Every Meeting, On the Record

Most Amity residents can't be in the room when the Board of Supervisors meets. It's a Wednesday night. People have jobs, kids, dinners, bedtimes. But the decisions made in that room — zoning changes, ordinances, the future of our rural conservation districts — affect all of us whether we're there or not.

So I've started doing something simple about it: I'm recording the Board of Supervisors meetings and posting them for the whole township to watch.

When the Board met in June, I recorded the full meeting and put it on YouTube — you can watch the vote on the cluster-home ordinance amendment in the first five minutes. Before that meeting, I ran a Facebook Live so residents who couldn't attend in person could follow along in real time. And it mattered: when hundreds of us either showed up or tuned in to the livestream in May, the Board deferred its vote on the controversial cluster-home zoning amendment. Public pressure works — but only when the public can actually see what's happening.

This isn't about catching anyone. It's about access. An empty room doesn't mean nobody cares. Last month I posted a clip of an empty room at the public hearing on the Joint Comprehensive Plan — not to shame anyone, but to show the gap. Important decisions were on the table, and almost nobody was there to hear them. Recordings close that gap. They let a working parent, a night-shift nurse, a college kid home for the summer watch what their government is doing, on their own time.

Transparency is one of the reasons I'm running for the Board of Supervisors, and I believe you practice it before you promise it. That's why I'm in a Community Listening Phase right now — hearing from residents before finalizing my platform. And that's why every meeting I can get to, I'll record, and every recording I'll share.

If you watch one and have thoughts — about a vote, an ordinance, something the Board said or didn't say — I want to hear them. That's the whole point.