New technologies are blurring new communication boundaries for town officials.
There’s no end to the things that can spur disputes with local town officials: Zoning regs, gravel pits, executive sessions, roads and culverts and, of course, budgets — to name just a few.
But laptops?
Call it a classic town spat. Or should we say, eSpat?
Welcome to the ever-shifting but always advancing front-line where the digital revolution bytes traditional Vermont town government.
A laptop is what got Essex Town selectboard member Bruce Post in trouble last May, revealing a cultural/digital divide that took several weeks to work out in this bustling town of 20,000 in northern Vermont.
Politically well-respected (he’s worked for several high-powered Vermont officials, including former U.S. Rep. Richard Mallary, U.S. Sen. James Jeffords and Gov. Richard Snelling) he’s familiar with computers, and though he’s 63 is comfortable with the advances of the digital world. So he didn’t think twice when he brought his laptop to a selectboard work session and then took it into the actual meeting that followed to take more notes.
But that prompted an onlooker to question the propriety of having the laptop open during the meeting, and in a “point of order” discussion, Board Chairwoman Linda Myers ruled that using the laptop violated board rules on digital devices — though in fact the rule only applied to handheld devices.
“I conformed with their erroneous ruling,” says Post, who shut his laptop but remains flabbergasted by the decision that night not to allow him to use it.
“It’s just another technology,” he says. “The absurdity of the discussion was just beyond me,” he adds, noting some irony in the fact the town it took place in is where computer giant IBM is located in Vermont.
For Myers, who also happens to be a Republican member of the Vermont House of Representatives, it was a simple matter of courtesy, “that having a laptop open during a selectboard meeting distracts from paying attention.”
She points out that many businesses, including IBM, have internal rules that insist laptops be closed during meetings so folks pay attention. “I was a journalist for 39 years; I took notes up one side and down the other,” she says, adding she has two computers herself.
“My issue is rudeness,” she says.
In a digital world where young people gather together and then all stare separately at their iPhones or Blackberries, and cell phone calls routinely interrupt conversations, what is courtesy? Is there a digital age divide? Is there any accepted canon of courtesy?
Throughout town government, mostly in ways less obvious and yet sometimes equally thorny, officials are trying to adapt 19th and 20th century local governance systems to the digital ways of the 21st century. Generally, despite some problems, experts see government becoming more open and more accessible because of new technology.
In Essex Town, after considerable back and forth, a vote by the board finally decided 3-1 in June that laptop use is acceptable.
“This is a modern era and we ought to use the modern means at our disposal,” argues Post.
Still, “modern means” raise many issues. What about public access to email messages between selectboard members? Can tweeting during a meeting be a violation of open meeting laws because the comments are not available to everyone? When a selectboard member speaks about a local issue on public access television, or in an email newsletter, does he or she speak for the town? Can board members set up a blog?
All of these questions have been raised at the local town government level, and there’s probably more to come.
The secretary of state’s office is one place town officials turn to for guidance, and the man who holds that elected post, James Condos, is well aware as a former legislator that there’s a whole lot of change going on.
“We recently had a question from a town in southern Vermont where there was a recreation board that wanted to essentially set up a blog,” he says.
Secretary of State Jim Condos. VTD/Josh Larkin
The hope was to involve more young people and improve interaction in the meetings. But after some discussion, Condos’ office advised that might violate open meeting laws since not everyone had access to the blog.
“The statutes have not kept up with the technology,“ admits Condos, who saw this firsthand as chairman of the Legislature’s Senate Government Operations Committee, which dealt with such issues.
“If you were to go back five years ago and we had said the only only form of communication allowed would be email, well now we have Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, whatever else is out there,” he says.
“It’s an evolving process at this point,” he says.
One of the more evolved cities in Vermont is the state capital of Montpelier, which in digital terms would be branded “an early adopter.”
