Planning Board working on rules other boards, commissions may also adopt
OCEAN CITY — The Ocean City Planning Board is working up procedures to allow members of the public to videotape meetings — procedures that may well be adopted by the city’s other boards and commissions.
The new procedures should be ready for approval at its next meeting, according to Planning Board Chairman John Loeper, who said members have been seriously discussing the topic.
Citizen Marianne Brewer brought the issue to the forefront. She attended Ocean City Council’s Feb. 6 meeting, feeling rebuffed from videotaping at the prior night’s Planning Board meeting.
Brewer complained that listening to the audio of a three-hour meeting about the fight over a marina in Glen Cove made her angry and said, “Eighty percent of the time all you can hear is papers being shuffled.”
“You can see who is talking, you can’t hear everyone clearly,” she asserted. “It’s not my business to be upset, but I was upset.”
She thanked Council President Pete Madden for allowing her to set up video recording at the council meeting even though the meetings are professionally videotaped and posted within 12 to 24 hours on YouTube for public view.
The council recordings were instigated through the actions of political gadfly Jack Bryson, a former Ocean City resident who was a frequent speaker at council meetings. That fact was proudly noted in his obituary following his death in 2006.
Bryson was a member of Fairness in Taxes (FIT) and pushed to have the meetings videotaped during a period of contentious relations among FIT, council and the administration.
After having the idea rebuffed, Bryson brought his own video equipment to a City Council meeting to record it and was promptly removed from council chambers by police for the disruption. (The Ocean City Sentinel carried a front-page picture and story about that in a subsequent edition.)
Council later began videotaping the meetings.
Brewer, who spoke during public comment near the end of the council meeting, asked council members and Mayor Jay Gillian to put forward an ordinance to ensure the meetings can be videotaped. She wrongly asserted the mayor and council had control over the boards, but city Solicitor Dorothy McCrosson explained they do not have direct control and the boards operate “somewhat autonomously.”
However, an ordinance is not necessary.
Under the state’s Sunshine Law and a 2007 state Supreme Court ruling (Tarus vs. Pine Hill, 189 N.J. 497), the public is allowed to record public meetings, a fact McCrosson attested to at the council meeting.
“Traditionally boards have been reluctant to allow videotaping because what they’re discussing is so tied to the documents in front of them,” she told council after being asked about procedures by Councilman Jody Levchuk. “Typically the members of the public didn’t have the documents so they may not have been able to follow along.”
Addressing Brewer’s comments, McCrosson said the request to videotape came in just before the Planning Board meeting and she didn’t know if either the Planning Board or Zoning Board had sufficient time to review whether the policy would permit it.
She explained there is a provision in the open public meetings act — or an interpretation — that video recording should be permitted.
“What it says is that these meetings should be open to the public subject to reasonable rules. There was not sufficient time between Tuesday and last night’s meeting for any rules to be put into effect,” she said.
“I think that Marianne’s point is well taken. I think that with time their policies may be adjusted. I cannot speak for those boards. They do not answer directly to the mayor or City Council.”
According to the American Civil Liberties Union’s New Jersey guide to the public’s rights while attending public meetings, citizens have a right to videotape the meetings and that board can have restrictions.
“A public body may adopt written policies that reasonably restrict recording to ensure that the recording does not disrupt the meeting. The policies could require you to sign up in advance to record the meeting and may limit the number of people recording and the number of cameras, as well as their position, lighting and location,” according to the guide.
The Planning Board’s
videotaping procedures
Loeper said he understands the law and that the Planning Board is setting up policies to ensure the meetings can be videotaped by the public with provisions to ensure certain steps are followed to keep disruptions of the meeting to a minimum.
“We’ve had other people videotape. We’ve never had to have any rules set up for it, but now we’re setting up a whole procedure so that the person knows what they can do or what they can’t do,” Loeper said last week, noting they should be ready in time for the next meeting, which is scheduled for March 5.
Addressing Brewer’s complaint that the city’s recordings are hard to hear, Loeper said they are professionally done and clear and it isn’t hard to tell who is speaking.
“It’s not like it’s some fuzzy recorder. It’s high-tech stuff we’re using to the point if a phone rings in the room you can hear it,” he said, which is why he asks everyone in the room to silence their electronics and not to talk during meetings.
“If people are sitting there mumbling to themselves or talking to the person next to them, it makes for a distorted recording,” he said.
Loeper added if someone wants to watch a sporting event on his or her phone, that’s fine, but asked that they mute it. (He has seen that happen.)
Loeper noted that the board’s recordings have been used in court cases and the court stenographers are able to get them down verbatim.
Among the videotaping rules will be signing up beforehand to make sure it is first-come, first-served if more than one person wants to tape, that the camera must be set up and stationary at a set location, not moved during the meeting, that the entire meeting must be taped without voice-over, that the recording device must be monitored and battery-powered and that a copy of the recording must be provided to the board.
That last aspect, Loeper said, is to ensure the Planning Board has a record in case someone decides to cherry-pick comments from it and use them out of context.
It should be noted, he said, that the video recordings won’t be official documents so members of the public will have to be careful how they use them.
There will also be some provisions if there are minors present because recording minors is different than recording adults, and there will be a section in the rules that when attorneys address their clients, that portion should not be taped because of attorney-client privilege. At those points, he said, the recording would have to be turned off.
Loeper added the board’s solicitor will review the regulations to make sure they comply with state law.
“There’s a whole series of stuff we’re looking at, but we’ll sort it out and we’ll have a good procedure that will probably be adopted by the other boards like the Historic Preservation Commission,” Loeper said. “It could be very disruptive if it’s not handled right.”
“You know, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and we don’t end up in court very often. I don’t want this to be an issue. And I’m willing to comply because the state Supreme Court says we have to do it,” he said. “It’s been on the books since 2007.”
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff