Brigantine City councilman Rick DeLucry was kind enough to respond to our questions about “Channel 2” technical difficulties last week. City Council meetings are normally broadcast on local cable channel 2, allowing local residents to watch the festivities from the comfort of their home. Last Wednesday, the ability to monitor this monthly event was plagued by a video blackout. Residents were not happy.
Here’s Mr. DeLucry’s response to the Channel 2 issue, as well as the situation regarding lag time in posting meeting minutes to the municipal website.
As far as Channel 2, I don’t have any insight as to the problem, other than that it was technical and obviously unintended. The Manager is looking into it. She’s probably the best person to ask about the cause of the problem and any remedial measures.
Minutes are being posted as we adopt them. There will always be lag time because the Clerk’s office has to listen to the meeting tape, create draft minutes from that and the Clerk’s meeting notes, and circulate the draft for Council comments/corrections before the minutes can be placed on a Council agenda for approval. The overall process has also been slowed the past several months by other demands on the time of the two people in the Clerk’s office, specifically a substantial number of OPRA requests and the Commission petition. Both OPRA requests and the petition review were tremendously time-consuming, and by law had to be completed within a particular length of time. That pushes back all of the other “normal” work of the office, including preparation of meeting minutes.
UPDATE from Rick: 11:45am 11/15/13
Apparently, the issue last meeting was that a transformer blew. I am also told that the target date for live-streaming the meetings is the last meeting next month. I’ll be sure to check on the progress at or before our next meeting.
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