Members of the city council, with one exception, all bought iPads last spring, and that has cut down on paper waste and cost and made current and past documents, votes and minutes more accessible, says longtime assistant city manager Beverlee Pembroke Hill.
At the same time, the city took considerable pains to set up rules and the technology to make sure citizens have access to the same information. City and board emails are all routed through, and preserved on, a city server, and Montpelier has been extensively adding to the information available on its website.
Councilor Andy Hooper, 37, and a computer programmer, is an enthusiastic backer of using the iPads. City police used to drop off thick council meeting packets, but now everything arrives – and can be updated – electronically, and it’s easy to check archived material before or during a meeting. All of the information is also available online to anyone who wants to see it.
What about concerns that an iPad is distracting or using it indicates a lack of interest to those attending a meeting?
“This is an etiquette issue more than a technical issue,” says Hooper, who brands himself an optimist that digital technology will make government more transparent.
Montpelier Mayor Mary Hooper (no relation) sees both sides of the technology debate. While she describes herself as being in the less tech-savvy crowd, she finds the easy-to-use iPad “a wonderful device” that has allowed better access to city material — though she quips she misses her walks to the police station to pick up her council packet.
At the same time, in the Vermont House where she represents Montpelier, her legislative committee decided by consensus not to use computers while taking testimony, noting members felt those who appear before the panel “deserve the full attention of the committee.”
Hooper says she takes pains at council meetings to make sure the audience can follow along and the council is attentive despite their digital devices, which are connected via WiFi.
“If we have new people in the room, I do explain what’s going on so people don’t think we’re being rude,” she says.
Taking it a step further, in Vermont’s largest city, five members of the Burlington City Council now “live tweet” when the city council meets (fully a third of the council), says Ed Adrian, a Democrat who represents Ward I.
“I think people have been really supportive for the most part,” says Adrian, who works as an attorney with the Vermont Secretary of State’s office. With people having busy lives, tweets are a way for him to inform his constituents, most of whom can’t make it to evening meetings.
He says the biggest digital impact on city government in Burlington, though, is the use of the social media/email newsletter, Front Porch Forum.
“By far that’s the most important media tool I use,” he says.
FPF bands together Vermont towns or in large cities, local neighborhoods, via an email “forum” that contains everything from pot lucks and concert news to items for sale, houses to rent and comments on roads, zoning or budgets.
Founded by Michael Wood-Lewis and his wife Valerie in Burlington in 2006, it now is available in more than 60 Vermont towns and there are over 160 forums and 28,000 members, says Wood-Lewis.
He has definitely seen an increase in local officials using FPF to communicate, noting there are now more than 450 members counted as local officials, and probably a lot more who don’t list their official titles. He guesses perhaps half of the forums now feature postings of meeting agendas and town announcements — sort of a virtual country store poster wall.
While services like Twitter and FPF are clearly beneficial in passing along town information, they raise some gray areas. During a vibrant discussion last mud season on FPF about rough road conditions in the town of Calais, selectboard members wondered whether to get involved in responding, and whether if they did, they were speaking for the town or themselves?
Wood-Lewis says FPF is good for distributing information and for asking questions or prompting discussion but thinks “it’s not ideal for trying to resolve challenging local issues, “ which should be done in face-to-face meetings.
Attorney Brian Leven works to resolve questions on open meeting laws and other government access issues as deputy secretary of state, tapping into 12 years of experience on government operations with the Vermont Legislative Council. He’s definitely seen an increase in town queries that revolve around digital issues.
“I’ve had them from all over,” he says, listing a few: Can a town charge for a digital photograph of a public document? Is it legal for someone to come in and video-record a board meeting? If a public board wants to meet in a chat room online, does that violate the requirements of the open meeting law?
As for Twitter and text messages, if the messages are not available to everyone, he says it does raise questions of accountability.
“That’s a whole ‘nother issue,” he says.
