A policy change intended to keep Santa Clarita’s public meetings in compliance with state law and “ensure continuity of public participation during technical disruptions” — essentially making sure the city stops a meeting and addresses any broadcast issues if its live feed goes down — drew questions and complaints from the council at Tuesday’s meeting.
For years, the city of Santa Clarita has broadcast its meetings, sharing its live feed from City Hall with SCVTV, its Facebook page and the city’s website, which, as Tuesday’s discussion revealed, all rely on the same feed.
Senate Bill 707, which takes effect July 1, now makes such a broadcast a legal requirement, and puts some further requirements on cities, as well as public meetings in general, through amendments to the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s public meeting law.
The City Council voted unanimously to approve the staff-recommended changes.
The city is now required to provide remote access, which the city plans to do through a Zoom link on its agenda, and the law dictates what happens if the internet or phone system fails during a meeting.
Specifically, the city must take at least one hour to make a good-faith effort at fixing its feed or employing a backup means when the feed goes down, before needing to decide on whether it can reconvene. If the service hasn’t been restored at the end of the hour, then the council can decide by vote whether the public interest favors reconvening at a later date or continuing the meeting.
The Santa Clarita City Council waived the staff presentation behind the purpose of the bill, and then proceeded to ask City Manager Ken Striplin and City Attorney Joe Montes a number of questions about it.
Councilwoman Marsha McLean had a few comments first.
“It just seems to me that we’re being handed down just one more thing, where we have to obey the state of California, for coming up with these policies. This is from the state, correct?” McLean asked Striplin, who nodded in the affirmative.
“I don’t know when we’re going to get people to realize that we became a city so we could take our own laws and stuff into our own hands, to represent our local folks.
“And here’s just one more thing telling us how we need to conduct our meetings. I don’t know what else to say about it — it’s just really bad news,” she said.
“It’s a lot of changes in waves, very quickly, in the last few years,” Mayor Laurene Weste added, before giving the floor to Councilman Jason Gibbs.
Gibbs mentioned the city had the three aforementioned streams, asking if one went down, would the meeting need to stop.
City Clerk Melody Bartlett mentioned that the feeds were related.
Gibbs followed up by asking, if there were a 20-minute outage, and then service is restored, would another outage require up to another hour wait. And it does, under the new law.
Weste described Gibbs’ questions as perfect, because those who came to the council to speak in person might find the wait tedious. Those individuals could have the opportunity to leave and comment virtually when the meeting reconvenes, under state law.
Mayor Pro Tem Patsy Ayala asked about the city’s backup systems.
Bartlett said the city’s technology services staff would need to look at resetting equipment and “various steps that they’ll need to go through.”
Weste wanted to know what happens if someone travels a great distance to provide testimony at City Hall, and the feed goes out for more than an hour.
Does the meeting continue the following day, or does the person have to wait two weeks?
“What do you do?” she asked.
At that point, Montes said, it’s a council vote on whether it would like to continue the meeting without public access outside the building in the greater interest of the public good.
McLean said she was planning to vote no, but upon hearing that the council could continue on its own after an hour, she said she was voting yes.
