The Fayette County Board of Education in October will become the first tax-levying entity in the county to have recordings of meetings available to the public. It will start with podcasts of board meetings and could in the future include video recordings on local access cable.

School system Public Information Officer Melinda Berry-Dreisbach said Monday that board meetings are being recorded and could be uploaded to the school system website as a podcast at a very low cost. Berry-Dreisbach said the podcast could be configured by sections so that anyone listening could choose which agenda item or items they wanted to view.

Berry-Dreisbach said that, as it stands now, the podcast would have to be removed each month unless the board was willing to allocate $200-300 per year to have the podcasts hosted so that they could be archived. She said the required funds could come out of her budget.

The board agreed unanimously. The first podcast will be available on the school system website after the October board meeting.

Berry-Dreisbach suggested and the board appeared to agree that meetings could also be videoed and broadcast on local access television. That decision will be made at a later date.