State experts are well aware that digital technology is changing the way government works. As part of a larger concern about public access to town decisions, Secretary of State Condos has embarked on a “Vermont Transparency Tour” to 12 towns around the state to bring local officials up to speed on open government laws, working with such organizations as the Vermont League of Cities and Towns (VLCT), the ACLU and Vermont Press Association.
The VLCT, which represents, and advocates for, the state’s nearly 250 cities and towns, has also been proactive on digital issues, says its executive director, Steven Jeffrey. Last year it put out an article on “Municipalities and Social Media” and this summer has held a workshop and, in July, produced an extensive model “Social Media Policy” that towns can adopt or adapt to their needs (Available at http://www.vlct.org/ by searching for “social media”).
Among many flash points raised in the policy are liability and accessibility, distribution of information, anonymity and who in town government oversees digital tools.
Leven, at the secretary of state’s office, says issues ranging from vexing to niggling will continue to crop up as use of mobile devices and technology change. But overall, he thinks this digital e-volution is a positive trend. Towns and citizens are now thinking about the “bigger picture” in how a town works and gets information out, whether it’s through Twitter, improved websites, Front Porch Forum or some service not even available yet.
There’s kind of a “culture shift” going on about making information public, including what is happening at the Vermont town and city level, he says. “Everyone has an experience now that they can get information at the click of a button.”
“In many ways, the issues that technology is driving are really healthy ones,” says Leven.
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My starting point: not everyone is able to get to a live meeting or has TV service that allows them to view the public broadcasting required of cable providers.
I don’t believe it’s sensible to restrict the use of computers (mobile or not). Instead ways should be found to be sure as many folks as possible have access to whatever was shared that way.
Done the ‘old fashioned way’ … a meeting is held where few to no folks show up for one reason or another (their right), and minutes are taken of that meeting and provided to those who would like the information after the fact.
The exact same process can be followed by chat room, email, twitter or any other form of exchange. The only restriction I would put on all this would be that everything must be made publicly available as soon as possible – and nobody will have to sign up for anything (accounts or whatnot) to access the information.
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Andrew, nice one.
There’s a “desocialization” which takes place with technology. It can “Misiform” and its also been known to drastically cut one’s ability to spell. I am no exception.
Read more. Email and text less.
Some changes will be good and some not so.
Good job.
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As the laptop “scofflaw” on the Essex Town Selectboard, I would like to append just a few comments to Andrew Nemethy’s thought-provoking piece.
1. The issue of laptops at our Board meetings is not truly one of “rudeness” but one of control and fear. I have been on the Board for two years and I have seen many examples of Board/staff actions to attempt to control and restrict information. You might legitimately say that the Essex Selectboard is to open meetings what black holes are to light.
2. Linda Myers differentiates between Selectboard “work sessions” and regular meetings. To wit, her comments in the June 6, 2011, minutes: “Ms. Myers preferred that everyone be attentive to what was going on at the meeting. She did not have a problem with the use of computers during work sessions, but did have a problem with them at meetings.” It is my understanding that there is no such thing in state law as a Selectboard “work session.” There can be emergency meetings, special meetings and executive sessions, but if a work session is where the Selectboard does its work, then what does it do at its regular meetings? Not work! I fear that advertizing something as a “work session” gives the impression to the public that this is some kind of insiders gathering that is for the Selectboard only (even though an agenda notice still should be posted). I would like to see Jim Condos weigh in on this.
3. I am proud that the Town of Essex keeps very good minutes of its meetings. It enables me and others to do considerable research on issues dating back several years. Yet, our Chair has sought in the past to change our policy on minutes from its present excellence to the minimalist approach allowed by state law. I expect that another attempt to drastically shorten our minutes will be made again in the near future. Maybe it is time that the Vermont Legislature look at the statute on minutes of public meetings (1 VSA Sec. 312(b))and change it to require more robust minutes that truly indicate the nature of the discussions and debate that take place. To say that folks can come to the Town offices and listen to the tape or watch the meeting on TV is one more way of rationalizing the reduction of the official public record available and accessible.
