. The transcript I sent to Commissioners that included some of the Dec. 16, 2025 meeting took me quite some time to capture and format. Of course, it would be quicker if the recording was saved as it was produced, but even so, the missing info is a problem. I do appreciate the minutes you provide, with the time stamps andlinks to the video recordings. That is quite helpful. Thank you so much for your efforts! Sincerely, Mary Bateson On Mon, Apr 27, 2026 at 9:31 AM Mike Maas <Mike.Maas@bozemanmt.gov> wrote: Good morning, We have been looking at the options provided by both Granicus and Zoom as closedcaption/transcripts. Unfortunately, the key issue is formatting. They are designed to capture thewords at specific moments so they are listed in time but with no additional context; they make no distinction between speaker changes, lack sentence structure, and punctuation. We continue to look at additional options/features both within our current software and new. Thebalancing of costs, both financial and staff time, with the outputs have been an ongoing discussion.Alex and I have attempted to make the summary document helpful to reference the official recording and are continuing to do so. We appreciate your engagement and continued participation. Thank you, Mike From: Mary Bateson <mbateson5@gmail.com> Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2026 3:55 PM To: Chuck Winn <Chuck.Winn@bozemanmt.gov>; Mike Maas <Mike.Maas@bozemanmt.gov>; Bozeman Public Comment <comments@bozemanmt.gov> Subject: [EXTERNAL]Closed Captioning for Meeting Minutes CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Manager Chuck Winn and City Clerk Mike Maas, I was happy to hear at the April 21st City Commission meeting that the City of Bozeman is looking into methods to more completely record the discussions that occur at city commission and advisory board and council meetings. It does seem that closed captioning applications that are already operating in the video capture or in Zoom recording could be automated to produce complete transcripts. I believe these kinds of text documents would be quite helpful because they would be searchable, and enable people to find topics of discussion more easily. Thank you for working on this on behalf of Bozeman. Sincerely, Mary Bateson, Bozeman resident City of Bozeman emails are subject to the Right to Know provisions of Montana’s Constitution (Art. II, Sect. 9) and may be considered a “public record” pursuant to Title 2, Chpt. 6, Montana Code Annotated. As such, this email, its sender and receiver, and the contents may be available for public disclosure and will be retained pursuant to the City’s record retention policies. Emails that contain confidential information such as information related to individual privacy may be protected from disclosure under law.