Why the Coastside Fire Board should keep the copyright to tapes of its meetings

Editorialposted by Barry Parr  on Wed, Feb 20 at 07:02 pm in  Government   Media
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NOTE: The Coastside Fire Protection District board is considering whether it should hire MCTV or Montara Fog to tape its meetings. This is my prepared statement to the board at its meeting Tuesday night.

In the four years that I have been publishing Coastsider, my priority has always been to cover all boards on the Coastside as honestly and fairly as possible. As part of that commitment, I have devoted a great deal of time and energy to taping public meetings which are also taped by MCTV.

I have had to do this because MCTV will not allow any Coastside news organization to reuse video of meetings they have taped.

Ultimately MCTV will have to acknowledge that tapes of elected boards that are paid for with public money are owned by the public and not by MCTV. But in the meantime, I recommend that regardless of which vendor the board chooses to tape its meetings, that the district insist that the vendor not interfere with public’s right to the contents of the tapes.

There is more than one way to do this, but MCTV’s current misguided policy is not in the public’s interest or that of the board, and is based strictly on the self-interest of the station itself.

The public is denied easy access to newsworthy events that happen in board meetings when they are buried in gavel-to-gavel coverage.

Boards are vulnerable to having their actions distorted by news reports and by political opponents when the actual proceedings are not freely available to the public.

And the community as a whole is impoverished when public property is treated as private property, even by a nonprofit organization.

Whichever vendor you choose to tape your meetings or to distribute them on the web, I urge the board to insist that the final product is the property of the public and available for reuse by anyone who wants it.

 

 

 

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Poetry Night at HMB Library, Fri, Sept 10

Letter by Joe Toschik on Wed, Sep 1 at 07:41 pm • 0 comments; click to add your own

Everyone is invited to a night of poetry at Half Moon Bay Library on Friday, September 10th at 7:00PM.  Join us as we celebrate the participants in our 13th annual Teen Poetry Contest.

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A ballot measure to increase HMB sales tax?

Letter by Bob Poole on Mon, Aug 30 at 01:43 pm • 4 comments; click to add your own

What insanity is this? Raise the sales tax by 1% and drive even more shoppers over the hill. I think that this will kill Main Street shopping for good. Rather than save Half Moon Bay from bankruptcy, I expect it will create a ghost town. Just my opinion.

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Pacifica DUI checkpoint

Letter by Tim Payne on Fri, Aug 27 at 10:50 pm • 3 comments; click to add your own

I want to start by saying that I think DUI checkpoints are great. They remove dangerous elements from our roadways. What I didn’t like today was being asked to show my drivers license at one tonight.

Under normal circumstances if I commit an infraction and get pulled over I fully understand why I would have to show my papers to an officer in the course of being ticketed. Tonight I was asked to show my papers just because I was on the road. It irked me. I wanted to know if this was legal and

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African Hybrid Cat (Savannah) Roaming in Montara

Letter by Margot Lowry on Mon, Aug 23 at 09:14 am • 3 comments; click to add your own

In the past month my housecat has been severely sliced up twice.  I wondered if a bobcat and he now had overlapping territories.  Then yesterday afternoon I found this hybrid cat, (I believe it is a Savannah cat which is a hybrid between a Serval and a housecat) just outside my front door. 

The cat has a blue collar with a bell attached.  No normal cat could stand a chance against him.  Triple check your chicken enclosures and do not leave windows open.  I read in Coastsider someone in

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