“We’ve gotten the legal information,” Mayor Karin Marks said during council’s monthly meeting last week. “The concerns about whether or not people will be uncomfortable remain.

“But we have decided that we will go forward with it and we are going to ask that people really respect more than previously the rules of question period, which is a short preamble.

“This is not really meant to be a forum for people to have an opportunity to just wax eloquent on subjects,” she continued. “But it is question period and it is an opportunity for people to ask their questions and to have them answered, and this will be helpful, I think, to those residents who want to make sure that they are accurately reflected and that they can hear it.

“Honestly, it will also be helpful to our staff who have a hard time listening to the questions, transposing them exactly, making sure that it is all reflecting exactly what was said without having to write it up verbatim.”

Marks said council was unable to restore the audio portion with the residents’ side for last week’s council meeting because there wasn’t enough time to reconfigure the recording system. “We have to make sure that the technology is all set up, but hopefully by next month it will be up and running and ready to go,” she said.

Marks said the decision the restore the residents’ side of the recording was made following a vote among council’s members. “It was unanimously accepted that we would go ahead with that,” she said.

Councillor Patrick Martin, who, according to Marks, had initiated the decision, said, “I don’t see any reason why discussions in a public forum, since they are recorded, shouldn’t be public.

“Some councillors say, ‘Well, what if the person wants to remain anonymous?’ Well then, write us a letter instead. Don’t come to public council and make a big statement.”

Although a local French-language weekly publication had been posting recordings of Westmount council meetings on its website for several years, the paper’s editor was advised last April to cease doing so because it might be illegal.

"There is a legal requirement, if you are taping someone and broadcasting it, you have to get the permission of that person in order to do it," Westmount’s former director general, Bruce St. Louis, said at the time, adding that the City had obtained legal advice.

"My concern is good citizens are coming to the microphone not knowing that they're being recorded and that their voices are being broadcast on the Internet,” he added. “And as far as I know that is illegal, unless they are properly informed beforehand that the meeting is recorded."