By John Burton

Middletown – Republican Mayor Gerard Scharfenberger and Democratic Township Committeeman Sean Byrnes don’t always agree.

The fact that elected officials of opposing parties fail to see eye-to-eye is certainly not particularly surprising, especially in election season. But even on an issue that could be considered nonpartisan, Scharfenberger and Byrnes do hold opposite views: whether township committee meetings should be broadcast. At a special township committee meeting on Sept. 7 that was scheduled primarily to adopt the long delayed municipal budget, a resident broached the subject of televising the meetings as other towns have been doing.

The response from the two officials couldn’t have been more different, with Byrnes injecting, “I have a problem believing this is something we to communities, he said. Cable companies take a small portion of the money paid to them by customers, and pay those allotments to the varies towns, what are called franchise fees. Some communities use portions of those funds to tape and broadcast meetings and other community information, Duthaler explained.

Sometimes municipalities negotiate with the cable providers, which can cover much, possibly all, of the cost of equipment. If Verizon is available in a community, that company, under its state agreement, would make available the necessary equipment and train personnel for any municipality that wants it, according to Duthaler.

“That’s the way for them [towns] to get anything they want, all the equipment, all for free,” he said.

WBMA-TV, is a 24/7 station which broadcasts municipal government, planning and zoning meetings, as well as other community oriented programming, along with a Web site where the public can access those taped meetings at their convenience, he said.

‘”We see big numbers,” he said of the online activities. “We can see a thousand hits at a time no our Web site of people who are watching these meetings.”

Bloomfield runs its station for about $15,000 a year with two part-time employees and volunteers, and shows its meetings gavel-to-gavel, unedited. A far cry in cost from the $100,000 figure offered by Scharfenberger As for the cost, that is all covered by the franchise agreement. Is there a downside?

“I would say no,” Duthaler said. “Everything is more or less the positive end, because I think there is less a feeling in the municipality that they’re doing those ‘backroom deals.’ When it’s out in the public it lets people see what’s going on.”

Two of the three communities in Monmouth County who broadcast their meetings – Long Branch and Howell – both share those sentiments. “I think its working out well,” said Long Branch Administrator Howard Woolley.

Long Branch tapes its city council workshop meetings (“That’s where the majority of the discussion is,” Woolley said. “There isn’t much dramatics at the actual public meetings.”), and airs it the following evening on Comcast’s Channel 20, as well as making it available for viewing and downloading on the city’s Web site. The taping is actually done by a Comcast employee. “They have a small budget in our municipality in which they pay someone to do the taping,” Woolley said. The administrator did not have the actual price to the city for the taping broadcasting but noted, “It’s a small cost; it’s not huge.”

City officials had considered ‘streaming’ the meetings live, but officials abandoned that idea because it could cost as much as $30,000, the administrator said.

In Howell, the cost of taping and broadcasting the meetings, “could almost be completely absorbed by the franchise agreement,” noted David Bonowski, Howell’s director of Management Information Systems.

There is some labor required in recording, which includes adapting the tape for different formats and maintaining the town’s Web site.

“But that all falls under the duties of what we do here,’ in his department Bonowski explained.

Howell receives a $14,000 grant from the cable company that is used to offset any cost to the municipality and the program has been received positively. “It was something the residents really wanted,” Bonowksi said.

Bonowski burns a DVD of township meetings for the local public library which the public can view at its convenience. As for Scharfenberger and Nelson’s concern over potential legal liability, Bonowski noted that in the six years Howell has been doing it there has been no editing of content.

“We haven’t had anything happen at a meeting that would violate the FCC public guidelines and regulations.”

“As a taxpayer I think its open government,” he said. “If you have a DVD player or the Internet you can still watch the meetings.”

Byrnes is charging that opponents are, “actively trying to keep meetings from being made available for the public.”

“I think if you could pick up the clicker and put on the local equivalent of C-Span and see what’s going on,” he said, “I don’t see how it can hurt.”

But Scharfenberger countered, “It becomes political theater,” and, “rarely do people watch it.”

“I can’t give any burning reason to do it,” the mayor said.

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