PASCACK VALLEY—Three of eight Pascack Valley government bodies broadcast local council meetings on public access television or electronic platforms — such as YouTube or Zoom — that enable residents to watch government in action, or catch a meeting rerun later if they cannot watch it “live.”
Due to a patchwork of meeting formats in use — including Zoom, cable TV and most towns not offering any live broadcasts of meetings — and an apparent lack of a statewide standard for broadcasting or recording meetings, Pascack Valley taxpayers are left to fend for themselves when seeking information discussed at open council and school board meetings.
[They also have Pascack Press, in print and online. – Ed.]
In only three towns — Emerson, Hillsdale, and the Township of Washington — can taxpayers find video recordings of recent and past council meetings up online for easy access and viewing.
Montvale generally posts its regular council meetings online within days following the session. However, other towns do not broadcast live, or else post meeting videos later.
Many residents’s only option to find out what took place at a public council meeting is to request an audio recording, often provided on compact discs, or wait for the meeting minutes to be approved and released — often weeks or months later.
Access to livestreams and recorded meetings of local Pascack Valley school boards is even more challenging, with only River Vale’s school board offering both a livestream and archived meetings on the district website.
Fortunately, for parents and taxpayers in the four towns served by the Pascack Valley Regional High School District, the regional board livestreams every meeting on YouTube and archives meetings on its website.
The same is true for the Westwood Regional School District, which serves Westwood and Washington Township.
The Pascack Valley regional board oversees a 9–12 school district that includes Pascack Hills High School, serving Montvale and Woodcliff Lake students; and Pascack Valley High School, serving Hillsdale and River Vale students.
On its website, the district notes, “Pascack Valley Regional Board of Education meetings will be posted here within 48 hours and will be retained for one year. Live streaming of meetings and the past year of recordings as well as other district videos are available on the Pascack Valley Regional High School District Board of Education YouTube Channel.”
And while only three councils offered livestreams of meetings and/or public TV broadcasts, others such as Park Ridge and Montvale offer delayed viewing of council meetings.
However, other towns such as River Vale and Westwood offer no community TV or electronic broadcasts of their council meetings.
The three towns that livestream council meetings — putting them on Zoom, YouTube, or both online and via community TV — take different approaches.
Emerson has been broadcasting its council meetings live on YouTube for several years; its online video archive goes back to August 2019. Recently, the council approved an effort to move toward hybrid meetings. where residents can call in remotely and participate.
For nearly eight years before becoming mayor, Danielle DiPaola had pushed for council meetings to be broadcast without success. Within six months of her election, working with two other council members, borough meetings were broadcast online via YouTube and then the next day on public access TV.
DiPaola said that “bringing our government into the living rooms of residents is one of my greatest accomplishments.” She said, “In order to run an open and honest government there is no other vehicle than to have the public watching you while it happens.”
In Hillsdale, residents can watch council meetings live on Optimum or Verizon FIOS, and can participate via Zoom. All contact information is on the borough website.
Prior meetings can be watched by clicking the View tab on the 2022 Meeting Agendas and Minutes List.
In November 2021 the council approved $29,000 to purchase new audio and video equipment for the council to conduct hybrid meetings.
In addition to enhancing two-way communication between members and public, meetings will be live-streamed on Zoom, broadcast on the public access channel, and archived for later viewing on YouTube.
In a recent effort to increase borough transparency, Mayor John Ruocco appealed to three legislators representing the 39th Legislative District to press to revise the 50-year-old state Open Public Meetings Act.
Ruocco wants OPMA to require all documents listed for discussion or vote on the online agenda to be available by a link so that the public can access them before a meeting.
Such documents are usually considered “drafts” and under state records law are not available to the public.
The Township of Washington offers live versions of its council meetings and school board meetings, the only town to offer both meetings broadcast live. The township shares the Westwood Regional [K-12] School District with its neighbor, Westwood, which broadcasts its meetings live.
