Starting May, meetings of the Port of Bellingham Commission will be viewable via live streaming on the Web.

During their April 15 meeting, the port’s three commissioners unanimously agreed to hire Spinner LLC of Bellingham to provide live streaming video of their meetings on the port’s website. Copies of the meetings will also be saved to a backup hard drive kept at the port’s headquarters.

The port will pay Spinner $425 per meeting for its video streaming service. Assuming that the live streaming begins with the port’s next scheduled meeting on Tuesday, May 6, the total cost of streaming meetings through the rest of 2014 will cost $6,375. Meetings that exceed four and a half hours will cost extra.

Marie Duckworth, a communications coordinator for the port, told commissioners that the port received four responses to a request for proposals seeking video services. Spinner LLC, owned by David Brown, submitted the most competitive price and had the best experience, she said.

In the past few months, several community members have made public comments to port commissioners asking them to consider making their twice-monthly meetings viewable online or by some other means.

View an April 8 port memorandum outlining details of the agreement with Spinner LLC:

[documentcloud url=https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1119578-port-video-streaming-memorandum.html format=normal sidebar=false ]

Evan Marczynski, associate editor of The Bellingham Business Journal, can be reached at 360-647-8805, Ext. 5052, or evan@bbjtoday.com.