By Elisabeth Strillacci

KANNAPOLIS — City staff presented results of research into broadcasting council meetings at Monday night’s city council meeting, prompting an extended discussion of policies regarding how meetings are run and issues dealt with.

The idea of broadcasting meetings has been raised a number of times, and about a month ago, the council directed City Manager Mike Legg to research the idea. Televising meetings has always had the goal of giving residents access to see and hear the two monthly meetings the council holds even if they are unable to come to city hall to attend meetings in person.

Legg, Director of Communications Annette Privette Keller and Director of Information Technology Tony Eury put together a packet of information, including bids from three different companies, to share with the council. But the first option to consider is whether the town will hire an outside agency to provide the service or if it will invest in the equipment and staff to do it in-house.

“It’s recommended by both the communications and IT department that we contract with a vendor for at least the first year,” said Legg. “We don’t have the equipment to produce a high-quality broadcast, and a vendor would be responsible for providing both equipment and staff. Try it for a year and then review and if you decide it is a benefit, then you could reconsider investing in what is needed to do it in-house.”

The bids received range from $48,000 all the way to $108,000, but Legg said the low bidder is also the most experienced and has most of the necessary equipment already. That company, Crown, submitted two bids, one for a monthly contract and one for a full year contract. A full one-year contract would be $48,000, while a monthly agreement would nearly double the cost.

“A year’s contract that is paid up front allows them to go ahead and hire the staff and get any equipment they don’t already have because they know they have it for the full year and can rely on that payment,” he said. The bids did not include a sound technician which Legg said would be essential and would cost an additional $9,000 per year, bringing the total cost of the lowest bid to $57,000.

Council member Darrell Jackson said he would prefer to see if there is any more affordable option, “because I’m not sure we can ask taxpayers to pay $12,000 a month for this,” but in general, the feeling was the low bid was not an exorbitant price. The actual monthly cost per month for the low bid and a sound technician would be just under $5,000 per month.

In order to provide the views people have asked for, Legg added, including seeing reactions on council members faces during discussions, would require multiple cameras and at least two staff, maybe three. He pointed out as well that there are new ADA requirements coming in the next year and while he did not specify what they are, he said those should be built in to the program from the start.

The city will also need to explore storage of the videos, because “YouTube won’t store things forever, and these are public record so we will need to preserve them long term. These will be good-sized files and we’ll need somewhere to keep them. But I also want to be clear they will not constitute the official documentation of meetings, those will still be separate.”

There is the question of whether the broadcast would be live, have some slight delay, or recorded in full and then posted.

Legg said he believes they could have the program up and running by summer, depending on decisions by the council.

Mayor Darrell Hinnant opened discussions by sharing information he has heard from other towns during NC Metropolitan Mayors Coalition meetings, saying among the 35 largest cities, three topics consistently arose: homelessness, affordable housing and dealing with speakers from the floor at meetings.

“From those conversations, I have learned that broadcasting meetings changes the participation you have,” he said. “The number of speakers is likely to increase, and we could get advocates who are paid to speak on issues. When some people realize there are more eyes on the meetings, they see they have access to a larger audience and will show up to take advantage of that.”

Hinnant said before the previous city attorney retired, the two men had several conversations about the “what ifs” that could come with broadcasting, including things like hate speech and profanity. He said because the mayor is in charge of running the meeting, or the mayor pro tem in the mayor’s absence, he was seeking guidance from the council on issues like these and others so he would know how he should proceed. He asked if he should gavel someone, stop what they are saying, have them removed, what did the council want him to do in a challenging situation.

“Well what do we do right now?” asked Councilor Ryan Dayvault. “I mean everybody in the audience and everyone on this board deserves to be heard and we’ve done that. But I have seen you gavel someone, offer a correction and it usually works. Why would we do anything differently?”

Dayvault used his own graduation from A.L. Brown High School as an example of how setting the standard from the start is efficient.

