City Hall officials responded quickly Thursday morning after learning that a rerun of Monday's tense City Council meeting, dominated by testimony of law enforcement misconduct and calls for greater powers for the police ombudsman, suddenly cut off just as the testimony began.
Alert City Cable 5 viewer John Olsen began sending out e-mails at 6:41 this morning noting that the Wednesday evening rebroadcast of the council meeting suddenly switched to soothing music and a scroll of civic events in the middle of testimony from social justice activist Marianne Torres. Torres was the third of 23 people to testify Monday, urging City Council members to adopt an ordinance that expands the investigative and reporting authority of the almost-year-old Office of Police Ombudsman, the civilian overseer of police conduct.
This has become a tense enough issue that harsh words have been exchanged and accusations made of various skullduggeries and of kow-towing to police unions. Olsen reflected the suspicious atmosphere when he wrote: ---
"There likely is a 'cover story' for why that part of the city council meeting was not repeated, but it looks and feels pretty icky and controlled....ie someone did not want that testimony to be readily available to the citizens."
Councilman Jon Snyder responded to Olsen's e-mail by 7:22 am, calling the glitch "disconcerting" and promising to immediately look into it.
By 9:09 am city spokeswoman Marlene Feist responded that, thanks to Olsen's catch, a problem with the server was discovered. An extra re-run of the council meeting — the entire riveting three hours and 40 minutes of it — has been added at 6 pm Friday.
The meetings are also available online here, Feist notes. Click on “City Council Meetings” and select the May 24 meeting.
Just an idea: Maybe the city can add some Marmot-cams. Be cool to have live footage from some of the larger underground marmot colonies downtown. If folks are up late watching the city council on TV reruns, who knows what else could be popular. I'm just saying.
