Forks Supervisors to Post Audio of Meetings Online

voted 5-0 Thursday night to begin posting of the board’s meetings online. But they didn’t quite agree on when, where or how they were going to do it.

“We’ve been discussing doing this for a year and a half now,” said Supervisor Chair David Billings. “This is a yes or no decision.”

Some of the other supervisors, however, disagreed.

“I know other municipalities are doing this,” said Supervisor Erik Chuss, “but this is a nice thing to have thing, not a need to have.”

Chuss said his concern was the township’s liability for the recordings if a member of the public libeled someone at the podium during a meeting or even if someone used a curse word.

“Plus it may discourage people from coming to the meetings,” he said.

spent $2,100 this year to in the meeting room. Since then, supervisors meetings have been digitally recorded, but those recordings have just been sitting on a server inside the township building.

Jim Farely, the township finance manager, and the staff member appointed to handle the project, said it would cost about $50 in additional service fees to add a page for audio recordings to the township’s website.

Billings wanted to start posting the recordings online by Dec. 31, but Chuss wanted a written policy about how the recordings would be handled before a vote even took place.

“You’re trying to micro-manage the staff,” Billings told Chuss. “We just need to get a decision by the board and let the staff execute it.”

After a prolonged discussion and back and forth, Township Solicitor interjected a two-step solution.

He suggested the board first vote to either post the recordings online or not. If yes, then the board could pass another motion to direct the township staff to write up a brief policy on how the recordings would be used.

Supervisors passed both motions unanimously.

The goal is to have a policy for review by the .

Farley said that a disclaimer would be posted along with the recordings and that typically three recordings would be available to the public at any time.

No decision was made Thursday as to how quickly after a meeting the recordings would be posted.