“Our principal sat us down and told us that everyone who crosses the stage deserves to have their name heard, to have their moment, and the first time there was any outburst, from us, from family no matter who, they would have to leave. Discourtesy was not going to be tolerated. Well, graduation came, and at one point, there was one outburst. The offending parties were removed, and that was the last outburst. I think if we have an incident or two and we make the rules clear by enforcing them, the message will be received.”

“I think we all need to understand what our policies, our rules are, and then we need to explain to the audience what they are at the start of the meeting,” said Councilor Jean Dixon. “I think that will also help people comply, if they are clear on expectations.”

And should an audience member become unruly, there is and always has been the option to ask them to leave, but Hinnant asked for feedback on when that would come into play.

“Now, I give them chances,” he said. “I’ll warn them once, and even a second time, but on the third time I will ask that they leave. Is that what we want to do going forward?”

Most council members agreed to the general three strikes rule, but they also wanted it clear to speakers that they understand being passionate about something.

“People come in here and they are passionate about something,” said Councilor Tom Kincaid, “and their emotions may be strong enough to make them emphatic, but we need to be at least somewhat lenient because they do deserve to be heard.” He agreed that cursing would be excessive, but he wants residents to feel like they can share their thoughts and concerns with the council.

New City Attorney Andrew Kelly said the council’s current policy does encourage courtesy and it currently prohibits “political speech” but also said he advises against policies that try to police content of comments so freedom of speech is honored.

Hinnant asked how the council would then deal with swearing, which “no one in Kannapolis wants to hear,” or possible hate speech, because “what might be offensive to one would not be offensive to another, so how do we judge?”

Kelly said the essential piece is having a policy to work from, being consistent in the application and consistent in the exceptions allowed.

Hinnant said broadcasting could possibly extend the length of meetings if more people want to speak.

“What if we have a list of 30 people who want to speak?” he said. “At four minutes each, with about a minute between, that’s 150 minutes, two and a half hours. If we get to the 15th speaker and we are tired and don’t want to hear any more, do we tell those other 15 they are not important? Do we say come back next meeting?”

“We have always listened to speakers, however many there are,” said Councilor Doug Wilson, who is the member who has raised the idea of broadcasting meetings and who made the motion to ask staff to investigate what it would take. “We would listen to them.”

“This is all about transparency,” said Mayor Pro Tem Dianne Berry. “Other towns have taken this leap of faith and made it work. I say let’s hire a vendor and get the ball rolling.”

Dayvault added that he was not sure why discussion of policies was happening now, because the council has had policies in place for years and Hinnant has implemented them very well.

But a review of overall policies and direction on how they should be implemented, to be sure everyone is on the same page, was what Hinnant said he was after, and Kincaid suggested they should “get together and go over what we have and what we are missing” since the opportunity presented itself.

“I’m not sure what groundbreaking rules we’re gonna come up with but I agree with Mr. Kincaid’s suggestion that we do review our policies, but I think we need to do it soon while this is fresh in our minds,” said Dayvault. “We have had lot of good discussion tonight and we’ve gotten some great clarification from Mr. Kelly, so I think we are well on our way.”

“I would hope that whatever we decide, if we decide to go ahead, that we don’t start until we have solid policies in place,” said Hinnant.

In the end, the council decided to review policies at the next meeting, May 12. The council will discuss policies governing meetings and in particular dealing with speakers from the floor, which is different than speakers for public hearings. Because there is only one meeting in May, the council will then plan to make a final decision on whether or not to hire a vendor and move forward at the June 9 meeting.

One of a handful of speakers at the meeting, Naomi Hatchell, made it clear she supports televising the meetings and encouraged the council to move forward.

“I want to thank Doug (Wilson), Mike (Legg) and Annette (Privette Keller) for putting in the leg work on this,” she said. “This is not the only meeting I attend…and others are broadcast and there have been issues from time to time but the elected officials have handled them appropriately.

“Four minutes?” she continued. “You can stand whatever I’m saying for four minutes. But to ban residents from having access? In November we will vote and we will vote on the economy and on integrity. You need to remember that.”