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Health & Fitness

County Government Meetings Now Televised in Novato

Comcast and AT&T television subscribers in the Novato area received a live feed of the Marin County Board of Supervisors meeting Dec. 3 and will receive live coverage of future meetings of County agencies thanks to the installation of new technical equipment.

County of Marin staff established a new connection between the Board of Supervisors chambers at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael with the office of Novato Public Access Television (NPAT) in late November and conducted a successful test. The Supervisors meeting was shown live Tuesday on Comcast Channel 27 and AT&T U-Verse Channel 99 for subscribers within the Novato city limits and nearby unincorporated areas. 

The Marin Information and Data Access System (MIDAS) community partner network spent about $5,000 on encoding devices at both ends of the connection and will pay Comcast for 10 megabytes of bandwidth to show the County meetings. MIDAS, created in 1994, provides a high-quality and cost-effective data network architecture for much of Marin.

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“We are pleased that we are able to use the existing MIDAS network connection that the County already owns and that it took minimal purchases to get this established,” said Barbara Layton, Enterprise Systems Manager with the County of Marin and MIDAS finance manager. 

The rest of Marin County has enjoyed access to County government broadcasts since July 2009 through the San Rafael-based Community Media Center of Marin (CMCM). NPAT has a separate franchise with Comcast to provide local public access, education and government programming to Novato.

Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Satellite TV services such as DirecTV and Dish Network are not obligated to offer local public access, education and government programming. 

In addition to televised coverage, County meetings are streamed live on the Internet and archived on www.marincounty.org.

Among the County televised programs new to NPAT are meetings of:

  • The Marin County Board of Supervisors
  • The Marin County Planning Commission
  • The Marin County Flood Control and Water Conservation District
  • The Marin County Open Space District Board of Directors
  • The Marin County Open Space Financing Authority
  • The Marin Housing Authority Board of Commissioners
  • The Gateway Improvement Authority Board of Directors
  • The Gateway Refinancing Authority Board of Directors
  • The Successor Agency to the Marin County Redevelopment Agency Board of Commissioners,
  • The Marin Transit District Board of Directors
  • The Transportation Authority of Marin




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