Board of Supervisors' meeting, January 19, 2010

Unfortunately, the video recording ended when my ancient camera died. The Herald's coverage is above. I had hoped to tape the supervisors' discussion of the fulfillment of campaign pledges for video access to meetings. Instead, this is what I recall, in so many words: Tom Alvaré urged the board to ask township manager Carolyn McCreary to investigate the options and costs for various systems and report back in February. She said she had other major tasks at hand and would need until March. Dan Hilferty suggested she take until June so there would be plenty of time to do it right. Carolyn reminded the board that there is no money in the budget for actually pursuing these options. I commented that [hosting at] Google Video is free. Frank Froio had mentioned the possibility of having meetings taped by volunteers when we were talking at the polls during the last election. I said if I got a new camera I could tape but as township solicitor Jonathan Reiss had acknowledged when I asked in May 2008, there are potential privacy issues when volunteers put public comments on the internet. Last night, however, he said that if I announced what I was doing and gave citizens the option to have their comments deleted from the video, as I did that evening, he doubted there would be a problem. Stacey Mulholland said that public comments are an essential component of the meetings.

What is PlumsteadWatch.org trying to do?

Some townships are televising their meetings. PlumsteadWatch.org is the nonpartisan project of a Plumstead citizen, Barbara Glassman, to show how cheap and easy it would be for Plumstead Township to videotape their public meetings, starting with the Board of Supervisors, and post them online. Google Video hosting is free, and we already have a tech-savvy township employee who attends most meetings. Barbara addressing the 19 August 2008 Board of Supervisors' meeting (3 minutes):
[If screen is blank, go directly to video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5994518932996464612&ei=YqlBSZPZEoeQrAKGiOnGAg&q=plumsteadwatch&hl=en or http://tinyurl.com/ydna564]

The Media Bloggers Association, featured on NPR's On the Media on October 5, 2008, sounds like a great place to start to answer some of the questions that arise; they even offer liability insurance and a course in media law. On the Media features SLAPPs on their April 2, 2010, show and offers the possibility of using a homeowners' insurance policy to buy inexpensive coverage against defamation lawsuits.