This made for a pretty interesting discussion on Tuesday evening…

Hercules City Council halts plans to destroy videotaped meetings
By Tom Lochner

Plans to destroy a decade-and-a-half worth of Hercules City Council and Planning Commission meeting videotapes to free up storage space are on hold, after a council member cast doubt on the adequacy of written minutes as the exclusive record.

That would be the case for meetings before 2001, when the city started supplementing its cable TV broadcasts with Web-streaming coverage on its Web site; the Web-streamed meetings since 2001 have been downloaded onto a DVD at the end of each year and are kept in the city clerk’s office. The current and past two years’ council meetings, and commission meetings dating to mid-2007, can be viewed on the city Web site at www.ci.hercules.ca.us.

For all of the tapes that city officials want to destroy, the city clerk’s office keeps written meeting minutes approved by the respective bodies. For pre-2001 meetings, the written minutes are the only record besides the videotapes.

“I know we have written … reporting of these meetings,” said Councilman Kris Valstad, who earlier had asked that the item be taken off the consent calendar. “However, I think it’s still important — and that’s why we have these meetings televised — that we should have some type of video recovery, or maintaining the archives that we have.”

Richmond keeps its City Council meetings archived on DVDs dating to 1993.

The Hercules tapes slated for destruction are in the Records Storage Center at the top of City Hall and cover council and planning commission meetings from 1991 to 2007. Under the California Government Code, the videotapes can be destroyed if there are other records, such as written meeting minutes. Also slated for destruction are tapes of Hercules Community Services Commission meetings from 1997 to 2005.

The council and the Planning Commission each generally meet twice a month, with hiatuses in August and a single meeting in December, for a total of about 20 meetings a year for each body.

“They add up to a lot, and storage becomes an issue,” said City Manager Nelson Oliva.

On the other hand, “Once they’re destroyed, they’re gone,” said City Attorney Mick Cabral.

Valstad said that in the case of a lawsuit or just for the sake of historical precision, it would be good to have a visual and audio verbatim record of the meetings.

He and fellow Councilman Ed Balico, who echoed some of Valstad’s concerns, suggested transferring the videotapes to DVD. The council instructed city staff to come up with an estimate for what it would cost to do that, but it set no timetable.