COEUR d'ALENE — Kootenai County commissioners will become more visible if their meetings will be televised as the board hopes.

Commissioners plan to spend $17,000 for camera equipment so that some of their meetings can be televised. However, they recently learned, through meeting with City of Coeur d'Alene employees about their cable Channel 19, that around $30,000 will need to be spent to achieve sufficient quality.

Commissioners favor the move toward televised meetings in the name of transparency.

"I was a little skeptical at the beginning, but there is a good deal of misinformation or lack of information about how we function," Commissioner Chris Fillios said. "(Televising meetings) makes sense."

Televising meetings in the first (bottom) floor of the county's Administration Building — where large meetings are held — would be ideal in terms of sound and space, Fillios said.

However, those two meeting rooms are oftentimes booked to accommodate larger gatherings, leaving the much-smaller third-floor meeting room next to the commissioner offices the most-likely option.

Details such as when the televised meetings would start and who would operate the system haven't been determined, Fillios said.

"We're still in the early-discussion stage," he said.

Finding a volunteer or contracting with someone has been bantered.

"I don't think we'll want to add staff," Fillios said.

Fillios said initially meetings such as weekly debriefings in which a variety of topics are discussed would be televised, but not all meetings. Commissioners meet several times each week.

"We'll start slow and, if we get a strong reaction, we'll proceed from there," he said.

Fillios said Coeur d'Alene has been of assistance to commissioners in the planning stages for televised meetings.

Commissioner Bob Bingham said he likes the idea of allowing the public to have more access to county business.

"It will provide more transparency than just the audio now," he said.

Audio recordings of some meetings are posted on the county's website and available for about two months.

- In other county news, the commissioners agreed to spend $15,000 on the Industrial Litigation Fund operated through the Idaho Association of Counties that protects counties on property valuation lawsuits.

"It gives us the ability to pay for witness fees and other litigation costs," said Assessor Mike McDowell.

The assessment is based on the size of the county.

McDowell said Kootenai County has utilized the fund in the past and a recent case involving Canyon County with how it valued a meat processing facility arose.

"There's a $10 million difference of opinion, and they're in the process of securing expert witnesses," he said.

If the counties lose property valuation cases, the tax burden shifts to all other property owners, so the fund protects residents in addition to the county government, McDowell said.

Counties aren't assessed every year to be a part of the program — just as funds are needed.