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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4210 North Cabrillo Highway
Half Moon Bay
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Tonight: Clear, with a low around 47. WNW wind between 6 and 11 mph.
Thursday: Sunny, with a high near 71. Calm wind becoming NW between 6 and 9 mph.
Thursday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 49. NNW wind between 8 and 11 mph.
Friday: Sunny, with a high near 70. NE wind between 9 and 14 mph.
Friday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 48. West wind between 3 and 9 mph.
Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 67.
Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 48.
Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 65.
Sunday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 47.
Monday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64.
Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 45.
Tuesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64.
Tuesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 43.
Wednesday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64.
PFC: 3:41pm; AFD: 8:30pm
Accident between car and cyclist has closed Hwy 1 southbound at Devil's Slide, Mar 17 7:30pm, Kevin Barron — “Any word on how the bicyclist is doing?” Here you go… your updates can be found here: http://cad.chp.ca.gov/ but, perhaps you don’t care if the car, after hitting a reckless cyclist (for the sake of assume, which I assume you are doing, as is ...
Accident between car and cyclist has closed Hwy 1 southbound at Devil's Slide, Mar 17 5:40pm, Jim Sullivan — Any word on how the bicyclist is doing? ...
Congresswoman Jackie Speier in Pacifica, Saturday, Mar 16 2:11pm, Barry Parr — I’m not interested in debating the issue here, but Kevin’s use of the quotes around the word “need” reminded me of these awesome charts from http://fivethirtyeight.com Gallup provided the verbatim responses of the rationales given by people who ...
Congresswoman Jackie Speier in Pacifica, Saturday, Mar 16 1:46pm, Kevin Barron — This should be interesting. I’m guessing she’ll pull her best Ginger Rogers, dancing in synch with the “need” for health care reform, and sashaying skirting around the “way” Obamacare is being pushed by Congress. I’m curious where she REALLY ...
Pacifica examines widening part of Hwy 1 to six lanes, Mar 15 9:49pm, Carl May — No, Route 1 does not become a freeway north of Reina del Mar in Pacifica. There is side traffic from the police station, the orchid nursery/GGNRA trailhead, Mori Point Road, and, especially, the dangerous intersection of Westport after RdM. Then ...
Pacifica examines widening part of Hwy 1 to six lanes, Mar 15 6:16pm, Barry Parr — We use the vet on that stretch of Hwy 1. A couple of years ago, we took Fireball to the vet. Julia was six and as soon as she got out of the car, she put her hands on her ears. I don’t blame her. I’ve been keeping track of sound levels in my ...
The Coastside's uninsured need your help, Mar 15 5:51pm, Suzanne Black — Excellent article, Cheryl. It brings home the national argument over health care reform. So much misinformation in the media and blogs! But it boils down to how we treat our neighbors—and our own and our families’ futures. Your advice is our best ...