Nutley Planning Board Meeting – August 5, 2015

This meeting is now the subject of what could end up being a pretty contentious battle over the First Amendment and common law rights of citizens to record public meetings. Those rights are also protected, without ambiguity, by New Jersey State law.

I was asked to attend this meeting by the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government, and joined by NJFOG Board of Directors member Saul Qersdyn.

Here is a copy of the rather sparsely-worded pre-meeting agenda that was made available for this meeting:

Pre-meeting agenda

Here is a copy of the regulations restricting the filming of public meetings. They were previously adopted by the Zoning Board in July, and unanimously adopted by the Planning Board in this meeting. Minutes after it was adopted, we were asked to sign it on the spot.

We politely refused.

Note that there is no mention whatsoever of this resolution announced to the public in the pre-meeting agenda.

Recording regulations agreement

My apologies for the virtually indecipherable audio in the first part of the meeting. It seems that Mr. Kozyra doesn’t think his board any obligation to the public to keep the microphone audio at a reasonably audible level.

We understand that a recent court ruling upheld that public bodies must ensure that the public is able to hear what is transpiring in the proceedings. We’ll be sure to research that statute, and pass it along.

I was sitting in the third row of the Commission Chambers with a camera that has excellent audio capability, and even sitting there in person, I could barely understand a word of what was said.