The city of Lenexa will finally join other major governing bodies in Johnson County in livestreaming its city council meetings.

At its meeting on Oct. 6, the Lenexa City Council voted 7-0 to approve amendments to the Governing Body Rules of Procedure and allow for city council meetings to be livestreamed on the city’s website. Councilmember Bill Nicks was absent.

While Lenexa City Council meetings have been available for replay on the city’s website since January 2023, the city has never livestreamed them. The council meetings have been recorded and typically posted online the next day.

The city tentatively plans to begin livestreaming city council meetings at the body’s next regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 20. City Council Committee of the Whole meetings will still not be livestreamed or recorded.

Lenexa Planning Commission meetings are planned to begin livestreaming in January 2027, city spokesperson Denise Rendina said in an email to the Johnson County Post. (Currently, commission meetings are not recorded.)

“Livestreaming gives residents another option to stay informed about City business and follow the conversations and decisions happening at City Council meetings,” Rendina said.

In addition to approving the council meetings to be livestreamed, the amendments to the Rules of Procedure made another tweak: setting a three-minute time limit per person for public comment.

Lenexa joins other Johnson County cities in livestreaming meetings

Lenexa is the last major Johnson County city to authorize livestreaming of its city council meetings.

Leawood, Olathe, Overland Park, Prairie Village and Shawnee all currently livestream their council meetings, as do some other smaller cities, including Fairway and Mission. (Merriam has a procedure similar to Lenexa’s old one, in which it records council meetings and posts the video the next day.)

Lenexa City Council meetings will be streamed on the city’s website via Swagit, the same video service the city has used to record its meeting videos for the past several years.

After they are streamed, they will be available for replay the day after the meeting for at least two years, according to the revised rules.

Some residents have called for streaming

At previous Lenexa City Council meetings, residents have asked the city to livestream its meetings. Most recently, on Sept. 1, Gaylene Van Horn expressed her disappointment that Lenexa residents at home couldn’t stream a discussion on the city’s budget.

“There are citizens not here tonight because they are ill, and they would have loved to see this on live stream. Now I know that’s been ongoing, and supposedly the procedures are drafted, but it certainly is taking a long time to get those into place,” she said.

The governing body discussed livestreaming in April at a Committee of the Whole meeting, where City Manager Beccy Yocham said residents wanted Lenexa Planning Commission meetings livestreamed and recorded, which the city previously did not do.

“We’ve really heard very few concerns about the city’s current process in terms of recording and putting the meeting up the next day. One thing that we have consistently heard since we began recording council meetings is that folks wish we also recorded planning commission meetings,” Yocham said. 

The city’s move to adopt livestreaming for council and planning commission meetings earned praise from the “Is Your Park Next?” Lenexa watchdog group on Facebook.

“Making meetings easier to watch is a step worth celebrating,” the group stated on its page.

The city pays about $23,000 per year to record, index and archive city council meeting recordings. Planning commission meetings will come with an additional $7,400 annual cost, while livestreaming both meetings comes at no additional expense.

Livestreaming will not change meetings’ structure

As part of the discussion about the city’s Rules of Procedure, residents previously asked that the city move the “Business From The Floor” section, where people are invited to discuss topics that aren’t on the city’s agenda, from the end of the meeting to the beginning.

Moving it to the beginning would help some residents not wanting to sit through potentially long meetings, Mike Feller, a Lenexa resident, posted on social media.

“While this is not a big deal when meetings are short, some meetings go for hours and pushing to the end is basically quasi-censorship of the public who probably won’t want to stick around until late for their 2-3 minutes. Does the city place developers or citizens first?” he stated.

The city decided to keep that section at the end of meetings, so city staff can address and vote on agenda items and the public can bring up topics that weren’t discussed, Mayor Julie Sayers said.

“The business from the floor portion is everyone’s First Amendment right to come down here and say whatever they would like to say,” she said. “We would like to keep those two items separate for the benefit of being able to address items efficiently if they’re on the agenda, and then give people the freedom to come down and make comments as they wish.”