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Letters: District should shop local

Letter writer questions council's contract for web casting

Considering the wrath of this council directed at similar circumstances, I was more than a little surprised to read in the July 11, 2012 Sooke News Mirror that a web casting contract in the neighborhood of $33,000 over the remaining term of the current council has been apparently sole-sourced without being tendered out. To add insult to injury, the contract violates the District of Sooke purchasing policy to buy local, sending both our money and our data south of the border, as if to say we have no technical expertise in Sooke, B.C., or even Canada.

The district has in-house IT support, and a web casting system is both technically simple and inexpensive. It amounts to an audio-capable network camera(s) and an application running on a host web server, such as the district web site is already on. There is no reason to pay a U.S. company anything, much less $10,320 per year. Of course council would know this, if they bothered to extend an RFP.

Hopefully they ask around before treating themselves to a bunch of cool iPads to replace B.C. paper.

Alexandra Martin

Sooke