The simmering tensions within the council chamber that have been made so public this week might actually entice a few extra viewers to tune in when council meetings finally go live to air.

Everybody enjoys a bit of argy-bargy and while our councillors are generally very well behaved at meetings, who knows what impact a camera could have?

On the other hand, that might be just the image council does not want to be sending out to the digital world.

Rigorous debates over over policy points are to be encouraged among councillors but it would not be a good look if those disagreements descended to personal attacks.

Not that it matters, though, because the question of whether or not council should live-stream its meetings was answered for them last year when the state government ordered that all councils start live-streaming by December this year.

It was an issue that had previously been debated in Bathurst over a number of years and while there always appeared to be strong support from councillors - and an online poll by the Western Advocate found support support from ratepayers - the idea had never quite got off the ground.

What remains unanswered by the state government, though, is why, having ordered councils to start live-streaming their meetings, it was not as forthcoming on the suggestion that the state government might foot the bill.

There are obvious benefits to webcasting council meetings in terms of giving ratepayers greater access to the meetings, but those benefits come at a cost.

And at a time when regional communities are continuing to battle the impacts of drought, it's likely that many smaller councils, in particular, believe there are better ways to spend their money.

We would not expect the set-up costs for a system of a reasonable standard to vary greatly from one council to the next, so that cost burden will fall far more heavily on the smaller councils than the larger.

So while in many council areas - perhaps Bathurst included - the benefits of live-streaming council meetings will outweigh the costs, there will undoubtedly be many more that simply believe they don't.

So much for local solutions to local issues.