City Hall's "Technology & Innovation Comm'n" Votes To Move Its Meetings Out Of Council Chamber [Which Has Live Streaming Video] And Into Room Somewhere Inside City Hall To Facilitate What City Staffer Calls "More Collaborative Discussion"
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(June 25, 2015) -- At its June 24 meeting, City Hall's Technology and Innovation Commission (Lopez absent) voted to conduct its meetings from now on outside the City Council Chamber (which has live streaming video capability) and in some other room inside City Hall to be determined with no indication that it has live streaming video capability.
No written material accompanied the agenda item [or any of the Commission's other June 24 agenda items.] A city staffer told the Commission that he agendized the item "to try and help facilitate perhaps a more collaborative discussion and I thought that there are several commissons already meeting in other meeting rooms within City Hall and I thought that that might be a good location for us to meet around the table as opposed to rather large Chambers..."
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LBREPORT.com is aware that some Long Beach City Commissions (Parks & Rec Comm'n, Airport Advisory Comm'n, Belmont Shore Business Parking and Business Improvement Area Advisory Comm'n) meet outside Council Chambers, but they meet at field locations, making their meetings more accessible to the public, not inside City Hall; their field meetings are routinely audio recorded by city staff and made available online after the meetings for on-demand access. We are also aware that the Economic Development & Finance Committee meets outside the Council Chamber for attorney-client closed sessions which the public can't attend regardless of where held.
None of the Technology and Innovation Commission members or city staff mentioned that meeting outside the Council Chamber would (unless other arrangements are made) eliminate the current live video streaming of their meetings. Meetings in other City Hall rooms could be audio recorded and made available thereafter...but this isn't required by the Brown Act and wasn't discussed by the Commission. Under the Brown "open meetings" Act, the Commission's meetings, regardless of where conducted, would continue to be agendized, listing their time and location, and would remain open to the public, which also has the right to independent record the meetings.
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A motion was made to move the Commission's meeting time to 3:30 p.m. to a City Hall meeting room TBD [to be determined] and the motion carried. The change will take place starting in July.
LBREPORT.com sought to reach the Commission for follow-up on this story, but apparently the Technology and Innovation Commission doesn't list a primitive telephone number or email address online for contacts (at least where we could find it.)
