May 2, 2019, 6:30PM
By Rue Eisen
In attendance: Council members DeBeredine, DiMartino, Ditkoff, Durante, Florio,
Rotella
Mayor Minichetti, Borough Attorney Regan, Borough Administrator Preusch,
Borough Engineer Boswell, Deputy Clerk Convertini
MEMORIAL DAY
The meeting was convened by the mayor with an announcement that the Memorial
Day speaker, Josh Greenberg, had been called for active duty and will be unable
to attend. Borough Historian Bill Yeomans will speak in his absence after the
parade in front of borough hall. The parade is expected to start at 10:30AM.
JULY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE and MAYOR and COUNCIL MEETINGS
The July Mayor and Council meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 8 at 8PM,
preceded by the Executive Committee Meeting at 6:30PM.
LIVE STREAMING of MEETINGS
Borough residents have requested that borough meetings are video recorded so
that they can stay informed as to what our local government is doing.
Councilman John Ditkoff has spoken with six towns and cities in Bergen and
Essex Counties about their use of live streaming. Lyndhurst spends $500/meeting
to record and post the videos, while Bloomfield spends $300/meeting. Many years
ago, Mahwah started livestreaming having spent $30K in equipment, setup and
$15K in operational fees, Mayor Minichetti reported. The costs have gone down
significantly since then. The mayor and council members said that they will
need to “figure out if it’s worth the time and expense” to live stream
meetings. They expressed concern that people might alter the content of the
videos after the fact, so they feel the need to safeguard the content. They
feel that it’s costly to hire a company, and suggest that a volunteer committee
of videographers is needed to do the recording, which will need to be checked
and safeguarded by the council. Steve DiMartino was appointed to follow up on
exploring the recording costs and the volunteer committee. It was not mentioned
that any allocation was made for the recording of meetings in the budget to be
introduced tonight.
SOUND EQUIPMENT
The poor quality of the current sound equipment including the microphones and
speakers in borough hall was discussed. Administrator Preusch offered to look
into a new speaker, and Councilman Durante said that he might have a speaker to
offer.
The meeting was adjourned after this discussion.