Byrnes: Televise Township Committee Meetings

"...I think televising our meetings is an important step toward engaging our citizens in their Government..." - Middletown Committeeman Sean Byrnes - Middletown Township Committee

Many residents around town have been advocating for the Middletown Township Committee to broadcast their monthly meetings on the townships 2 public access channels, Comcast channel 20 and Verizon channel 26, their numerous request and letters to the editor have gone unheeded thus far.

The excuses of those in the majority on the Township Committee give for not broadcasting these meetings have included cost, lack of equipment and manpower to not wanting to create a circus type atmosphere at meetings, which is just plain silly.

Those in favor of broadcasting meeting say "if you can video concerts in the park or beach parties then broadcast them over the cable channels than you can certainly record township meetings for broadcast", which I happen to agree with and evidently so does Committeeman Sean Byrnes !

The following is another blog post from Sean Byrnes's blog Mobilize Middletown:

On Tuesday night at our Workshop Committee Meeting here in Middletown, I asked the Township Administrator to provide the Committee with an assessment of the costs to televise Township Committee meetings. My preference would be televise them live, but even a taped, televised meeting is better than no televised meetings. I think televising our meetings is an important step toward engaging our citizens in their Government. If we can play tapes of concerts in the park, we surely can play tapes of our elected officials at work. If we are to put our financial house in order, we need a citizenry that pays attention, expresses opinions and has transparent access to all of our budget and spending records. Indeed, our system of government anticipates an informed electorate that cares about how its local government spends its precious tax dollars.

In recent years that type of involvement has been limited to a small segment of our residents. When good times prevailed, many members of our community lost interest in the activities of our elected officials. I do not exclude myself from that criticism. Escalating real estate values and a booming economy lessened the burden of real estate taxes on the average resident. As a result, the actions of our elected officials became less important.

But those times are gone for the foreseeable future, and we now must manage our public resources during a time of financial crisis. This means mobilizing our citizens to participate in the governing process and to volunteer to perform services that may have been previously paid for with tax dollars. As an example, we budget a significant amount of money every year toward the maintenance of parks and fields. We should explore organizing the local neighborhoods adjacent to our parks to participate in regular cleanups, grass-cutting and upkeep of these assets. I believe that Middletown residents would welcome the opportunity to come together as a community to take care of their "jointly-owned" assets and save tax dollars at the same time. To set ourselves on this path, we need to connect to our residents. Televising our meetings would allow citizens to observe their government at work and to weigh in on decisions that impact them or that involve matters where they may have expertise.

Corruption and mismanagement arise when Government is conducted in the shadows. Two years ago we took an important step toward opening up our government when Committeeman Short and I introduced a resolution to place all township meeting agendas, resolutions and ordinances on our website in advance of meetings. This resolution was passed unanimously by the Township Meeting. (It was also an excellent example of bipartisanship). This allowed residents to see what was being voted on at meetings. Prior to this, residents who attended meetings would frequently have little idea what was being discussed, because they had never seen, and had no meaningful access to, the documents being voted upon. Bringing our meetings to television would further open a door to local government that until recently remained shut to all but a chosen few.