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Thank you for such a detailed piece on technology in public life. . . this question is one that the e-Vermont Community Broadband Project addresses daily as we work with rural communities to help them make best use of Internet resources. Those uses might include posting selectboard minutes online, offering video streams of a public meeting, or developing policies to ensure that using technology to engage more people doesn’t inadvertently leave others out of the process.
We have a lot of good examples of communities adding real value to how they engage citizens by using tech tools. Front Porch Forum (an e-Vermont partner) is one example and I highly recommend their blog http://blog.frontporchforum.com/. New municipal websites developed with help from the Snelling Center for Government (also partner) are another – these sites can make public records available at any hour of the day, let you renew a dog license without driving to the town hall, and provide one more place to distribute notices of meetings and events.
But we have to be honest with ourselves – bringing a laptop to a meeting works great for me, until I see that a college roommate just sent me an e-mail, or I remember one last thing I wanted to read on VT Digger, or I realize I need to check my phone bill, or. . . .
It’s not an either/or debate. It’s everyone being conscious that technology is a tool and that we each have to take responsibility for using this tool in effective, productive ways.
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A note from CCTV/Channel 17 Town Meeting Television:
In addition to airing on Channel 17 in Chittenden County ( http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/channel-17-schedule) , all of our recordings are available on-line and on-demand at – http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/municipalities.
Also, anyone can come into our offices at 294 No. Winooski Avenue in Burlington and use our extensive video archive.
Great article and here’s the link to watch recent Essex Selectboard meetings http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/series/essex-selectboard
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Hello Nick,
Thank you for all of your hard work at Channel 17.
While some may disagree, it is my humble opinion that a library or archive in this case, is only as good as its contents.
On Thursday December 4th 2008 Channel 17 filmed our Ward 6 Burlington NPA meeting. As the meetings are public they are all filmed.
Do you know what happened to this film? Do you know why nobody can find it?
This film included our police chief Michael Schirling speaking about “Community Policing” which was why I went to that particulaar meeting. He was in uniform and previously scheduled to speak about his topic.
I was so amazed to find out that the tape (along with several others) wasn’t anywhere to be found in your archive. Several members of our ward six NPA Steering committee described it as “Missing.”
How can the public trust us if the police are allowed to just help themselves to your archive? I’ve included a separate chapter in my book describing this episode.
This incident is an example of the types of police misconduct which puts Vermont at the top of the list for our entire nation. That’s right, Vermont has the highest police misconduct rate IN THE NATION per capita of police officers – (NPMSRP/www.injusticeeverywhere.com)
We, the private citizens of Burlington need Channel 17, to maintain those ethical standards which would not be compromised by anyone including and especially the police.
I don’t want to be “Mean” or disrespectful in any way but Vermont is three and a half times the national average for police misconduct and incidents like this are exactly how it happens.
Why wouldn’t Channel 17 make copies of “archived” public meetings?
Can the police come and just help themselves?
Shouldn’t there be a copy somewhere?
Thank you again Nick for your hard work and if you know of a way for us to acquire a copy of the Channel 17 tape for the above stated meeting, it would be much appreciated.
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Helen’s comment is spot on: It’s not an either/or debate. It’s everyone being conscious that technology is a tool and that we each have to take responsibility for using this tool in effective, productive ways.
Must we really seek to regulate every possible use of every possible idea or tool?
A laptop might be seen is ‘rude’ or ‘inattentive’, but so can tapping a pencil on a notepad. Is taking notes on a laptop worse than taking them on paper? What if we wish to research a question of statutes ‘live’ during a meeting? Sometimes it can be easier to search electronically.
Here, we often use a laptop and projector during municipal meetings, because then everyone can see maps, site plans, architectural designs, or budget spreadsheets more effectively than on an easel or on printed handouts, and it’s far easier to help everyone see and understand where we are on the page, so to speak.