Township council meetings are broadcast live and archived for future viewing. Also, school board meetings are streamed live. Go to the WWRSD website, click on Menu, then Agenda/Minutes, and then “Recorded Public Meetings” to select among numerous recent YouTube meeting broadcasts available.
The Township offers its council meetings live via WCTV-NJ on Optimum Ch. 77, FIOS Ch. 24 and on WCTV’s YouTube livestream. Residents interested can click on a Township Council Meetings link on the Township’s Agendas/Minutes dropdown menu to access the live meeting.
For those wishing to participate remotely, accessing the Zoom platform link permits remote participation. As of 1/3/2022, all Township Council meetings returned to the Zoom platform.
Park Ridge broadcasts its council meetings the week after the in-person meeting, though PKRG-TV cameras are rolling during the meetings. PKRG-TV Director Howard Fredrics said while they did do some live cable broadcasts on special occasions, that takes more resources, set-up time and staff, which is generally not available.
“PKRG-TV is not currently regularly broadcasting ‘live,’ either through our cable stations or through our YouTube channel, and we have no current plans to do so. Rather, we record meetings, and normally broadcast them on cable stations, Optimum Ch. 77 and Verizon Ch. 22 starting during the week following the meeting. We do not, as a matter of longstanding policy, upload recorded Mayor and Council meetings to our YouTube channel,” Fredrics told Pascack Press.
Also, no Park Ridge school board meetings are available online. “The Park Ridge Schools does not currently make its meetings available online or on TV. Additionally, the Board does not record its meetings,” emailed Robert Wright, district business administrator and secretary.
While Montvale’s TV says it offers a livestream online, Pascack Press could not find any council meetings being broadcast live via the website. The borough administrator told us that no livestreams are done.
Woodcliff Lake Council meetings are not usually broadcast online but during the pandemic, meetings were streamed on the Zoom platform. As recently as Jan. 24, 2022, the council put a meeting on Zoom, probably due to a Covid-19 spike occurring then.
All told, about 10 previous council sessions broadcast on YouTube are archived under Meeting Videos on Woodcliff Lake website’s Government drop-down menu. However, not all the Zoom meetings have been archived for viewing.
Recently, however, meetings are not being broadcast online or archived by the borough. Meetings have returned to in-person only, said Business Administrator Tom Padilla.
The Woodcliff Lake School District, which includes Dorchester Elementary School and Woodcliff Middle School, also does not broadcast or offer live-streamed meetings.
Generally, most councils and school boards offer audio recordings of meetings, which must be requested via a public records, or Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request. However, Pascack Press has found out that all audio CD recording formats may not be user-friendly, and some require downloading software to run audio compact disks.
Residents should check with municipal administrators, clerks, and school board secretaries for further information about electronic or audio records available if a meeting video recording is not currently available to the public.
Whether councils or school boards ultimately decide to broadcast and archive meetings often appears related to the public pushing for such publicly accessible video recordings, as well as council and school public officials’ desire for more transparency in government operations.
While most officials prefer face-to-face interaction with residents, some towns who do not broadcast or livestream meetings — such as River Vale Township — have come under fire for lack of public participation in major town-wide decisions, most recently the approval of a $13.3 million Public Safety Complex.
Also given the Covid-19 pandemic’s disease variants and on-again, off-again face mask and social distancing requirements, letting meetings remain remote and available via Zoom and online broadcasting seems to be one more option available to enhance public participation.
Moreover, online meeting options allow those who feel uncertain or fearful of in-person meetings an opportunity to listen and participate remotely.
What’s more, online meetings — including archived sessions — allow media outlets to cover multiple meetings with reduced staff since in-person attendance is not necessary to cover what are generally multiple-hour public meetings for most towns and school boards.
Upcoming: Which Pascack Valley towns offer online broadcasts or livestreams of Planning and Zoning Board meetings.