Members of the Española City Council held a preliminary discussion at their Feb. 11 meeting about bringing back the virtual meeting option.
District 3 Councilor Felicia Archuleta-Toya made a recommendation on behalf of the city’s ad hoc Public Relations Committee to bring back virtual meeting attendance for the public.
“There are some stipulations,” she said. “This is us taking baby steps to bring things back … we would set it up in a webinar format, meaning that those that do join via the virtual link can only listen.”
Currently, they are considering using a program like Microsoft Teams or Zoom.
The Committee did not make a recommendation about recording meetings and making them publicly available online.
“It’s not a no, but right now what we just discussed is (bringing) back the virtual option,” Archuleta-Toya said.
This was strictly a discussion and not a vote by council. In the future, Mayor John Ramon Vigil said, it can be introduced as a resolution.
Security
concerns
In a telephone interview, Vigil said that meetings will be encrypted and anyone who wants to attend virtually will have to use an actual program, like Zoom or Microsoft Teams, which will require them to sign in with a name. A person will have to use a specific link to access each meeting. They will no longer be able to simply livestream the meeting.
The city began livestreaming Council meetings because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but ended the practice after a security issue in December 2023.
At the time, there were several issues with the computer used for this, as well as speculation about whether the city clerk, who was responsible for the broadcasts, was able to do her job correctly, Mayor Pro Tem Peggy Sue Martinez said during the council meeting.
“Whether you liked her or didn’t like her, whatever the situation was then, we come to find out that an outside source had actually taken a hold of some of that,” Martinez said.
In reality, someone accessed the city’s YouTube account, but they never determined who did it, Vigil said.
District 4 Councilor Justin Salazar-Torrez, who is serving his second term, said the blame for issues with the city’s previous livestream attempts fall squarely on the shoulders of leadership.
“It was me as a councilor, us as a governing body, that messed up, for we did not provide the proper training and resources for these folks to utilize the tools that they had at hand,” he said.
To prevent future issues, the city recently hired an in-house information technology specialist, who will help guide them as they choose a meeting platform, as well as making sure it is secure, Vigil said.
Using end-to-end encryption on video conferencing platforms like Zoom does disable features that were part of the city’s previous attempts at hosting online meetings.
According to the Zoom support website, turning on end-to-end encryption stops a meeting host from being able to livestream, cloud record and live transcribe.
“I want our meetings to be broadcast, but I am not going to do it at the risk of a security breach,” Vigil said.
Official
complaints
The city received a letter from the New Mexico Assistant Attorney General Daniel Rubin after community members Cynthia Lentini and Danielle Mares filed a complaint with the New Mexico Department of Justice regarding possible Open Meetings Act violations during an Aug. 22, 2023 City Council meeting.
This meeting was broadcast on KDCE and livestreamed on YouTube.
According to the letter, audio during the public comment portion of the meeting was partially muted and inaudible. While it was outside the city’s control whether KDCE censored meeting audio, the city’s own agenda created a reasonable expectation that people would be able to hear all public comments.
The letter also stated that the agenda may have also created the expectation that someone attending the meeting virtually would be able to participate in public comment. In the future, the letter said, agendas should state anyone not attending the meetings in person must submit comment in advance.
While the city no longer livestreams its meetings on YouTube, KDCE continues to air meetings on the radio and online, but does not include public comment.
“It’s (KDCE) not broadcasting public comments because people were using complete profanity over the air,” Vigil said.
Archuleta-Toya’s recommendation addresses these two issues. Meetings will be shown in their entirety, and anyone who wants to participate in public comment will be required to attend in person.
Members of the Public Relations Committee spoke with City Attorney Frank Coppler to make sure its recommendation conformed with provisions of the Open Meetings Act, she said.
“We feel strongly that we need to provide this option,” Archuleta-Toya said. “We have heard time and time again from the constituents that KDCE is not reliable at times … there are folks who would like to get here but can’t and this is just one way, in our opinion, that we are showing that we are trying to make an effort to be as transparent as possible with the information that we present here in council.”
In agreement — but not
All Council members at the Feb. 11 meeting expressed their support for bringing back a virtual attendance option.
Despite agreeing, District 4 Councilor Sam LeDoux and Vigil had a tense exchange.
“What Archuleta is advocating for works,” LeDoux said.
During his time working for the State of Arizona and serving on the Arizona Barbering and Cosmetology Board, he said, they used Google Meet. It was simple and easily allowed recording, archiving and livestreaming.
Besides benefiting the public, remote attendance also helps leadership be transparent with city staff and allows them to stay up-to-date with all city business, he said. It also helps anyone who wants to go back and check minutes for accuracy and clarity.
“It will make us a lot more efficient, it will make us a lot more accountable,” LeDoux said.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Northern New Mexico College filmed and broadcast meetings on Canal 6 and put them on the school’s website during the Alice Lucero administration, LeDoux added.
In response, Vigil said he was tired of hearing other institutions being compared to Española.
“We have aging infrastructure from 20 years ago,” he said. “I constantly am told, ‘Why don’t we do this, why don’t we do that?’ Our budget doesn’t allow us to because we are trying to decide if we can upgrade the utility infrastructure here, I.T. infrastructure, decide if we are going to pay for tortillas for them at the senior center. And so at the end of the day, we need to make the priorities and this is how we’re doing it in the best interest of the city and if you don’t like it, I quite frankly, I don’t really care anymore.”