Further, if we seek to ban anything that everyone does not have access to, then where is the logical end to that? No blog because not everyone has a computer, no televised meetings because not everyone has a TV, or has cable access; might as well ban paper because not everyone can read. This is not intended as criticism of anyone’s abilities, strengths, or weaknesses, but more as criticism of our seeming desire in society to make everything in life as an all or nothing choice; typically a false dichotomy in most circumstances.
I do agree that overreliance on technology, especially at the expense of direct social interaction or enjoyment of activities or the environment, can be very negative. That said, if we use tools wisely, then we can improve out ability to be effective and efficient in accomplishing tasks, whether in governance and public policy or in our private lives.
Thanks for listening.
Lee
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This is a fascinating and poignant issue well presented by Mr. Nemethy. Insertion of technology into the traditional talk, pen and paper world of public meetings should and will create controversy. Only then will we find the right balance of efficiency and openness in our public discourse and decision making.
The public record should be accurate, complete and hopefully electronic. The future demands no less.
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Bruce,
Thanks for the question…
It has been the position of this office with my predecessor and is now with me, that if you have a legislative body with a quorum discussing or doing the business under its control, then it is a public meeting and needs to be warned and minutes taken. It does not matter if its a work session or regular meeting.
Here’s a section of the Open Meeting Guide that my office has on its website:
MEETINGS OF A PUBLIC BODY MUST BE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
• Public must be given notice of the meeting.
• Public must be allowed to attend the meeting and be heard.
• Minutes of the meeting must be taken.
WHO DOES THE OPEN MEETING LAW APPLY TO?
This open meeting law applies to all boards, councils and commissions of the state and its political sub-divisions (i.e. municipalities), including subcommittees of these bodies. This means the open meeting law governs meetings of selectboards, planning commissions, boards of civil authority, recreation commissions, municipal public library trustees, auditors, listers, etc.
WHEN DOES THE OPEN MEETING LAW APPLY?
Whenever a quorum (a majority) of a public body meets to discuss the business of the board or to take action, the open meeting law will apply. This means that if a majority of a board find themselves together at a social function they must take care not to discuss the business of the board!
HOW DOES A BOARD NOTICE ITS MEETINGS?
• A board schedules regular meetings by adopting a
resolution setting the time and place of the meeting.
This information must be made available to the public.
• A board holding a special meeting must, at least 24 hours
before the meeting, publicly announce the time, place
and purpose of the meeting by notifying the board members
and the local news media and any other media that has
specifically requested notification, and by posting
notice of the meeting in or near the clerk’s office and
in two other public places in the municipality.
• An emergency meeting may be held in the event of a true
emergency without public announcement as long as some
public notice is given as soon as possible before the
meeting.
WHAT IS THE PUBLIC’S RIGHT TO BE HEARD?
At an open meeting the public must be given a reasonable opportunity to comment on matters considered by the board, subject to reasonable rules set by the chair of the board.
Hope that helps…
Jim Condos
Secretary of State
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I think Linda Myers may be digging her heels in regard to the Modern Age. She railed against reading on a Kindle at a recent Board meeting, not considering that reading in any form, especially for children, is a good thing. I have been taking notes on computer rather than by hand for years. Less strain on the fingers and once taken, permanently stored, digitally.
As to being rude, Ms Myers and other Board members routinely rifle through their paperwork at Board meetings and look down to take notes while members of the public speak. Recently I was at a meeting and had my hand raised for three agenda items and Linda Myers didn’t acknowledge me all three times. If you look at the Channel 17 film, you can see my hand and a reporter’s (Mike Donaghue’s) hand waving back and forth in front of the camera to no avail. Before I left the meeting in disgust, I stood up and windmilled my arms and still Linda did not react. Since there were only about four or five members of the public in the room and I was sitting directly in front of Linda Myers, I, logically, thought Linda was intentionally ignoring me, a violation of open meeting law. Linda Myers said she did not see my hand up and explained that she often doesn’t see members of the audience with their hands up, because she is “concentrating on the discussion.”
