After the August 5, 2024 City Council meeting, Council President John Lyda gave an interview to WBRC Fox 6 about the passage of a resolution to maintain YouTube Records. Did John Lyda misspeak, mislead or even tell a lie or two?
Bluff Park resident and founder of The Hoover Channel, Robin Schultz, took to his YouTube channel with a detailed response.
Schultz says of Lyda, “He has done everything in his power to remove transparency instead of enhance transparency in city business.”
He also offered the following timeline:
Timeline in Video
2015 – Hoover Resident Dan Fulton Records audio of Council meetings and uploads them to his YouTube Channel
2016 – Newly Elected City Council begins to stream meetings using an iPad and uploading to the city’s YouTube Channel
2020 – Council Chambers are remodeled and new $370,000 AV system includes cameras for recording meetings
8/2022 – City deletes all meeting videos from 2016-2022 from their YouTube Channel
9/2022 – Council President Lyda institutes a new streaming policy that mandates that the stream
will only start with Action Items and stop at end of Action Items, thus omitting presentations, proclamations, Council comments and Public Comments.
11/2022 – Robin Schultz finds the deleted videos and downloads them, then uploads them to the newly created The Hoover Channel’s YouTube Channel, preserving them in perpetuity.
3/2023 – The Hoover Channel begins livestreaming meetings in their entirety, including Public Comments.
5/2024 – Robin Schultz is asked to draft an ordinance that will restore the streaming of the full Council meetings and Work Sessions.
8/5/2024 – Council votes and approves Resolution 8188-24, which restores full streaming.
Prior to the vote WBRC caught up with Councilor Steve McClinton you can see his interview below.
See the full interview here:
