Martins Ferry City Council is working to remove obstacles to public participation.

The primary obstacle is a set of stairs in the historic municipal building. Council’s chamber is located on the second floor of the structure, which does not have an elevator. The city is not required to alter the building to make it comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, but officials still want to find ways to ensure people who cannot climb those stairs have a voice in city government.

In the past, council has taken its meetings to other locations periodically. Those sites, such as fire stations and the Recreation Center, have been able to accommodate the meetings at ground level, allowing more people to attend.

Now council and the administration are working to make it possible for even homebound residents to see and hear what takes place at council meetings. Their plan is to stream video and audio of those sessions live on the internet. Their goal is to begin the live-streaming sometime this spring. Earlier plans to do so were delayed because the equipment available for use was not producing good quality audio.

Last week’s council meeting was recorded via a laptop computer sitting atop a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Service Director Chris Cleary said he was trying to get better sound to accompany the video.

“The sound was better this time — you could hear better this time,” he said of the effort. “Sometimes the air conditioning gets loud. We’re trying to work on that.”

Councilman John Davies came up with the idea to stream the meetings on the the city’s website, www.martinsferry.org. Meeting minutes already are posted there.

“It’s about accessibility,” Cleary noted.

Accessibility is important. After all, elected officials such as council members are accountable to the public, so the public needs to be aware of what they are doing.

City leaders are doing the right thing by making various efforts to ensure as many residents as possible have access to council’s meetings. We applaud their work to stream the meetings online and encourage them to continue taking periodic meetings to more accessible locations.