NAHANT — The Planning Board met on Tuesday to discuss alternatives to its decision to not publish video recordings of its meetings on social media.
The main issue seems to be with storage. After a January vote to stop posting the sessions on social media, the meetings are still being recorded.
“There is a capacity issue in terms of where to store all these huge video files,” said Planning Board Chair Daniel Berman. “YouTube is a convenient place to store them. I don’t know what our capacity is (on) the town’s YouTube channel, but whatever it is, it can apparently handle them better than the town’s website can.
“So, if we are not going to put them there then we need to discuss another place to store them. Perhaps we could keep them offline somewhere and make them available if there’s a public-records request and that’s something that I will continue discussing.”
Berman has discussed the matter with Town Clerk Diane Dunfee and the next step is to talk to Town Administrator Antonio Barletta.
During its last meeting of 2021, the Planning Board voted, 6-1, to stop the recording and publication of its meetings.
“I thought the strongest argument for suspending the recordings was that continuing to publish the recordings could have a chilling effect on the free flow of discussion amongst the board and public, when people become self-conscious about the video being published on YouTube,” Planning Board member Patrick O’Reilly said after the vote.
“I voted to continue with the recordings simply because I felt that, while the board was still primarily having remote meetings, that it was still of value and would allow for more people to be able to catch up on discussions they missed.”
Board member Sheila Hamberton mentioned that there is an Open Meeting Law training session taking place on Feb. 8 that could provide for a good opportunity to ask questions about what is right or wrong in terms of where the recorded videos should be located.
Berman reiterated that by the letter of the law, publication of these meetings is not required.
“The law requires if the recording exists, it is a town record that needs to be maintained by the town and made available upon request,” he said. “Which doesn’t answer the question of how the town should maintain it and make it available if essentially the town chooses not to publish them on YouTube.”
Berman and Shannon Bianchi mentioned possibly acquiring an external hard drive or even using DVDs to store the meeting videos as an alternative to posting them.
