Council Meeting 3/16/23

Have you ever argued with someone regarding the color of the sky? Well, it was a similar debate last night at the New Albany City Council meeting.

District 5 Councilman Josh Turner presented a fairly benign resolution requesting the other city boards and commissions to find a way to live stream their public meetings within the next 30 days.

The Facts – The council meetings for the last year have been streamed from the new chambers in city hall with somewhat acceptable success. (Last night’s meeting should be available for view here) The object of the resolution was to use the same process and technology afforded to the council.

The debate that followed was dominated by 2^nd District CM Adam Dickey. Mr. Dickey is the current Chairman of the Floyd County Democrat Party, so it is safe to assume that his aversion to transparency is the party’s stance – he and the other party members in attendance chose to abstain from the vote. The resolution failed 3-0-5 with Mr. Turner, Mr. Blair & Ms. Griffith voting yes. Republican at-large representative David Abersold joined the Democrats in abstention.

Oddly enough his “arguments” against were the most transparent the Floyd Democrats have been in a long time (psst - I’m saying they were weak).

The arguments ranged from “staff resources” aka someone to hit the button to go live (nearly all of the other meetings are during staff hours), what is the process, what about the cost to let’s wait until the state mandates it.

Well let’s touch on each of these;

Staff & Process – The city employs an IT Director. It is reasonable to say that this is 100% within their duties. It is sensible to expect them to write a robust procedure on how to use the equipment to steam any meeting held in the chambers. If need be they can flex their hours like the rest of the world to help out in person.

Cost – There is a current “system” in place, no new equipment needs to be purchased at this time. Also, in all practicality there is no or very little cost to stream video these days. Internet data is unlimited and the resolution was to LIVE stream, not to store and stream on demand where some minimal costs could be in play.

State Mandate – The information that the in the current state session there is some legislation to mandate (and I would assume specify some minimum requirements) streaming. Mr. Dickey didn’t want to start doing something that won’t meet the mandate. I can tell you right now that using two fisheye security cameras won’t meet the requirement. Let’s get the process down and ready for the new equipment that will be required.

Where I stand – My campaign is based on three principles – the first of which is Transparency. A live streamed meeting is a simple way to start meeting this benchmark. Nearly every church in the country provides a live stream of their services, schools live stream sports events, our local school board does a really decent job streaming their board meetings - the technology is established. The only reason for a government entity to not stream is to prevent ease of public access. The city representatives against this technology should be embarrassed, the citizens should demand more.

What’s the bottom line? – Just like trying to argue that the sky isn’t blue – there is no way to justify the argument not to live stream meetings. You must ask yourself why the Floyd Democrats are against transparency.  When elected I will push to improve the equipment and provide a robust live stream process for all public city meetings.