Television Comes to City Council

The local television station in Pembroke called me to ask if they could broadcast the regular meetings of council live. I was mayor at the time and it was in 1976 when this became routine for other communities. I was happy with the request but had some reservations about how it would be accepted by the aldermen.

I brought the request up on the regular agenda next meeting and the motion was passed . Before the meeting of the first broadcast I had a short session in camera to explain the procedures and to make everyone comfortable with the cameras. I asked if everyone could have something to contribute on the introduction of TV in council.

Everything went well during the meeting even thought some more verbose than other aldermen hogged the limelight and spoke too long. As the meeting was about to close I noticed that two Senior aldermen had not spoken. I knew special orders was coming up and took the opportunity to thank the TV station for their new innovation.

I also caught the eye of the two alderman to give them a chance to speak and get their feet wet on TV. One older alderman stood and said he had a question to ask of his friend sitting next to him but he did not know what it was. He spoke, rambled on and nodded to his friend to answer the question. His fellow alderman stood and said since his fellow alderman did not know the question he would do his best to answer it. Everyone in the audience smiled, smirked and burst out laughing. The alderman was not put off and took his four minutes to answer the question that was not asked. Before sitting down he thanked his fellow alderman for the opportunity to clear up the answer to the question bothering him.

After a moment of silence I closed the meeting with the words, "welcome to live television every Tuesday , it should be fun if this is an example of our meetings."

Those two alderman were my good friends and have since passed away but they had a little stage fright and their actions that Tuesday were not indicative of their tenure on council.