As to using technology at a meeting, I think using a computer to take notes is no different than doing so with pen and paper. Board members Tweeting or using Facebook is another story, since the audience cannot witness the tweets and that could be considered a technological hybrid of an executive session.
As to abreviated minutes, I’m not sure why the Board would take a step backward like that, except to limit public access to the content of the meetings. That is absurd in this digital age, when it is so easy to give the public access to information. The reason given for shortening the minutes is to save time. Presently, the Essex Town Manager’s office reviews and sometimes edits the minutes of the Board, Planning Commission and all Committees. If we want to save time we should take the editing and reviewing out of the Town Manager’s hands and place that task with the Board and the Committees where it belongs. There is no need for both the Manager’s office and the Board to edit minutes.
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Discussion about the role of technology for communications among members of a public body was one of the reasons the public meeting law revision got derailed in the past legislative session.
The bill is still alive, since this was the first year of the biennium session. But it is hard to find agreement around these issues.
Is an e-mail between two members of a three-member board a meeting? Are teleconferences acceptable for holding public meetings?
Look for more of these questions to come up next year. New technology offers so many more opportunities to keep government open. Yet agreement on its appropriate use is hard to find.
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Mr Gilbert,
How nice to hear from you.
How are the police in our state allowed to violate our 4th Amendment Rights so Easily?
If I were an officer of the law, I’d be ashamed of some of the “survaillance activities” we use, especially on peaceful law abiding citizens.
I believe the public is partially responsible in that we are stupid. That’s right, Americans differentiate themselvs from the rest of the world with a kind of “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” mentality and the police just hop on for the ride. Its job security for them and if they can scare some judge into signing a survaillance warrent, then they’re off and running.
Police are experts at “Fear Mongering” and our puritanical society has revived a “Salem Witchcraft” type of response. I’ll spend the rest of my life writing about it.
The ambiguity or hipocracy is astonashing.
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I’d like to begin by complimenting Mr. Nemethy for a well-written, balanced article.
However, I do have one major concern that was only mentioned briefly in the article.
Given the easy access to the internet and instant messaging, how do we know that it’s still an open meeting?
I sat at the Essex Selectboard meeting on Monday, July 18 with my laptop open, connected to the internet, the entire time. If any member of the selectboard had their laptop open and also connected to the internet, I could have been instant messaging with them. That’s not an “open” discussion.
For that matter, someone not even in the room could be doing the same thing. They could be telling selectboard members what to say, how to think and most frighteningly, they could be telling a selectboard member how to vote on a subject.
How do I, as a concerned member of the public, know that the people in the room are making their decisions without unknown influence?
People above have mentioned the selectboard having the ability to research something electronically during the meeting. That means the selectboard members would have to have internet access. And without being able to see their screens, there is no way anyone will convince me to simply “trust” that they aren’t communicating with some unknown person.
I’m a senior financial analyst for a local, major manufacturing firm. We have regular financial and business audits. And a key point that is always made in process audits is that “trust is not a business control.”
Until someone comes up with a way to guarantee that selectboard members actively using technology at meetings aren’t having private digital conversations, I’ll be opposed to them having laptops, tablets and smart phones open during the meetings.
As an aside, this same major technology firm also has quite a few meeting sessions where “no laptops open” is a standard operating procedure. If someone has a laptop opened, they are asked to leave the room or the conversation is halted. This very scenario happened in meetings on July 20 and 21, 2011. So I’m not talking about older policies.
And last but not least, I’m a member of generation X, so I’m hardly a “curmudgeonly old timer.” I personally own a 4G smart phone with hot spot capability, a tablet and multiple laptops/netbooks. I’m very much in favor of technology.
But I’m more in-favor of Vermont’s open meeting law.
