The City Council will consider changes tonight that would stop the broadcast of council meetings just before the meeting’s public comment session.
The audio and video taping of the public meeting would start at the beginning of the meeting but terminate with the council comment portion of the meeting — before the open public comment period. The change to the ordinance, O-48-13, was introduced by City Council at its October meeting and will come up for a public hearing and final approval at its meeting tonight at 7 p.m.
Mayor Samson Steinman said the change was proposed after the September meeting (.pdf of minutes) when a resident described complaints that were becoming too graphic to be broadcast. The mayor denied that putting an end to recording public comments was a move to quash public criticism of city officials.
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Censorship is never cool.
This is a public meeting. If someone behaves in a way that is out of order or illegal they can be gavel-ed down and removed from he meeting.To totally cut off the whole population from access to this public meeting just because someone MIGHT use off color language is a prior restraint of free speech…..you may as well simply shut down ALL public comments on that "rationale".This is clearly an effort to keep he public ignorant of anything other than the official fixed predetermined agenda items as deemed by the existing officials.Running government in the dark is un-American. It stinks of corruption. Anyone who was to introduce such a resolution or, Heaven forbid, actually vote for it deserves to be disqualified from holding ANY position of public trust.Nick Lento