Things are more transparent in Paramount than they used to be.
Was a time, you’d be lucky if you occasionally found a Paramount City Council meeting presentation video online.
Nowadays you can find full council videos meetings on YouTube. Also good.
Was a time, you had to attend a Paramount Unified School District Board of Education meeting in person.
Nowadays you can find full Board of Education meeting videos on YouTube.
That’s a good start.
However, the city and the school district can do a wee bit better.
Here’s the problem: YouTube and other social media platforms are competitors. If a Paramount resident (or observer like me) were to post a link from YouTube to another platform, the algorithm that controls the other platform would drive the post down in the newsfeed. That reduces the number of eyes that might see the post.
Putting the City Council meetings on the city of Paramount website proper would address that problem.
Putting the school board meetings on the PUSD website proper would eliminate that problem.
It has been a long time since I’ve said it, but it needs to be said again: Paramount residents ought to know what’s happening at their council meetings and school board meetings. Making it easier for them to share the meeting videos goes to the heart of the whole concept of transparency.
We’re not talking about a huge expense here, people. I know of cities much smaller than Paramount that put their council meetings on their websites. It can be done.
The same, of course, may be said for the school board.