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I’ve never seen anything that says board members can’t have private interactions during an open board meeting. We can’t in these private discussions talk about the business at hand and take action, but we can communicate off the record.
It is a matter of trust. If you don’t feel you can trust your local select/school/other board member(s) the appropriate action is to replace her/him.
With that said if I were running a meeting that had an internet connection and laptops or tablets, I would insist on a software platform that makes all communications and documentation available to everyone who has access to the internet.
We need to remember that not relying solely on the printed paper can save a few bucks, but more importantly there are many folks nowadays who would rather use the computer for just the above. We need to accommodate today and tomorrow – even when we’re not sure what tomorrow will look like.
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Robyn Moore failed to disclose that she is the daughter of Linda Myers, Chair of the Essex Selectboard. I would enjoy knowing what network or WiFi connection she was using. Personally, when I launch my laptop at an Essex SB meeting, I see two WiFi connections, both of which are locked. One says, “ToE”. When I inquired if that were available to the SB, our assistant town manager replied, “I hope not.” Evidently, that is the Essex PD network.
Ms. Myers-Moore might very well have gotten a connection where she was. Regardless, I can categorically deny that I had access to any internet connection.
Ms. Myers-Moore might also reflect on how easy it is to violate our open meetings law even without technology. Her mother tried to violate it a couple of meetings ago by raising an issue in executive session, an issue that had not been warned and was not appropriate for executive session. Only the objection of one board member stopped her from proceeding.
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I’m pleased to see this article spur some thoughtful commentary and that VtDigger posts are civil even though they can be pointed at times. A credit to Vermonters.
After researching and reporting on this issue for several weeks, it’s clear to me that each town/city is going to have to adapt and confront issues of digital use and openness to some degree. I was surprised to see how “advanced” some towns are, largely due to involved tech-savvy citizens as well as citizens who see technology as a way to open up the meeting and government process.
This is not to say the “old ways” do not work, it’s just that our expectations are changing and life and government is more complicated. (I’m sure town clerks are happy to have Quicken or other accounting software and not do ledgers – especially when it comes to state education aid!)
Change is part of life and technology’s advance is relentless and as Deputy Secretary of State Brian Leven noted, we increasingly expect to find what we want on the web, whether it’s the town budget, delinquent taxes or zoning rulings.
Several posts mention that ultimately, trust is at the heart of a working system, the belief that town officials are working honestly for us (and not taking voting directions via Twitter or clandestine emails). I am optimistic that Vermont will be able to work its way through this digital transition/transformation without the need for extensive legal redefinitions in the Legislature, though clearly some issues will need to be addressed especially regarding access to new forms of digital material sought by the media – i.e., such as arrest videos on police cruisers. As an earlier post mentioned, digital devices are just tools, albeit different ones from ones we used 50 years ago.
Andrew Nemethy
Adamant, Vt.
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“It is a matter of trust. If you don’t feel you can trust your local select/school/other board member(s) the appropriate action is to replace her/him.” (Quoted from above)
I would love to take appropriate action and elect someone that I trust.
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In response to Mr. Post’s most recent comments, I am indeed Linda Myers’ daughter. However, I’m a tax paying resident of Essex. And therefore, I’m entitled to my opinion, just like any other resident. My relationship does not disqualify me from attending public meetings, speaking out about subjects of concern to me and voting.
And secondly, I was not using either WiFi signal that Mr. Post mentioned while I was at the selectboard meeting.
With all due respect to Mr. Post, as a vocal proponent of technology use, I would have thought that he would have automatically known that I carry my own internet signal by my notation that I own a 4G smart phone with hot spot capability. And that means that any selectboard member could be doing the same thing. He can categorically deny having access, but any selectboard member can have internet access relatively easily, just as I do.
And considering that he chooses to attack other selectboard members publicly, a somewhat unprofessional choice, he proves my point that controls other than “trust” should be in place.