Cape supervisor wrong to stop videotaping

I attended the last Cape Vincent town board meeting, and I was shocked to hear our town supervisor tell a local town resident, John Byrne, he could not video-record the proceedings of the meeting.

This person has performed an invaluable service for this community by recording local town meetings and posting the videos on the Internet. Recording the proceedings of public meetings is completely legal. And this is a wonderful way for homebound residents to see their local officials in action.

For example, you can watch town board member Marty Mason instructing us why voting on a water district is a conflict of interest. OK, maybe that wasn't a good example.

If you would like to watch this video and many others, simply go to the following Internet address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZfJ-bCmP3s.

If the truth be told, I'm guessing some of the officials have been embarrassed by the shenanigans shown on these videos. As a consequence, Supervisor Thomas Rienbeck had to find an excuse to stop Mr. Byrne from video-recording future meetings.

Rienbeck produced copies of pictures someone printed off the Internet. He said these pictures insulted him and his ancestors. Rienbeck stated that Mr. Byrne posted these pictures on his Web site.

I rushed home to my computer to see what I have been missing. I searched for the Web site spoken by Rienbeck called "Pandora's Box of Rocks."

As it turns out, this site is a blog and K. Muschell is the Web master and not John Byrne. The blog is devoted to wind energy issues.

There is a tongue-in-cheek article dated April 14 entitled, "A Strange New Disease Discovered in Cape Vincent." The article describes the symptoms of the disease as confusion, delusions, ideas of grandeur, dishonesty, pathological lying, cunning and self-centered behavior. There are two pictures that depict people with this disease.

The YouTube videos and the blog pictures are totally unrelated. There is no reference to Rienbeck in the blog. Our town supervisor should apologize to Mr. Byrne and to all citizens of Cape Vincent for his unprofessional behavior.

Tom Gormel

Cape Vincent