If you go up to where the Canadian flag overlooks Merritt behind Juniper Drive, you’ve gone too far to spot it.

The City of Merritt has installed an HD webcam overlooking the city along the Norgaard Viewpoint trail in an effort to increase traffic to its webpage. It also provides a way to showcase the city’s natural beauty, said City of Merritt deputy financial services manager Ben Currie.

For $20 per month, the city now has a live stream of the town, which can be used to track the weather.

The webpage the camera is on also has news updates and is linked to the city’s events page.

“It should flow more people through our website more often, and just like any other city, it’s important to have people going through your webpage and looking at upcoming events is good for the community,” said Currie.

He said the city is also working with Castanet to have the camera linked to their webcam page and will try to get other weather websites to link to the page.

He said it is common for other cities to place cameras like this in their town squares.

“You can see a lot of different municipalities have web cameras in different areas and sometimes it starts as security as well, but in this case it’s basically just a weather camera and its meant to funnel more people through our site,” he said.

The City of Merritt Live HD Webcam went online Monday and can be viewed here: http://www.merritt.ca/city-merritt-live-hd-webcam

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