By Anita Schwerner

At the May 16, 2022, Stockbridge Annual Town Meeting a citizen petition was passed by a majority vote of the town. The article requires all town meetings to have a remote option so that the meeting can be watched in real time with the exception of any site visits that have deliberations. To further transparency for those who are not able to attend in person the meeting recordings are posted on CTSB so that they can be watched after the meeting.

Lately the meetings are not being posted in a timely manner and the video is slowly disappearing into darkness. At this time the last posted meeting is from September 9 and there are 13 meetings since then that are not yet available on CTSB. Michael Canales has taken it on as his responsibility for posting the meetings but has acknowledged that his responsibilities as Town Administrator make it difficult to keep up with this task. Michael, CTSB has indicated you can just email them the raw meetings. You don’t have to do any extra work!

This is about transparency. We need to be able to watch meetings and to read about them in the press. I enjoy reading Stockbridge Updates and believe that to have an informed electorate and to get the facts straight it is important to also have submissions from the Town Administrator as well as departments such as fire and police as well as from chairs or members of committees and boards.